building your own rig or going prebuilt moneywise

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pseud0

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I read an article that said prebuilt PCs offer a better price than the sum of it's parts if you were to buy each part and build it yourself?
What is the general consensus? Do people build their own rigs to save money by recycling parts from their previous PC, to accomplish something from ground up, or was what I read just bologna?
 
Man, if I was to reply to this question before I built my rig, I would rant about how much money you can save by shopping around and building yourself. But after a slew of compatibility issues, restocking charges, and a lot of late nights I'm probably lucky to break even.

However, one thing that I have gained is a hell of a lot of hard-earned experience. I am no longer intimidated by issues that in the past would have prompted me to call my friends; now I just get on [H] and figure the damn thing out.

This community will support you, and if you follow their advice and cover the Hot Deals section like a hawk, you will probably save money.

Good luck, and be sure to post your progress!
 
If you're going to build a gaming rig you will be hard pressed not to save money building it yourself. If the $500-700 Dell will do what you want... buy the Dell to avoid potential issues like the above poster mentioned.

You save (by my very rough estimation) at least 1/3rd when building yourself, and sometimes as much as half if you go really high-end. You also get to choose the parts yourself and be certain of their quality -- though as mentioned above, not necessarily their compatibility. Researching heavily beforehand can help avoid most pitfalls, and is just generally a good idea anyway.
 
Building your own rig will always be cheaper no matter what budget you're shooting for. There was already a locked topic about this and coincidentally a $280'ish Dell deal a few weeks ago in the deals forum every went nuts over....I couldn't help but laugh at all of these people raving about the price after I spent 5 minutes putting together a slightly better computer for the same price. I'm sorry but whatever article you read was wrong.

As far as compatibility issues are concerned, with a forum like this as a resource things like that shouldn't be a problem. Maybe I've been lucky but I've been problem free with all of the builds I've done.
 
There are exceptions to the rule. I remember a Dell home business deal a couple of years ago that had a quad Xenon machine for less than it would cost you to buy the CPUs in question and /any/ server motherboard that would support them. These are few and far between, of course.
 
In most cases yes you will be cheaper building something yourself. Although there are some things to consider when doing so. As one poster said you have to deal with incompatible parts sometimes, parts being shipped to you that do not work and haveing to RMA them, the headache of putting it together and finding testing everything. It all depends on how you value all of that and whatever else you may run across.

Generally when you have a machine built you don't have to worry about all of that plus there is always the extra warranty on the machines you get pre-built. Yes I know the parts you buy have a warranty as well, but to me it is a hassle to return parts etc etc to the manufacturer.

I have built plenty of machines on my own, but the last few I have had built for me. I just don't have the time to mess with things like that know so it is worth paying the extra 400 - 500 bucks more or whatever it may be to have someone build it for me and get a little better of a warranty from them.
 
If you know how to shop around on the net and score a "deal or two" you will almost always come out ahead by building it yourself. That being said, the margin of savings is very slim on the low end and in many cases may not be worth the hassle of shopping and putting it together.

At the moderately high end side, where the majority of us probably are, you can save several hundreds of dollars by piecing it together and building it yourself. I would have built mine anyways because I like to, but when I priced my two new comp's I saved a little over 350-400 bucks per comp (total 700-800) by buying parts myself over a comparably built Dell, AVA, and even more over Falcon, Alienware, etc.
 
I just went through this last week.
I ended up going with custom made since the 3 machines were $3600 from Dell vs the $2150 from newegg. with all the same spec hardware.
 
It really depends on what you need and the cost of your time. Some people work for nothing, therefore their time isn't valuable at all, and like to deal with rebates. Some people don't want to deal with rebates and the hassles of building a computer themselves, so they opt for prebuilt.

If you need a simple computer without special needs, a good dell deal (not their everyday price off of their website) is the best route. If you'd rather deal with rebates and putting it all together yourself, then DIY would be the cheapest route, most of the time. Deals don't last forever (and you have to wait for them to come around), and rebates aren't always going to come through (and usually take forever if they do). Time is money, and if you don't have enough of both, prebuilt is a good solution if it fits your needs. If you don't have any special needs (like gaming and OC'ing), then prebuilt should fit your needs.
 
Prebuilt will always be more expensive. One of the huge bonuses of prebuilt is the warranty but now, that seems to be degrading, check this thread
 
Last time I did the math, which admittedly was a couple of years ago, you couldn't touch a middling or low end scratchbuilt for the price of an equivalent Dell; unless you were reusing parts and software. If you compare apples to apples, that means including software, I bet you'll find a prebuilt will be cheaper. Now if you're doing a rolling upgrade, meaning you'll reuse some parts and/or software from your old machine then you can probably save money.
 
Well, IMO, the answer to your question is: It depends.

- It depends on whether you're talking about a gaming PC or a work/internet browsing PC. Prebuilt gaming PCs are usually more expensive than custom built PCs but that's mainly because you're paying for any support you might need with the gaming rig as well, hopefully, excellent build quality in terms of wire management, cooling, and pre-shipped stability.

As for general work machines, that leads me to my second point....

- It depends on whether or not you want quality parts in your PC and if you're willing to wait around for a deal on hardware. In previous threads, it has been shown by other forum goers here that a custom built work PC is cheaper than a pre-built PC. However, most, if not all, of those so called cheaper custom built work PCs were made with low quality parts and contingent on some sort of hardware or OS deal that would last only for a few days. In some cases, some of the custom hardware were crappier than the some of the hardware in pre-built PCs.

