What Hardware Should I Buy? - Oct 2008

bit-tech recommends... October 2008

If you’re anything like us, it seems that barely a week goes by without a friend or family member asking for advice about what PC hardware to buy or how best to improve its performance.

As PC gaming continues to become more and more mainstream thanks to MMOs and accessible casual games, people are starting to realise that integrated graphics processor in the old Dell just won’t cut it, and the inevitable questions of “what graphics card should I buy?” or “which processor is best for under £60?” start to drop into your inbox or pub conversations.

While it can sometimes be nice or even flattering to have your hardware knowledge tapped, keeping on top of latest hardware and product trends, let alone specific products, can be hard enough for even a hardened band of tech-journos like us here at bit-tech.

No one likes trawling through search engines for hours looking for product reviews or recommendations to justify your own, let alone someone else’s all important graphics card or processor purchase, so we’ve decided to make the whole process a fair bit easier by producing a monthly hardware buyer's guide.


We’ll be covering budget, high end and premium pricing bands looking at every piece of hardware you need to build a system within a set budget, from processors to motherboards, cases to coolers, power supplies to hard disks. All of the recommendations made in this guide are based entirely on either our personal experiences or our own reviews, or even occasionally good rumblings and recommendations from trusted community members - so you know that by picking the hardware we've recommended, you’ll be getting a high quality product.

Also it means we won’t have quite so many of those “what hardware should I buy” threads in the forums.

So here's our inaugural bit-tech buyer's guide. We'll be updating it monthly, adding new products as and when we feel there's a need for change either because technology has moved on, or prices have got a whole lot more competitive. Don't forget to pipe up and let us know what you think in the forums.