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Build your own PC v.s. Buying one, price wise question

Z

Zap Brannigan

Golden Member
Is it still much cheaper to build your own or has the market adjusted and there are only marginal cost differences?

I ask this since the time is nigh for a new computer for yours truly and it's been awhile, lot's of reading to catch up on but it will be done! 😀
 
For a gaming rig I always recommend a self-build vs. a buy because that way you know what goes in it, you know how things are put together, you have control over what parts are used.

You can get some pretty good deals on quality components in the FS/FT forum which makes things even better.

it may not always be cheaper, but I would rather pay more money for quality parts than save a few bucks on a complete system.

 
Check out General Hardware, LOTS of building threads around there, complete with sticky on suggested components. Building yourself is usually cheaper, and better to boot. Sometimes it can be nice to buy a dell and throw in a better videocard, but that's just for the lazy. Building yourself also leaves a lot more room to upgrade, you can decide exactly what you do and don't want.
 
At the lower end and for general use it's really hard to beat the savings OEMs make and pass on; to get a full system with monitor, OS and warranty is not usually within the budget of a low-end self build. If you're spending around $800 and up, and already have a monitor and OS, however, the freedom of choice of hand-picked components and the flexibility of configuration is fantastic.

Summary: depends on your budget and what you already have!
 
If you just want a system to do many common things, it's hard to beat the pricing of mass-market makers. But if you want very specific components in your system (even if the exact make and model of each component is not critical), you almost never can get exactly what you want pre-built.So if you design your own, and especially if you like to design / build / know your system intimately, you gotta build yourself. Don't expect to save much that way, but you get exactgly what you want.
 
Email machine = Dell/HP/Gateway/Etc

Gaming = Build it yourself, or find one with a PCIe 16x slot, and put in a graphics card and pray the PSU holds out, and pray there is enough physical room inside for the vid card.
 
Originally posted by: Zap Brannigan
Is it still much cheaper to build your own or has the market adjusted and there are only marginal cost differences?
Click to expand...
* Cheaper or "much cheaper" to build your own = No way
* Cost differences are fairly large depending on configuration

 
I would have to disagree. For lower end computers, yes its probably cheaper to buy dell/hp, etc... However for expensive ones its often cheaper to build yourself. The main difference however is that when you build yourself you can reuse old componennts, for example when i last built a computer i could reuse: Monitor, HD's Speakers, Keyboard&Mouse. It would have been much more expensive to buy a new one from dell
 
If the budget is:

$400 or less = almost always cheaper buying
Between $400 ~ $600 = depends on the deal, not hard to make a case for/against either way
$600 or higher = almost always cheaper building
 
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