Buying hardware in Ireland

satchmo

I've recently decided to build my own machine. I've spent hours going through the web looking for good prices and good sites - the best I can seem to find is www.scan.co.uk, with it's www.todayonly.co.uk page. They have good prices, sometimes great, but my problem is the English exchange rate at the moment is woeful and I'd prefer to buy my parts in Ireland anyhow.

Does anyone know a good place to find cheap reliable parts here? Here's what I'm looking for:

MSI K7T Pro Socket A Athlon motherboard
Athlon Thunderbird ~800Mhz
~30GB 7200rpm ATA-66 HD
128MB PC-133 SDRAM
GeForce 2
DVD drive (preferably multi-region)
suitable case & PSU

anyone out there know someone I could talk to?

thanks,
Keith

quozl

Hi Keith,
yeah you could try Gerry or Sutty they build their own pc's. Come on lads, post up a quote
Greg

iar_xeno

This maybe taboo on such a techie board, but when I was investigating building a new PC and figured I couldn't be assed with all the returns you invariably have to do with the individual parts and also the cost worked out about the same as buying a new one. Off to D3LL with you, admittedly you'll be tied to INT3L chips but the build quality is great and support is second to none... actually I take that back, support is none.

Xenophobic

Lump

Lads there aplace in roscommon called trojan computers. Good guys. You'll have to ring them though on 079 62552.

John

satchmo

Yeah but Xeno the whole reason I want separate parts is that I _want_ to build it myself!

Think of it as a learning experience.

Gerry

Jazz, don't get a dell. They lack performance and upgradibility. Building it yourself is much better. Try www.dabs.com and www.scan.co.uk for the athlon and motherboard, possibly they have good prices on the hard drive and ram. Bear in mind the terrible exchange rate though. I may be able to get the geforce2, hard drive, ram, dvd and case+psu for a good price.

OctaviaN

Be warned if yer going with amd. http://yahoo.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-2198230.html?pt.yfin.cat_fin.txt.ne

It may only be Gw

satchmo

Well I don't really have the budget for a GHz machine, so that's not much of a problem!

I reckon I'll follow your advice Gerry, buy the processor & mobo from England and get the rest locally (I'll be in touch with you about that soon).

thanks alot,
Keith

Gerry

I'm not exactly an amd fanatic, but I reckon the problem is gateways fault.

iar_xeno

Jazz, I got that urge out of my system way back building a 386 then a 486, if you must, you must I suppose, but I prefer spending my time using PCs rather than having me head stuck under the hood.

Gerry, the difference in upgradablity between a D3ll and anything else would be ...?, I bought my first D3ll about 9 months back, first thing I did was put in a SBLive full, just finished today replacing the TNT Ultra with a Geforce 2 and next up (in a few months) will be a new processor, so barring prising chips off the mother board its as upgradable as any, imho.

Performance wise the HW is as good as if not better than most available retail, maybe with some of the bells and whistles removed to cut back on costs but nothing that affects performance, the only thing left is software driver wise and on that they do fall down abit, having to wait for them to release a new version of software is as annoying as h3ll.


On the downside their tech support is rubbish, delivery via int3rlink is awful and you get someone else to worry about all those lovely incompatiblities which people in the HW side of things must love or else they wouldn't build their own.

I've bought two from them and I'd recommend them as the lesser of three evils (GW and build your own).

Xenophobic
tired and going to bed

Gerry

Building your own is so much better. I added to mine over time, carefully picking every component, and looking for the best price on it. I've now got a p3 600 running at 1 ghz, with a geforce ddr. Dell wouldn't even tell you for a long time what type of geforce they were giving you, and people ended up with the sdr version. most dell's cant be upgraded to the latest chips. The machines are not as well configured, and they cut corners. The only good thing about dell is their monitors.

Blitzkrieger

I started out with a Dell P2-233MMX, winmodem, sounblaster, 32MB RAM, 4MB gfx card, 4GB HD.

First I added a VooDoo 2 SLI, then 128MB of PC-100 RAM with absolutly no problems, then a 10GB HD with no problems. I still have a spare PCI slot for my new h/w modem when I buy it, I have an AGP slot for my VooDoo 5 6000 when I buy it and a spare RAM slot too. I can upgrade the chip to a P2-366 or a Celeron-566 without upgrading the board and I'll free up two PCI slots replacing the VooDoo 2. What's hard to upgrade?

I always heard that Dell had an outstanding reputation for quality. I heard they do ****-loads of testing on every PC and when I went looking for advice on a new modem-driver they got back to me the same day. The Dell employee who bought it for me is allowed buy 3 PCs at cost every year and he's got orders for the next 4 years. I know a man who knows a man at Tiny but he has no such orders.



[This message has been edited by Blitzkrieger (edited 06-07-2000).]

