not bad

I seen this instore today when I went in, I think it was this anyway.. it was Packard Bell quad core.

Very reliable ol' Packard Bell's!

Would upgrade graphics but other than that a cracking little machine!

these come with a 250w PSU from the info i can gather. any graphics upgrades might not be that easy.

it is a good deal...shame it has VGA and not DVI connection

Does this have a TV tuner?

Seriously, no DVi??

with a decent psu and graphics card this is a gd pc...!

Just upgrade to a new gfx, can pick decent ones up quite cheaply now.

Voted hot

What, so this is £384.99 WITH a monitor??? Bargain if so. HOT

Im sure this is just the base unit...

I'm on my second X2416 now. The motherboards sufffer terribly from coil whine. I think this one is going back too.

If it's a VGA only monitor then with the low spec. PSU it's a middling deal. As the base unit seems VGA only it's a fair bet any monitor is analogue - for me that's fatal.

its got nothing on the core i7 processor.

its just the base unit

blu ray doesnt interest me really, nor does the graphics card

scrapard bell at £385 good spec umm i give it a miss

You lot are very difficult to please. It's a good deal, everything that's been pointed out as a possible concern is cheaply and easily solved.

laze

ok so far the cons are it may be difficult to play Blu-Rays in the future and that the graphics may be a bit s**t

my current graphics card is a sapphire radeon 9200se alantis 128mb

cant be worse than that, can it?

very decent computer for a very decent price!
Have some heat :smiley:

Whats so good with DVI- I've never had to use mine... :smile:

Cold from me.

Cheap ram, a intergrated graphics card and a rubbish psu. Great. :w00t:

Noticed the title says 2.8 processor. Its 2.33ghz

is it 32 or 64 version of vista

Ive got a dvi monitor with vga as well, all you lot banging on about its terrible that it doesnt have a dvi slot might want to realise its not that big an issue considering theres ****** all difference between the two, its not noticable, so whys that a deal breaker? A non noticable dvi vs vga load of sillyness.

Its a good deal. voted hot.

If you want to update the card to vga you can get a silent one for £15-20.

Was tempted but the Micro ATX MOBO and PSU put me off. Oh and it is 2.33GHz and not 2.8.

MOBO layout here. http://support.packardbell.com/uk/item/index.php?i=spec_ic_motherboard_denver11_layout&ppn=PB80146101

£380 is not cheap for those specs.

For £380, you could build a much better computer. Which would include atleast a 4850.

I doubt the average PC World customer would ever consider building their own computer, for them its a good offer. In fact, most people on here wouldn't do it either.

Please can you put these components down as I'm not having any joy getting the price lower than £380!!

If it was a 2.8, then it would have been a steal. But as its the lowest quadcore 2.33ghz, is not worth it. There was a few deals before crimbo where 2.4's were cheaper than this at ebuyer and dell outlet

not a bad spec for the money so voted hot. If peeps did get this and decided to upgrade the psu/gfx then you might want to check that this wouldn't invalidate the warranty. I would have thought that this would have been Vista 32bit too.

Excactly, it's the new-ish quadcores that Intel have released and perform much better than the old Q6600.

can you upgrade your memory from DDR2 667MHz/PC2-5300 to say DDR2 800mhz?

what to genreally speed up my pc i wanna go from 2gb ram to 4gb ?

i have no idea what my motherboard is lol

This pc has 4gb of ram......

If your talking about your own pc then the chances are that putting extra ram in wont make that much difference. Remember 32bit OS only uses just over 3gb anyway. If you want a cheap upgrade and are using onboard graphics then getting a basic graphics card would be of more benefit as it will help with graphics and free up some system ram.

