Advice please - poor & not tech-savvy

[Deleted]

So my laptop recently died due to an Act of Kitten (like an Act of God - uncontrollable, chaotic, and impossible to hold a grudge over although sadly not covered by insurance). This was fine because I'd been meaning to replace it anyway, and it is the latest in a succession of sucky cheap laptops - but, although I absolutely love my job, it does not exactly pay out the mega bucks and I'm left trying to find a new PC for under £600 (I'm in the UK, FWIW).

I looked at the Puppy & Dolphin builds on the front page and according to amazon.co.uk, the cost of the Puppy set-up with the Dolphin memory & graphics cards will run me up to about £575 (which is juuuust about affordable within 2 months' paychecks for me). That's just the components, though - I also need speakers, an operating system, a keyboard, and a wireless card because my landlord absolutely refuses to drill holes in his walls for me to run cables through for a wired connection (which is, you know, fair enough).

My local computer shop is selling a pre-built machine with 8 GB of RAM, a 1TB HD and an "Intel G2120 3.1GHz Dual Core CPU". I have literally no idea whether or not that's better than the AMD FX-6300 from the Puppy build. It's also listed as having "Intel HD Graphics" but there doesn't seem to be a detailed component list on the handout they've given me. The machine is £349 for me because it's a family-owned shop & the owner owes me a few favours, and includes a copy of windows. I could buy this PC this month without needing to split paychecks to afford it (I am ok with eating ramen this month). I believe that if I bought this machine this month, I could buy a better graphics card next month, should the current one not be up to snuff (the shop owner is off sick but I'm going in to see him next week to get a list of components).

Should I stick with the Puppy components or go for the cheaper local option? If I go with a cheaper local option, how terrible IS an unspecified Intel HD graphics card likely to be compared to a Radeon or an NVidia? What kind of components should I be on the lookout for that will run WoW at decent-ish graphics? My benchmark for 'decentish graphics' here is 'can play melee in a 25-man raid with the graphics settings at 'Fair' without becoming a slide show' which would be a novel experience after the nightmare that is my succession of sucky cheap laptops (once, I got 20 FPS in the middle of nowhere... it was a great day). I'd like to play on Good or Ultra settings but I know that's going to cost more than I can afford, so any advice for a broke wow-player would be gratefully appreciated.

TL;DR: I suck at tech, please help.

[potis]

The cheaper local option is a pile of crap, you can do much better with 600 pounds.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz Dual-Core Processor (£104.69 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Motherboard: ASRock H87M Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£80.69 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Memory: Avexir Core series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£59.90 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£76.69 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Video Card: HIS Radeon HD 7950 3GB Video Card (£180.79 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Case: Silverstone SST-RL01B-USB 3.0 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£51.08 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Essential 400W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply (£51.89 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£24.90 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Total: £630.63
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-30 18:46 BST+0100)

Miles better, its 630 since i chose everything from the same retailer but if you order from multiple places its probably cheaper.

This is just an example build to make you understand waht you can do with 600 pounds, if you want to order from a particular place, let me know and i will check the builds/prices there.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz Dual-Core Processor (£93.59 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H87M Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£80.69 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Memory: Avexir Core series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£59.90 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£64.30 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: HIS Radeon HD 7950 3GB Video Card (£180.79 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Case: Silverstone SST-RL01B-USB 3.0 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£33.61 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Essential 400W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply (£37.68 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£12.98 @ Novatech)
Total: £563.54
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-30 18:50 BST+0100)

Here is if you order from multiple places, it can probably go further down also, and you can easily add Windows if you dont have them.

[Deleted]

Wow, thank you for taking the time to come up with that spec, that's really cool of you, thanks! What kind of performance do you think that machine will give me, in WoW-gameplay terms?

[Fascinate]

His suggestions are fine above but if you need a monitor or operating system considering dropping down to a gtx 650ti boost card, 7950 is likely overkill for your situation. Also i have never heard of that brand of memory he linked, stick to corsair, gskill, kingston or crucial.

[Deleted]

His suggestions are fine above but if you need a monitor or operating system considering dropping down to a gtx 650ti boost card, 7950 is likely overkill for your situation. Also i have never heard of that brand of memory he linked, stick to corsair, gskill, kingston or crucial.

Avexir are a generally good quality RAM maker, even on their Core series, which comes with 10-year warranty.

Here's my proposed build:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-4340 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor (£117.76 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus H87-PLUS ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£81.74 @ Dabs)
Memory: Avexir Core series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£59.90 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£64.30 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7870 2GB Video Card (£160.99 @ Dabs)
Case: Silverstone SST-RL01B-USB 3.0 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£33.61 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Essential 400W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply (£37.68 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£12.98 @ Novatech)
Total: £568.96
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-30 19:52 BST+0100)

The Bolded is a placeholder, with the upcoming R7-series of GPUs coming in at around £170, give or take.

[Fascinate]

If your ram doesn't have a lifetime warranty its not up to standard in the ram business. I understand no one probably uses a PC for more than 10 years its just the point id rather stick to a well known maker with a lifetime warranty. Spend the extra couple bucks and get a decent memory kit, sheesh.

[potis]

Wow, thank you for taking the time to come up with that spec, that's really cool of you, thanks! What kind of performance do you think that machine will give me, in WoW-gameplay terms?

Well everything Ultra with Multisampling at x2 and Shadows at Low and you would probably see ~40 FPS during 25mans, that kind of performance wow wise, the above builds are example, i really need you to link me from which place you are gonna buy and what you REALLY NEED, to fix the price and the build accordingly.

If your ram doesn't have a lifetime warranty its not up to standard in the ram business. I understand no one probably uses a PC for more than 10 years its just the point id rather stick to a well known maker with a lifetime warranty. Spend the extra couple bucks and get a decent memory kit, sheesh.

I just linked whatever that site had as an example to hit, of course the suggested are either Corsair Vengeance or Geil Ares but overclockers didnt have that, i made example builds for him.

7950 isnt an overkill at all, its a perfect time for him to purchase it since its price went down insanely cause of R series coming out soon and its a must buy for the price.

[Deleted]

If your ram doesn't have a lifetime warranty its not up to standard in the ram business. I understand no one probably uses a PC for more than 10 years its just the point id rather stick to a well known maker with a lifetime warranty. Spend the extra couple bucks and get a decent memory kit, sheesh.

Uhh, Avexir have been pretty consistently good. Just because you've never heard of them doesn't mean that they're awful and should be avoided. Look at ASRock - after their frankly awful early boards, they've also proven to be consistently decent MB makers.