To Build or Not To Build?

[johnjohn320]

But here's the thread anyway.

I am looking in the somewhat distant future to buy/perhaps build a new computer. Here's the thing: Some ads I've seen are for an $800 dollar Dell, others are for around 5 grand or so. How expensive/difficult would it be to buy the 800 dollar one and buy all my own additional hardware, and basically deck it up. In other words, should I wait and get one of the more expensive computers with everything in it, or get a cheap one and build it up?

 

[A2KLAU]

Well you should start from scratch! I mean you don't go and buy a cheap one and then build it up casue then all the parts are wasted apart from maybe the mobo, Hard drive, CD-Rom, case and maybe the mobo and CPU. The rest you will be wanting to upgrade. If you were wanting to build one then start from the bottom and work your way up! Like fit everything and do everything yourself. If you can't be bothered or not sure of what you are doing then leave it to the experts and buy a more expensive one which everything inside rather than make your own incase something goes wrong... And remember if you build your own the only techie hotline or anything is you or US Anandtechers or your friends.

Good Luck!

Albert.

P.S call this link Should I build or not build or seomthing liek that!

 

[Yoshi]

The basic platform of an $800 system will not allow you to build it up. That is why they are cheap. For example, my sister got an approx $800 Dell system with a 500Mhz Celeron several months ago. The system uses a motherboard with the Intel i810E motherboard. It comes with integrated video and no AGP expansion slot. Right off the bat you are stuck with the lower than average performance integrated graphics solution. Additonally the board has very few PCI expansion slots, 3 if I remeber correctly and one is consumed by the sound card. Finally the case is small and the power supply weak (200W).

My advice is save up a little and build a manly machine.

Besides, your PII 450 will get you by a bit longer.

 

[A2KLAU]

I agree with Yoshi! Their expandability and upgradability is as poor as poor will get with most Brand name computer mobos. The only ones which allow for extensive upgrading and such like are from mobo companies like Asus, MSI, Abit, Gigabyte and so on... Building your own has more or less unlimited upgradability and expandability. The power supplies they gove you are JUST about enough to power all the original parts. If you added one of your own pereferals then it might struggle with power. Building your own computer has more flexability then pre-built, but support is not good. So basically its up to you which you want to go with!

Good Luck,

Albert.

 

[Smbu]

It's much better to just start building one from scratch. I used to have an old Gateway computer 333mhz celeron computer and the only things I am still using from that computer are; 10gb hd, DVD rom drive, and floppy drive.

 

[Floydian]

If I remember correctly, the cheap dells also havea microATX case with 1 (one!!!) 5 1/2 drive space thats already being used, so if you ever want to have a burner and a DVD-rom it would be harder (unless you get a dvd + cd-rw drive)

 

[WoodDogg]

You could build a decent gaming machine for $800 or a little more. Without monitor of course. Again, like they mentioned above, you'd have no tech support but this forum and friends, but you'll be much happier.

Some prices(just estimates):
$110 Mobo
$110 AMD processer around 900 Mhz
$20 floppy drive
$60 case(find a good deal on one in the hot deals forum)
$120-400 video card(you could really spend a bunch here, the economy card would be the Hercules Geforce2 MX)
$150 on average for a decent IBm 75GXP hardrive(depends on size of course)
$30 for a decent cd-rom
$80 for a Soundblaster live value
$80 for 128 megs of ram
Then $30 for NIC card if you need one or $50 dollars for a decent modem.

Hope I didn't miss anything. You could probably look for deals and build it cheaper. My prices might not be perfectly accurate but should be decently correct. If you want a burner then get the TDK 12x for $151 from the hot deals forum. If you need monitor then look for deals as well. If you don't shop smart, this basic setup could cost you much more then $800. Most of this will get a tad cheaper if you wait a few months. It'll become outdated if you wait a year(not completely outdated but the new stuff by then will kick it's tail.)

Just to let you know, my computer(which you can look at in my signature) plays all the games available on the market. Not at the highest resolutions but on medium settings. So if you build the one above you would have at least a twice as good system.

 

[Noriaki]

Title: To build or not to build? That is the question.
Heheheh

Yeah it's like Yoshi said...if you buy a cheap one you have very poor upgrade path....

If you want to do something like that look around for what's called a barebones system.

I saw a bare-bones system, it'll be something like:

Duron 700
Motherboard
128MB RAM
Floppy Drive
Mid-Tower ATX case
Power supply
Maybe a Modem or a network card...
Keyboard, Mouse, maybe some cheap speakers on the integrated audio...

So you'll need a monitor, hard drive, DVD or CD or CDRW drive, graphics card, sound card (it would probably have integrated if you just want basic sound).

If you don't want to build from scratch but want to start with something and build it up that's your best bet, don't get a cheap crappy Dell and try and upgrade it, it won't work.

Ideally build your own, but if you aren't comfortable with that for whatever reason, get a barebones and add a few key parts.