Something like this. http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/7871884/Play-Value-ATI-Radeon-HD-2600-Pro-512MB-PCI-E-Graphics-Card/Product.html#

Faster processor or overclocking ,if you can,Anything else makes hardly any difference,

got intel core 2 [email protected] easy to overclock?
and radeon x1300 series

I find it slightly depressing looking at the price and specs of this machine when compared to the one I built just over a year ago :x. Technology sure does move fast. Hot :thumbsup:

tesco still have the inspiron 530 q6600 from a while back sitting in thier stores - not on display though (our store has a dozen , just stitting there in the lockup). still @ 299

Was just going on same spec for value. Have ordered a couple of Vostro desktops off the outlet. Have a conformation for one but not the quad one.:x Just have a funny feeling that I will get a call tomorrow saying it was a mistake or something as it was £100 cheaper than the other one on the outlet.

The ability to overclock depends more on your motherboard and Bios but if you are wanting an improvement in games you definitley need a graphics card update

This is another one of those Scrapard Bell/PC World attempts to lure the uninformed customer. They throw big numbers and things that their useless sales people can use to missell things to people who aren't as well informed as some, and instead scrimp on the things that are actually important. Such as general build quality, a decent PSU, and a solid, reliable, motherboard.

They'll use the cheapest components they can where they can get away with it (cheap RAM/PSU/Motherboard = crashfest), and instead, for example, they'll use 4gb of rubbish ram instead of 2gb of high quality ram. Meanwhile, the salespeople will be reading their pitches "oh, it has 4gb of ram, which is the most you can get in a desktop computer! more ram makes your computer faster and makes it able to do more things at once, so this is as fast as it gets!"

They know customers think that bigger numbers after "hard drive" is a good thing. They know they wont have a clue what on earth a 250w PSU is, or 12v rails, etc. You get the picture.

As far as the 'specs' go, this is an OK offer. As far as the quality of the PC is concerned, its poor.

Oh, as for the whole VGA/DVI arguement - this is marketed as a 'media PC' and its shipped monitorless. Chances are, quite a few people will be plugging this into external displays, such as their own TFT/Plasma TV. With DVI thats easy, as you can get a simple DVI -> HDMI cable. With VGA, your screwed unless your display has a VGA socket.

And if it does have a VGA socket, due to the blu ray encoding thing, you'll not be able to put a blu ray drive in it and play HD content without replacing the graphics card for one that has DVI/HDMI first.

Which, I'd say, for a media PC is a little odd.

hopefully you're life doesn't revolve around posting that you could build better machines than those of posters.

If you can, and I'm not saying you can't, then it's a deal and good for you. However, why not go and get all the bits, post where it can be built for a non-tech user and get it up as a deal. That would a touch more constructive

Not really red hot from me sorry

Would anyone have any other recommendations for a pc and monitor for around £500, from somewhere with reasonable backup? I didn't think this was a bad deal.

Because he knows he cant. You could build this for the price but not with a 4850 but a 4550 with a little shopping about.

Does the motherboard on this even support PCI Express? And if so it may be limited to 4x ? That PSU is going to be under serious pressure. I have come across many a Crapard Bell that has imploded and it's incredible that they've been turfing out s**t for so long and get away with it. :x

OK, so please tell me how to fix the motherboard whine. Upgrading the PSU makes no difference, neither does adding a PCI-E gfx card. Doesn't seem to emulate from any particular coil either. Tried two machines from two different stores now and both suffer from migraine inducing whine. IMHO it isn't cheaply or easily solved at all. :whistling:

I would have to advise people to avoid this machine.

Does anyone know whats the maximum RAM a DDR2 motherboard can support? Also, am i wrong to assume that a duo core processor gives twice the processor speed and a quad core 4 times? I.e 2.2Ghz on a duo core will give 4.4Ghz and on a quad core 8.8Ghz? I know it enables more things to run smoother, but is it like stepping stone technology, where it steps up when dmeanded and all the other times, performs at a base rate? Or at less demanding times will it give that extra performance boost? I.e, if a job requires 50 men to do, which will take 50 minutes to complete, but theres 100 men available, do only 50 perform the job in 50 minutes or will 100 men do it in 25 minutes. Weird analogy, but the only one i can think of at the moment.

Sorry to anyone left confused after reading this post lol.

thanks for all your comments and help

i changed the title from 2.8 to 2.3, appologies about that

despite this deal being made hot, i still think im going to leave it after what a few people have said about the motherboard n that.

the dell outlet does seem to have good deals on, but arnt all them PCs second hand or throw backs?

thanks again for all your help people, much appricated

if your comp runs ddr2 memory can u run ddr3 graphics card?

