Is it worth upgrading?

[nathancz]

Hey guys, I have a laptop (specs below) and would prefer a desktop because I want a bigger monitor and prefer using a mouse too!

However, my laptop works fine so I dont want to fork out much for a new system. I would only be looking to put £200 towards a new tower (mobo, cpu, ram, hdd, case, psu) as I have monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse.

So, do you think its possible to put something together thats similar to my laptop for that budget?

Laptop specs: Toshiba Satellite L650 12Q

Intel i5 430M (2.27GHz)
4GB DDR3 1066 RAM
320GB HDD



Any advice will be great,

Nathan

 

[TheBigTroll]

no there is no point of getting a 200 pound desktop. in the end it would be slower than your laptop

you could get a monitor and just hook it up to your laptop using a vga cable or a hdmi cable. then add a mouse

 

[nathancz]

Ok thanks Troll. I found this on ebay with decent specs and it doesnt look like cheap components too. What do you think?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-Desktop-PC-2-7GHz-8G-Intel-Pentium-Dual-Core-Sandybridge-G630-Warranty-Inc-/150889594811?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs&hash=item2321b87fbb

 

[TheBigTroll]

it would perform the same (or slightly less) than your laptop

 

[mikerockett]

Id be wary of buying anything with a bundled PSU (especially from ebay) as it is almost certainly poor quality.

As mentioned by the troll i'd just add a decent monitor, mouse and keyboard and go from there.

A decent desktop isn't going to happen in that price range.

 

[nathancz]

Alright I'll stick with my laptop. Just for future reference, what would you guys say is a average price to buy/build a PC similar to my laptop?

Thanks

 

[mmilner1]

Alright I'll stick with my laptop. Just for future reference, what would you guys say is a average price to buy/build a PC similar to my laptop?

Thanks

Just my two cents, you can nitpick parts here and there and find bargains but I'd say as a rule of thumb $1600 for a quality gaming system. Not sure what the conversion is as thats US dollars. but funny thing is 4 years ago I build my high end system and spent right around $1600 so for some reason that price seems to be pretty steady IMO. Again you can easily spend more and find enough bargains and make sacrifices to go less but that seems to be the average for at least me for a quality system.

 

[nathancz]

Yeh milner, thats what ive realised, I could spend ages looking for a cheap one that may/may not work or I could wait until I have the money to invest in a quality system.

I was going to test out Linux on the new system but I guess I could try it on my laptop instead.

 

[mikerockett]

Linux isn't very demanding and will run on a pretty basic system.

I would say around £500-700 would be a worthwhile gaming system. But that would get you a much better spec than your current laptop.

 

[TheBigTroll]

600-800 pounds is good for a uk build. in the states, we can get by with 800 or so