 

[A2KLAU]

Wood Dogg basicaly sumed everything up and what we said and more. If you lived in the U.K i could give you a link to search for all the best prices for all the U.K online sites but the bad thing is you live in the US which is not much help! Sorry can't help you any more than point you to go to the Hot deals forum and wait patiently for something good to crop up and then buy the stuff in bit by bit. This may take longer but in the end you save money! But if you want the stuf quick then go with a big online reseller and pay extra for the fast and good service that they generally provide.

Good Luck,

Albert.

 

[Deeko]

I'd say build your own...much more flexibility.

 

[peemo]

The consensus is to build. Alternatively, you can do some research and spec out the parts you want, then find a reputable local builder to put it together for you and offer a warranty. Just depends whether you want the thrills and satisfaction of doing it yourself.

Good luck.

 

[A2KLAU]

I've heard that a place in the US called Alienware or some thing like that build PCs to your specifications and are very reliable and good. Of course I have never used them becasue I live in the U.K but I have heard about them in these forums in the past!

Good Luck,

Albert.

 

[Deeko]

Yea, Alienware is the best OEM, IMO. They make great systems. But I would still say building your own is best.

 

[Topochicho]

Monarch computers has some decent prices on bare bones. I picked up an athlon 800 MSI pro2a and Taisol(suprisingly good) fan preassembled for less than I could have gotten all the parts (shipping included) from other vendors. They have a high reseller rating and I was impressed with how fats I got my stuff even shipped ground.

The definition of barebones(as far as most professionals define it)
is:
Case
Motherboard
Cpu (most times with a cpu fan)

this comes assembled ,and jumpered, and is meant to cut down on assembly time for builders. These few steps take twice as long to do as the rest, putting on everything else can be done in less than 5 minutes. This lets the builder price shop for the rest of the components and still be able to whip together 20 systems in a couple hours(not with-standing burn-in time).

The plus side for a regular person is that it lets you price shop for everything, the shipping cost should be little more than the case alone, and the worst part of assembly is over.

 

[johnjohn320]

The problem with AlienWare is price. Oh lord, the price. Anyway, how hard is it to build your computer from the ground up? I've barely worked with hardware before, is it simple enough that anyone with logic could do it basically?

 

[Mears]

I just finished ordering stuff for my GF's system which will come to right around $875 which includes shipping and tax ($845 if I get a rebate)and a monitor.

Athlon 750 w/Soyo K7Via
Quantum Fireball ATA/66 30gb
Microsoft Intellimouse
128mb pc133 mosel rev.2
Creative Geforce 256 DDR
Antec SX1030
Aopen 52x cd-rom
Sony floppy drive
Logitech internet keyboard
Samsung 17" monitor (model escapes me...flat screen)
Some cheaper flat panel speakers w/sub
ISA Lucent Modem

This was all ordered in the course of a week so by shopping around you could probably do better for cheaper or you could get a cheaper case and save more money that way too.

 

[hans007]

Get an HP pavilion if you really want to build up i guess. Some are made by tatung and SCI and those are made with all ASUS motherboards. About 30% of HPs are made by trigem (same company that owns emachines) and well those suck. The athlon ones are not made by them though. You will get an asus a7v if you buy an athlon one, with a delta 300 watt power supply. Just go to HPs build to order site and you can order it with a geforce2 GTS or an ultra, and you really dont even need to build it up. Its significantly cheaper to buy a prebuilt system most of the time. If you go on hotdeals and scour the deal forums you can build your own and you should be fine though (thats what i did) and you will learn a lot. Basically if you build your own and pirate all the software , you'll end up costing about as much as just buying it, which is basically what i did.

 

[Noriaki]

The only thing that every freaked me out about my first build was mounting the motherboard. Drives, PCI cards and RAM are extremely easy to put in.


Topochicho: Don't bare bones come with RAM? I thought it was CPU/Case/Board/RAM...oh well all the better...RAM is easy to put in and then you can get your own.

 

[Bleep]

Comparing prices from factory built and homebuilt are somewhat confusing because of the software packages offered by the corperate builders. Look at the machines here. Link Russ builds good systems has very good support for his customers and had a good reputation.
Bleep

 

[airfoil]

Buy the best mobo and processor you can afford, with a good hard drive like the IBM 75GXP. You can always upgrade the rest. This will start you off, especially if you cannibalize parts from your 450! Go the AMD 1GHz route!

 

[Topochicho]

Noriaki: There is really no formal definition of bare bones, so its something that you have to define with each supplier. When selling to individuals many wholesalers will toss memory or other high margin items onto the barebones package to bump thier profit margin, but that is not something you can pull on a person or company thats a regular customer. When a regualr customer buys a barebones, they are buying it that way because they judge the time mounting the board, jumpering it and attaching the cpu/fan are worth the extra cost. Memory and everything else, can be assembled in literally seconds per item, and are ussualy bought in bulk from the cheapest supplier.