While you can build a work rig for cheaper than a similar pre-built work rig, I can guarantee you that it'll be done with piss poor quality parts as well as be based on some sort of deal. If you want a bit of quality in your custom work/web browsing PC, then expect to pay a bit more. If you don't want to pay extra for quality, then why bother building it yourself? When people build their own PCs, it's not always because it's cheaper but because they can select QUALITY parts for their PC as well as for the learning experience.

There are exceptions to prebuilt work/web browsing PCs being cheaper than a custom built with one of them being the OS:

- It depends on what OS you want the PC to have? A custom built Linux OS work PC will be cheaper than a pre-built Windows work PC because you don't have to pay for a new XP or Vista license. Linux is free. In fact with the savings you've made by going with Linux as your OS, you can use that extra money that you would've spent on a Windows OS on better or faster hardware. Not everyone has a spare XP license that they can move or use on a new PC.
 
Probably about the same if you get a good deal on a prebuilt.

However, on a custom built, you get to pick all the parts, don't have to deal with cheap hardware and lousy video cards that come with prebuilts, no proprietary rubbish to deal with, no bloatwear in the o/s, you can build it for exactly your needs (and to o/c if needed).

Unless you just either don't have any time or are lazy, I'd say custom built every time.

edit: I'm talking about personal computers for home, focused on gaming, maybe video editing, general computing, etc. For workstations, servers, multi-builds, etc. I'd probably just get a Dell.
 
the 2 machines I am putting together as I type this (actually, I already put them together, just loading the OS right now) are E4300 with 1gig of OCZ Ram, Asus P3 based bare bones case/mobo/psu, 80gig Seagate 7200rpm SATA drive, Lite-On 52x CD-R and Win XP Pro SP2. Each one was only $535 shipped. The cheapest Dell I could configure with the same specs was $900.

Same went for the E6400 machine. $975 vs $1900.
It seems as though the Prebuilts are getting pricier, as they were generally cheaper to buy 2-3 years ago when I bought 2 Dells for the office, one GP machine and one for my onsite Photoshop printing machine.
 
If you thoroughly search for the compatability and feel confident in building one yourself I say go for parts, but I just finished my first mobo switch and it was a pain. I bought one used and turns out the it was a defective motherboard, so I was outta luck. Everything was working fine with my old mobo, but it was a cheap-o, with no advanced OC options, so I thought I'd upgrade a bit and get the most out of my hardware. Turned out to be a big nightmare, Im putting in my old mobo this weekend and calling it a loss.
 
Mac Cool said:
Does your $535 computer include a monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, OS and software?
Click to expand...

Did I mention monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers?
The Dell box (no monitor, no speakers, no mouse, and no keyboard) with Win XP Pro and the same specs (proc, ram, HD and CD drive) was $900 with tax.
 
WS6 said:
Did I mention monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers?
The Dell box (no monitor, no speakers, no mouse, and no keyboard) with Win XP Pro and the same specs (proc, ram, HD and CD drive) was $900 with tax.
Click to expand...
I didn't know you could price out P3 based systems at Dell. Dell sells some nice systems for less than $600.
 
Mac Cool said:
I didn't know you could price out P3 based systems at Dell. Dell sells some nice systems for less than $600.
Click to expand...

Not a P3 as in Pentium III, the Asus P3 based case/mobo/psu setup,

I just looked at Dell again, and the system from them is now $764, $130 cheaper than last week with free memory and HD upgrade, 2gig and 160gig.
 
It really depends what you want your rig to do and what you want to spend. I mostly game, but I don't need to have all bleeding edge hardware. You wouldn't believe the hardware I've bought as closeouts, specials, sales or from stores going out of business, ( cough , cough, CompUSA... cough ). For example, I recently bought and ATI X1900XTX 512meg for $205 from Microcenter as a closeout. I nabbed AMD64 Socket 939 4200+ dual-core retail box for $150, and a Visiontek X1950PRO apg for $140, both from a closing CompUSA store. I usually do a fair amount of research before I build a rig so I wont have compatibility issues.

I used to build systems for people, but it's almost impossible to compete on price with a pre-built on a mid-range to lower-end system. On high-end or gaming systems, you can save quite a bit on a home built system over a pre-built. What do you need your rig to do ? Do you play Oblivion on a 22inch widescreen ? Do you use Photoshop ? Or do you just surf the web, burn cd's, rip Mp3's and do stuff on MS Oiffice ? To be completely honest, most people could get by with a simple P4 system with 512 megs of memory and integrated graphics and sound.
 
Waveforme said:
I used to build systems for people, but it's almost impossible to compete on price with a pre-built on a mid-range to lower-end system.
Click to expand...
That's an old stereotype propagated by marketing departments and I'm sure they salivate over customers with this mindset. Anyone who thinks that's the case simply doesn't know how to shop for parts. With the massive amounts of online retailers duking it out and places like Fry's and Microcenter burying local competitors you'll be hard pressed to find a Dell deal that can't be beat. Here's an example:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1198075
Total shipped/taxed to Arizona = $299

Theoretical build:
4400x2 w/ mobo at Fry's. $99, Antec NSK 4400: $44, Hitachi 80g 3.0g/s: $39, Lite-On DVD: $16, Corsair 1gig: $39
Total shipped/taxed from Antec, Fry's, and Newegg:
$273.88

That's cheaper with a better quality PSU, motherboard with options, faster processor, and a faster HDD and that's built while not even scouring for deals. Keep in mind that the Dell deal didn't have their usual bloated OS so neither does the theoretical build. This will undoubtedly get heated like it does every week this topic comes up but I've proved my point here and in those threads. Pre-builds are better for some people and not for others but to say that it's "nearly impossible to compete on price" is simply untrue.
 
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