Ok, here goes, re the build your own comments, had a spare 5 mins went a popular components website:

4GB (2x2GB) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC2-5300(667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15 £32.53 £37.41
LN22387

640 GB Western Digital WD6400AAKS Caviar Blue, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms £48.64 £55.94
LN23988

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200, Yorkfield Core, S775, 2.33 GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 7x, Retail £134.84 £155.07
LN24458

LG GH22NP20 AUAA50B 22x DVD±R, 12x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, DVD-RAM x12, IDE Black OEM £12.49 £14.36
LN25102

Asus P5KPL-AM iG31, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 1066(OC)/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX, VGA £33.95 £39.04
LN24616

Scan 81-in-1 3.5" Internal All-in-One Card Reader + 1xFront USB - New Best Seller!!! £5.99 £6.89
LN25471

Silverstone Precision PS02B Black Mid Tower Case w/o PSU £44.95 £51.69

Net Total: £313.39

Carriage: £9.99

VAT: £48.51

Total £371.89

OK its only a tenner cheaper but probably better quality components:)

Because so many people use pirated copies of windows they dont realise that there are actually people out there who would rather have a legitimate OS on there PC

Not forgetting a psu too as the case comes without one ;-)

lol you may aswell add keyboard, mouse and labour time in it too in that case :whistling:

I'd like to say that i've had my old packard bell pc for over 5 years and its spot on!!!! Before I had it it belonged to mother in law who bought it new from pc world originally. Hence i am upgrading to this one. my old one has only 80gb hd and 500mb memory!! And is originally came with a small 15" monitor. So its about time I upgraded.

the only thing that has ever stopped working is one speaker!!

To be honest I don't care about the vga only connection. I don't want to use it as an entertainment system, its a pc!

same, but every pc i look at has its positives and negatives.

this one looks to be the front runner at the moment though

My point exactly. I was being ironic since it might be a fave hobby of his if you look at some of his posts

According to the full spec on the Packard Bell site.

It has VGA and HDMI output

The M/Board has one 16x PCI-E slot

I can't confirm where 250w came from for the PSU as there is no mention on Packards site

Not a bad PC for the money.

Did anyone ever confirm the PSU wattage? If anyone knows which motherboard/how upgradable it is as well please let me know.
I'm thinking of getting this and a new graphics card to make it a gaming PC but would like to be able to upgrade to faster ram in future.

i have a packard bell x2416

it runs call of duty mw3
with external graphics

it has 512mb ati sapphire radeon one of the rare cards

650w psu as the card needs 250w
2tb seagate storage drive
128gb ssd os drive boots up in 10 seconds
win 7 ultimate

4gb ram max it can go

the down side is the usb power sharing

when i connect all 6 devices including my iphone 5s for internet
when i transfer data to a flash drive or downloading at same time it cuts all 6 ports off then you have to restart it

other than that its quick boot up time if you include an sdd and a decent pci-e graphics



soon ill be getting a motherboard upgrade so i can have more than 4gb ram im uprading it to maybe 8gb or 32gb ram

I seem to remember that one of the USB ports on the back links to another component on the motherboard and you are advised not to use that one as it can cause this very scenario on the 2416. Some sort of power imbalance. The 2 next to the LAN connector are good, I think it is one of the 2 above it. Might be colour coded? It just rings a vague bell from about 8 yrs ago. Bizarre for this post to spring back to life, I thought I was the only one still using mine. Now running Windows 10 with 2GB Nvidia GT610 internal.

I had this PC went it first came out around 6 years ago. Paid £500 which included a AOC 21.5inch monitor. The motherboard fried within 2 years so i had to get rid of it, but while it did work it was great. I was told it's a headache to change the motherboard so i brought a HP laptop which i still use today.

Hi does anyone know where I can find the drivers for this model? The link to the Packard Bell site does not work.
If it helps the motherboard P/N is MCP73PVT-PM