MP Computers who the.........

I think a lot independent computer companies take a look round PC W.... and think \'look at all this expensive rubbish\' then start selling cheap rubbish! If your looking for cheap cheap then we\'re probably not the place to come for a PC, that is not to say we don\'t offer good value but we\'ve found if you want to keep a customer then supplying quality and at a good price is key.

When your buying a PC it\'s very easy to get preoccupied with numbers. So I thought I\'d run through each thing in a PC to explain what it does and consider possible options.

Case There are a lot of cases, keeping the components cool is very important so a case that offers good airflow is important. The gauge of metal used is an issue, you want something solid. The Shuttle system is very compact but shuttle have been clever in using a great colling system and using >Aluminium. Many customers complain about the size of case but be mindful of airflow.

Power Supply We\'ve seen 550W Power Supplies that we wouldn\'t touch with a barge pole, stability is key here, using a high quality power supply is far more important than using one with a high rating. We can supply 400W power supplies at well under £10 but we wouldn\'t use them in our systems. Unless very high end system 400W is ample to cover most systems.

CPU A CPU is measured in Mhz a thousand of these is Ghz, what the heck do Mhz mean? Simply every second for every Mhz the CPU will carry out One Million instructions so a 2.6Ghz can carry out 2600 Million instructions. So faster Mhz = better PC right? Wrong, a Celeron 2.6Ghz CPU is nothing at all like a Pentium. If you were buying a sports car and the salesman told you it was a 1.6ltr engine would you be satisfied it was going to be fast? No, there are a whole range of other issues to consider, it\'s very much the same with PC\'s.

Memory More memory equals better performance, this isn\'t exact but the concept will give you an idea..... If your PC is running Windows XP with 128Meg of RAM then by doubling it you would likely see double the performance, but going from 256Meg to 512Meg you\'d only see a 50% improvement, going from 512Meg to 1Gb (1000Meg) maybe 15%. The best value we find is generally to be found at 512Meg, it does depend on what you intend doing with your PC.

Hard Drive A lot of PC\'s we work on have 200Gb hard drives with 180Gb free. Honestly 80Gb is ample for a lot of users, gamers need a bit more, if you like to collect music or perhaps make your own videos then maybe have a look at the size. SATA is a new type of hard drive it\'s undoubtedly faster and currently there is only small price premium for them.

Graphics Card I see a lot of customers say \'My graphics card is 256Meg it will run any game\', we can sell you a 256Meg graphics card for around £32. Will it run any game? Barely. To get the best out of PC gaming you will need something that has a fast CPU on the card itself, do not become preoccupied with Memory.

Motherboards What\'s a motherboard? The is arguably the most important thing in your PC, everything plugs into the motherboard, a fast stable motherboard is critical to performance. When you are shopping for a PC ask what motherboard it has, if the salesman doesn\'t know then maybe your shopping in the wrong place. We could write ten pages on motherboards, our preference is to use ASUS but we usually have tried a few across the range before settling on one that we\'re happy with.

Optical Drives It\'s almost got to the point where DVD Writers are on every PC. Pioneer have continually offered the most stable and best performance. This is typical component which highlights why we won\'t be the cheapest. A Pioneer DVD Writer will cost around 10-15% more than the cheapest on the market, however very often these cheaper writers very often just don\'t cut it in terms of reliability.

Support PC\'s are complex things can go wrong, lets just say we are never going to support our PC\'s from India.

Benchmarking A car does 0-60 in 5 seconds with a 2ltr Engine and another with a 4ltr engine does 0-60 in ten seconds. That\'s a benchmark, you can talk numbers till the cows come home but you can benchmark a PC.

Build Quality Typically a big manufacturer of PC\'s will make one PC, install the operating system and software then make a batch of 300-400. The Operating System and software will then be put directly onto the hard drive of those 400 systems. How do they know the modem works on all 400, or they haven\'t got the odd duff memory stick, or maybe the power supply isn\'t quite up to scratch on three or four? We continually get repairs from customers saying that their PC has \'never been quite right since they had it\'. Every system we build we test every component we can, we benchmark every system to make sure the performance is there.