Gerry

They are not all that easy, they have improved, but a lot used to come with integrated video and sound, and nonstandard sized motherboards. Most of the time their tech support is rubbish. If you know someone in there, thats different. Also, why are you getting a voodoo 6000, it needs a much faster processor to get the most out of it. A geforce would be a better investment. Just my 0.02 euros.

SickBoy

Ok I have to stand up for the company I work for. The upgradeability of dell isn't bad. There are some problems though. If you plan on upgrading your motherboard its a bit of a nightmare as the chassis is setup for there specific motherboards(depending on your model, Optiplex / Dimension) The reset & power buttons are totally different from standard ATX motherboards. But for upgradability from a peripheral point of view its not too bad as iar_xeno and Blitzkrieger pointed out. Out of the 2 main systems Dell ship the Optiplex is the least upgradeable one having most of its peripherals onboard i.e. sound, video, nic. For some this isn't a problem but for others its rather annoying as there is no AGP slot if they want to upgrade there video unless they want to upgrade to a PCI 3Dfx jobbie. I for one think theres no point wasting a valuable PCI slot on a graphics card

satchmo

I've never really considered buying from the US. After shipping & all the extra bits (what's the story with VAT over there?) does it come out much cheaper?

Blade

I also got my 566 from knowledge micro as podgeen and sonic know, but cause I was drunk when I ordered it online I forgot to make any arrangements with them as regards valuing the stuff on the delivery docket so I got hit for the whole shebang, 30 quid delivery and 40 quid Irish VAT on delivery which on one single item makes it way too expensive, 240 quid in total just for a 566, fan and slocket.

Podgeen: I need a video card too if I'm not too late to jump in on your orders, I was thinking more so of a normal g-force DDR rather than the g-force2 depending on price, also if you can check for me I actually need whats called an FPD output (Flat Panel Display) on it, I've seen some models with that, it's for a digital TFT monitor.

Blade

Blitzkrieger

I'm wasting two PCI slots with my gfx card

I know that a VooDoo 5 6000 is a waste on my current system but I'm planning on getting a faster processor and I might take my chances with a new motherboard as well.

podgeen

have you checked out any america sites?
i got a celeron566 and an ABITBe2 motherboard and sound card and 2 network cards and logiteck keyboard and mouse an dfan and heatsink for bout 300 quid, had a monitor and atnt got 256 raM for 100 quid and got a case.
machine cost about 460.
and now i am getting a gforce2 for 200 quid.
we're ordering 3 of them if anyone interested in getting some let me or sonic know...

i got motherboard and stuff from www.knowledgemicro.com

and we're getting the gforce2's from computerhq.com

also knowledgemicro had our stuff delivered to us within 4 days of us placing the order..

podgeen

We're ordering on monday me thinks...
sonic had to go away
anyways www.computerhq.com is where wer're getting the stuff from
so check it out blade and let me know..
there're more expensive than kknowledge micro for most things -> hd's mommaboards etc..
but htere gforce2's are cheap

Gerry

nice one lads for finding a place that actually delivers to Ireland. I'm in business!

satchmo

On a related note, my brother intends to buy a laptop soon. He's going to New York on Sunday, and figures the prices over there will be much better.
Basically what he wants is a laptop with a DVD & modem, and one of the reasons he's going to buy it in NY is because he's over in the US alot and buys many region 1 DVDs, so he'd like to have a region 1 player in his laptop.
Is he better off getting one in a store over there or getting one from a site (bearing in mind the DVD issue, and of course price!)?

Lump

We got a pretty good laptop over there in a shop for around 900 Irish with the bag and the convertors etc.

IMHO, your better to get it in a store and bring it back UNLESS you can order it before you go over and have it sent to your address in America. Once it leaves american soil, They Slap customs etc onto it. No-one would notice you waking through the airport carrying a loptop in a bag like how many bussiness men and women travel the world a day carrying latops.

john

Blade

Podgeen: http://www.computerhq.com/ have this on their site....

'International Orders?

We are currently unable to ship or bill to addresses outside the United States.'

Or has sonic made special arrangements with them?

Blade

sam

im getting a cdrw from dabs.co.uk soon, if anyone wants something similar and wants to split shipping mail me please at doomgod@redbrick.dcu.ie

[This message has been edited by sam (edited 12-07-2000).]

Kali

haha sam ye should have got it off scan.. ordered mine there on monday..
how much on dabs?

Blade

Sam: Acer 8x4x32, 173 quid, free delivery in the Rep.
http://www.letsbuyit.com/en_IE/deal.jhtml?catid=11582&subcatid=11582&dealid=50606

Blade

elexes

jazz with most good dvd software you can select the region that the dvd is so you can watch any dvd . i still have to get a dvd i cant watch . just tell your bro always rem that the irish voltage is higher then the us .

satchmo

Well he got one, a Compaq 1600 with multi-region DVD for $1800. He's happy, so I'm happy.