 

[MAZZHOLE]

MonarchComputer.com
I have to agree with Topochicho on this question.
I've dealt with the hassles of ordering components seperately,
then building a machine. If you can afford the time and money
this is a great learning experience. But if all goes well...
you'll end up with jumble of parts, some with warentees, some without,
driver issues, compatability problems, and a sense of acomplishment.
For about the same price as a system that can be purchased pre-built
for $40 and covered for 3 years, with tech support.
Got the time? Got the desire? Go for it!
If not then go to their website and build your own... there.
With the same quality components.

 

[MichaelD]

This is soooo coooool! A thread aimed specifically at me! (Spike the football, do end zone dance)

Ahem, I am The New Guy. About a month ago, I was thinking/saying the exact same things that you are. I too, was suffering from a bad caseo of "Didn't Know What I was Buying and Got Stuck" disease. See, I bought a cheap Dell. However it wasn't so cheap a year ago when I bought it, and I'm still paying on it....and it's in about 45 pieces right now.

Don't misunderstand; the Dell was great. Not a single problem. Worked great right out the box. The problem was expandability. No AGP slot. Only one 5.25 bay in front, 4 PCI slots, a power supply that runs on 2 "D" batteries (it's quiet though) all housed in a Micro ATB case about the size of slightly bigger than 2 phone books. A year ago, I didn't know the difference between PCI, AGP, PIII, Athlon, Arid, Dristan or ...you get the idea.

I was using **GASP + BLUSH** the ONBOARD VIDEO! (Crowd boos, hisses and throws things). When I got into gaming I bought a Voodoo 3000 PCI. It was like seeing Jesus. Then, I saw my friends'32 meg NVIDIA based cards and got jealous cause I couldn't upgrade.

So, I couldn't do AGP. Couldn't have two CDR drives, couldn't upgrade my processor because the Dell BIOS lets you change all of 7 settings, and none of them count. You get the idea.

With OEM systems you're very limited as to how much upgradability you have. For the casual/neophyte user (my Aunt Marge) who only knows "icons" (Doesn't know the start menu exists...no kidding!) an OEM system is best because when something goes wrong, they call 1800-DELL and the nice man on the other end tells her the magic secrets. If you were that basic a user, you wouldn't be on this forum. I say go for it! Remember, you get what you pay for. There's a reason why 128mb of memory is an amazingly low $12.54. It's grade-D reject memory. Buy good stuff and it'll last you.

If you already have (and you do) monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers AND an original OEM operating system, well, that's about 500 bucks saved right there. I put together one helluva system for $1,000 that'll beat the pants off any retail system costing the same amount.

Trust me, if you can swap memory, drives, cables, install software and drivers, you CAN put together your own pc. I got a whole lot of advice from this very forum, plus I work in a facility with it's own LAN shop (over 2,000 LAN drops in one building) so I had some very experienced people to ask, but heck, I did it. Nothing even blew up. Good luck!

 

[chansen]

MikeD, thank you for writing the best reply, and one of the few replies that was readable and would make any goddamn sense to the initiator of this thread (johnjohn).

Please people, this is not a request for proper spelling. Just consider your audience and present your replies in short, coherent sentences. Presenting potential builders with a run-on sentence full of acronyms will only confuse and scare away new enthusiasts. Short paragraphs improve readability, too.

johnjohn,

Yes, build your own from the base components (case, motherboard, CPU, memory, video card, sound card, hard drive, CDROM, monitor, etc.) You can keep many of the parts from your current system, or start new from the ground up.

If you're looking to invest in this machine in stages, you can start by upgrading your current machine by adding memory and a new video card, for sure. This is where you will definitely see a terrific improvement for the money. Upgrading to only 160MB may not be a good idea, however, considering that final 64MB stick of SDRAM may take up your last memory slot. Seriously consider a 128MB stick for a total of 224MB.

Upgrading your motherboard depends on your current case. For all newer motherboards, your case must be of the "ATX" variety (auto power-down), and have punch-outs (openings) in the back to accept the connectors on the new motherboard.

The upgrade options are many, which is both good and bad. If you have the time, your best bet is to soak up as much as you can from this site and others like it. As new questions arise, post them here. This is definitely the best spot for answers.

Good luck!

Regards,
Craig

 

[TravisBickle]

I concur with what someone else said months ago. make sure you have all the info you need on hand from the web or a modern book. It's not all that hard.
I built a barebones system, it is MicroATX with case, motherboard with as much as possible integrated onto it, and cdrom. I have to say, for performance, it sucks. I am on PII300 and 64Mb, with slooooooow graphics. But I never played much games, that was for my wasted teen years.
The case is a dead loss for serious tweaking. no rear fan, and the airflow is not good- the psu blows air into the case. the motherboard bios hasn't been updated since they made it. no AGP slot of course.
if you buy as cheap as possible it is very likely that you cannot transfer much of that investment when you decide to upgrade. but
buy QUITE cheap because the price/performance relationship is not at all linear. in a year most of your components will be superceded, so do you want expensive parts superceded a couple of months later or would you rather have money left over to upgrade quicker if you wanted?