Where's good to pick up pre-built PC's from these days? I'm not after an amazing gaming powerhouse or anything, just something that'll be solid and reliable for work, keep on going without dying and if possible will let me play the odd MMO from time to time. £500ish on the budget?

I was looking at Dell and CCL, is it worth taking out the extended warranties at all?

Or does it still work out an awful lot cheaper to put together your own rig?

You can get some bargain machines if you look around places like hotukdeals, it is hard to beat building your own system though and knowing what components you're getting. A lot of the IT retailers make their own bundle systems now anyway, I doubt you'll see better prices going that road though as I know how low profit margins are.

Trouble with a self build is I'm so out of the loop that I don't know what really goes with what these days, what's good, what's not. If anyone fancies putting together a build for me from Tek or another retailer be my guest, I'll have a look around myself in the meantime.

Ordering a cheap and cheerful i3 model from CCL. I'll use it as a base to upgrade at a later date.

My main concern with pre-builts is how they are configured, IE, whether builts are built in or soldered to the Mobo. Would much rather have the freedom to upgrade/reconfigure how I please

Quote from: Quixoticish on April 04, 2012, 11:29:47 AM
Ordering a cheap and cheerful i3 model from CCL. I'll use it as a base to upgrade at a later date.

An I3 isn't only cheap and cheerful, it's quite powerful too, much more so than most earlier processors. If the I5 2500K wasn't there, or was more expensive, then it would be the obvious choice.

Quote from: zpyder on April 04, 2012, 15:45:43 PM
My main concern with pre-builts is how they are configured, IE, whether builts are built in or soldered to the Mobo. Would much rather have the freedom to upgrade/reconfigure how I please

This isn't a pre-built pre-built, it's completely transparent with regards to components.