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Which is the best choice out of these 3 PCs

Go with the D3 Barbarian (first link) as it's configured. By far the most powerful system of the 3 systems you're looking at. Very fast CPU, plenty of ram, and nice mid-range video card. Should do you fine, and you even have an extra 100 pounds to spend on an SSD for instance.
 
Does reputation of the company have any bearing on your decision?

BTW, #3 is an apples to oranges option for a "gaming PC".
 
I would go with pcspecialist with the following options selected:

(but first you must go to "configure desktop" then "intel systems" and then "my budget is £450 to £1500")

CPU: i3-2120
Ram: 8gb samsung 1333
GPU: 1GB AMD RADEON 6850
Hard Disk:500GB 7200rpm
Power Supply: 450watt 80%

And leave all other options as is. The total should come to £587. Only thing is, I left the case on the cheapest option (£14) and it is not the most aesthetically pleasing thing I have ever seen.

The cpu I selected is only a dual core but it is still a very fast chip. To step up to a quad core (i5-3450) it would push the total up to £641. Personally if I could find the extra £54 I would spend it because in future more and more games are likely to make use of a quad.

450watt is plenty to run this system. Here's a review of a 6850 running furmark (which uses more power than any game as far as I know) in a system with a more power hungry CPU (i7-920@3.33Ghz) and it only uses 292watts at full load.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/...enewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/20

Edit: It seems that pcspecialist are quite a good company. They score an average of 9.3/10 with 4,347 reviews on trustpilot.co.uk.

http://www.trustpilot.co.uk/review/www.pcspecialist.co.uk

Eclipsecomputers on the other hand gets an average of 4.9/10 with 15 reviews.

http://www.trustpilot.co.uk/review/www.eclipsecomputers.com
 
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Another option is:

http://www.arbico.co.uk/Arbico-Core-i5-6870-Pro-Custom-Built-Gaming-Computer-p-.html

Specs:

CIT Jupiter Black
• 2 x 120mm Standard Case Fans
• Quiet Corsair 600W
• Intel Core i5 2400, Quad Core (1155, 3.10GHz, 6MB Cache)
• Standard Heatsink & CPU Fan
• Standard Heatsink Paste
• Asus P8H61-M X, 2xDIMM, Max. 16GB, M-ATX
• 8GB (2 x 4GB) Kingston 1333MHz DDR3
• Overclocked ATI Radeon HD 6870 1GB
• 500GB SATA II
• NO RAID
• 22x Dual Layer DVD +/- Rewriter
• Integrated 10/100/1000Mbps
• 2 Front + 4 Back Ports
• Integrated 7.1 High Definition Channel Audio
• Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64bit Version)

Total (including delivery) = £652.99

The advantages of this setup are a better case, it looks better and probably has better cooling (it has 2x 12cm fans). I upgraded the PSU to a Corsair (+£40) for peace of mind and it comes with a more powerful GPU (AMD 6870). If you go for this make sure that you select the 6870, as the default is set to Nvidia 560 (non ti) which is considerably slower. The i5-2400 is slightly worse than the i5-3450 but it's still faster for gaming than anything AMD has to offer.

On trustpilot.com arbico.co.uk scores an average of 9.1/10 with 58 reviews, so not bad but not as confidence inspiring as the stats for pcspecialist.

The reason I upgraded the arbico PSU to a corsair is because the default was a 500w coolermaster which I strongly suspect is a load of rubbish. The 450watt PSU offered by pcspecialist I figured was probably better because it is a 80% efficient one.

PS. if you click that link you will see the price is listed as £589(inc VAT). With delivery and the upgraded PSU it comes out at £652.99.
 
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Info on relevant graphics cards (in case you're interested):

AMD 7750 VS AMD 6850 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/535?vs=539

AMD 7770 VS AMD 6850 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/536?vs=539

AMD 7770 vs AMD 6870 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/536?vs=539

Summary:

The 6850 is significantly faster than the 7750. The 7770 is considerably faster than the 7750 and is perhaps on par with the 6850 (wins some, loses others). The 6870 is quite a bit faster than both the 7770 and 6850.

