Urgent advice required. New PC

[smilodon]

After an evening of tinkering I seem to be the owner of a PC with no working motherboard. While the two external hdd light up the mouse and keyboard are lifeless as are the screens. I get no bios and no beeps. It's an old PC (core 2 duo) so a replacement isn't really an option.
I was planning on building a new rig this autumn but it looks like that's not an option either now.
I need to replace the PC ASAP within a day or two, so I'm looking to grab a middle of the road desktop from Amazon or Overclockers etc. No screen, keyboard etc required. It needs to be able to play games at a reasonable level, but doesn't need to be state of the art. An ssd would be nice but is not crucial. I'd like to keep the price to £600 to £700 if possible but will spend what's needed. Mid range is where I'm going hopefully.
Any advice on a decent prebuilt that could be sat under my desk by Thursday /Friday would be very welcome.
Thanks.

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[Snokio]

Sorry to hear that , unfortunately I'm not up-to-date with pre builds so I'm not much use other than looking here: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=43&catid=2473 (not used their configurator before)

But out of interest, have you tried running your current PC on bare minimum components (minimal RAM, no hdd, CD, usb, sound cards etc) and ruled out a PSU? seen any blown caps on the MB?

[smilodon]

I've pulled everything, swapped monitors and graphic cards. What worries me is that neither my mouse nor keyboard light up, and while the monitors know they're connected I see nothing but a blank screen. I'm getting no beeps or errors and trying to boot into the bios doesn't work. Neither does booting from my rescue disk or a linux boot disk. It seems power is going out to the usb devices but no data. It's a bit of an odd set of symptoms. Sadly though I don't have the time to start fault finding my way through all the possibilities. So I'm working on the assumption that it's the mobo or cpu that's gone. The PC is five years old and a non standard Dell XPS, so replacing components is a bit of a non starter. So I'm cutting my losses and going for a new rig. I'll check out the link , thanks.

[BrotherTobious]

Novatech bundles but don't know if it is possible in that time span

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[Ranualf]

overclockers do and express build service, and from the price you listed, you can get a half decent rig for that, all the extras ssd, graphics and other goodies add up, but you can also buy bundles off them too, take a look

this is a half decent system, and fits well into your price range (yes there some REALLY ones on offer also..)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-247-OE&tool=3

cheapo option
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-344-OE

[smilodon]

Novatech, I didn't think about them, Cheers seems I could even drive down and collect it. Thinking about this for £629.00
Novatech Black NTI78 - Intel Core i5 4430 - 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz Memory - 1TB SATA Hard Drive -120GB SSD- GTX650TI 1GB Graphics - Gaming Case & 500w PSU

I guess I'm trying to work out what the cpu and gpu sweet spots are.

[sulky_uk]

if you can squeeze to a 2gb 660 or 660 ti that would do you a better service than the 650

[Tutonic]

It's not something as painfully obvious as a blown power supply, is it? Have you got a spare you can borrow from somewhere to test?

The 650 GPUs are to be avoided - it's worth spending the extra to get a 660 or a 670.

[smite]

http://www.dell.com/uk/p/alienware-x51-r2/pd

May take a bit longer than a couple of days though.

[BrotherTobious]

I think there is a store in Reading mate which might be closer

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[sulky_uk]

http://www.dell.com/uk/p/alienware-x51-r2/pd

May take a bit longer than a couple of days though.

gtx 645 aint worth the money

[sulky_uk]

this has a 7770 card for £650, but if you configure and swap in a 2 gig 660 its £717

http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/system/weekly_sales_II

just for the box

[smilodon]

Thanks for the info everyone. Thanks to the generosity of Mr TeaLeaf I'm now working from a very acceptable loaner laptop which should be fine for my work. So I can now sit back and relax a little and be a little more choosy about what to get. I need a balance between gaming and image editing so CPU and RAM have a slightly higher priority than the GPU than would be the case is a pure gaming machine. But I'm getting a handle on the CPU, GPU and RAM options. So thanks for the speedy advice, I should be ordering something in a day or two.

[kregoron]

Id suggest you go for something non prebuilt, they come at a high price. The pricetag itself might not look to bad, but companies like dell's motherboards are absolutely rubbish.

buy the bits, build it yourself = result is win

[smilodon]

Thanks but while the immediate panic is over I still need to get something ordered within the next day or two and be up and running by the weekend or very early next week. My master plan was to build it myself but time means I really need to grab something 'off the shelf'. It won't be exactly what I would have picked and I know I'll pay more but this is more a work machine that I play games on rather than just a games machine. So I sadly don't have the luxury of time.