I would link some comparisons between the i5-2400 and i5-3450 but I can't find any 🙁 but in theory they should be very similar in performance with the i5-3450 having a slight advantage. As a general rule the GPU is considered more important for gaming than the CPU. But it depends on the game too, some games really benefit from a quad core (supreme commander springs to mind). Point is, going from a i3 dual core to an i5 quad can make a big difference, but choosing a i5-3450 quad over a i5-2400 quad is probably going to make no perceivable difference.

Benchmarks between i3-2100 and i5-2400 (scroll down to bottom to see games):

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/363?vs=289
 
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I priced out the arbico build at ebuyer.com:

£139.98
PowerColor HD 6870 Battlefield 3 Edition 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI Dual Mini DisplayPort

£143.22
Intel Core i5 2400 3.1GHz Socket LGA 1155 6MB

£46.98
Asus P8H61-M LE/USB3 Intel H61 Socket 1155 8 Channel HD Audio mATX Motherbo

£32.00
Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333MHz Memory Kit CL9 1.5V

£52.63
Corsair 600W CX Series V2 PSU - 6x SATA 2x PCI-E

£55.00
Seagate 500GB 3.5" SATA-III 6Gb/s Barracuda Hard Drive 7200RPM 16MB

£10.98
Casecom CM-262 Shiny Black MicroATX Case

£66.95
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium w/SP1

£1.70
120mm Black Case Fan - 4 pin connector

Total = 549.44 (including delivery)

So it will cost you about £100 extra to get it pre-built. But that includes a years warranty (for the second year they only include labour which it pretty crap, same with pcspecialist).

I would cost out the pcspecialist builds but I gtg soon.
 
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Blain said:
:hmm: Ebuyer UK @ ResellerRatings
Click to expand...
Yeah, seems ebuyer's not too great. Sry about that. They do pretty badly on trustpilot too, Scan.co.uk does much better (8.8/10 with over 1000 reviews). In my experience scan is a little more expensive but it shouldn't be much more. I would price it out but on phone and cba.

Edit: I've bought loads of stuff from ebuyer in the past and have never had a problem, but I'll defo be using scan in future based on the poor reviews.
 
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Thanks for all your advice titan, awesome stuff, i was leaning towards the i5 3450 but will cheack out the 2400. Again many thanks.
 
Titan, i loaded up the arbico build and the total is £629.00, basically the £589.00 base price plus £40 for the PSU and changed the GPU to the overclocked 6870. i check twice to see if i missed owt but dont think i have. How come u get £652.99?
 
JeffroBizzle said:
Titan, i loaded up the arbico build and the total is £629.00, basically the £589.00 base price plus £40 for the PSU and changed the GPU to the overclocked 6870. I check twice to see if i missed owt but dont think i have. How come u get £652.99?
Click to expand...
Delivery is £20 plus VAT unfortunately. It shows up when you go through the checkout process.

Edit: Just looking at the benchmarks between the 6870 and 560 (non ti) and it's not as clear cut as I thought it is.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/540?vs=543

Although the 6870 seems to win some it gets really destroyed in a few games, like Starcraft II.
 
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oh ok, thanks, i did google the 6870 with diablo 3 and some people had problems but it was with the beta and i suppose other factors also come in to play.
 
JeffroBizzle said:
oh ok, thanks, i did google the 6870 with diablo 3 and some people had problems but it was with the beta and i suppose other factors also come in to play.
Click to expand...
There are quite a few videos of different people playing the beta of diablo 3 on 6870's (search youtube for "diablo 3 6870"). Blizzard is such a good company that I would expect any problems with GPU compatibility to be sorted out pretty quickly, especially for such a mainstream card.

Having said that, dare I say it, AMD has a reputation for having worse drivers than Nvidia. But most 0experienced people on here say that it is really a non issue nowadays because AMD drivers have improved so much and also because Nvidia has had driver problems themselves, not just AMD.
 
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