Build or Buy ???

[Trancendental]

Me and a mate are planning to build identical (almost) computers each so we can run forth and own everyone at Batlefield 2142.

I was speaking to a business manager at PC World and he claims that in todays day and age it is cheaper to buy a pre-built PC from a store or on the NET then to build one yourself.

He was going on about when you buy a PC you also get your legal software included where as if you are going to build a PC properly you have to buy your Office and your OS and it will add around £400 onto the build cost.

With a built PC you can have it Set up exactly how you want, down to the Mainboard chipset and fully compatible Graphics adapter, Processor preference, monitor Disk Drive set up etc.

With a showroom PC you get cheapo versions of office or ONLY word in some cases, the budget version of the OS as in XP home NOT pro and they usually come with a lot of garbage manufacture tools running which you don't want as a user and will uninstall anyway. In my experience with showroom PC's when I look at high end machines they are usually running AMD and ATi where as I personally would like an INTEL and an NVIDIA but its seems that as the AMD's and ATi's are cheaper this is how they are sold in PC Showrooms etc.

Furthermore they don't give you the OS and the applications on CD in many cases so if you do need to format your drive and partition it in a certain way you lose everything and have to order the discs and are often charged for doing so.

So my Question... Build or Buy?

 

[toad101]

build your own especially if you want it for gaming, amd cpus are cheaper than intel and run alot cooler and quieter

 

[OwenS]

no question... build it...

means you dont have to have a moderate cpu and moderate ram and moderate hard drive... you can customise it to what you need the most, i.e for gaming, your going to want a hell of alot of RAM and a decent sized hard drive. and obviously a good graphics card. (from my experience pre-built pc's never give you decent grpx cards)

 

[Si]

I was speaking to a business manager at PC World and he claims that in todays day and age it is cheaper to buy a pre-built PC from a store or on the NET then to build one yourself.

He works for PC world, talking sales bulls**t

His statement partially applies if you never plan to do any gaming and just intend to do office stuff and internet. However as you pointed out, most off the shelf machines only come with standard applications, what is office these days, at least £100?

Building is far better for so many reasons, wouldn't think twice.

 

[Hellcat]

Many applications you can buy OEM versions when you buy the hardware.

Infact you can buy OEM windows XP pro with just a purchase of a mouse, or a power cable

For an office manchine, I'd get a DELL. For a multimedia machine, I'd get an ACER. For my PC though I'd buy the parts and build it myself.

Pre-built machines often have daft specs - I was looking at the potential upgrades for a family members Tiny PC.. Its an XP2600 (about as quick as the board will take). They give you 2x firewire ports (nobody I known in IT has any firewire devices), and only 1 stick of 256mb ram

 

[Stu DemonD]

I would say build it don't even listen to that guy at PCWorld.

This PC here is running a legit OEM copy of XP Pro, only cost around £70 at the time, plus no need to have all that WGA hassle.

 

[arc]

ive just built a pc for my sister and her bf.

Core Duo 6300 (1.8ghz) CPU
Asrock Conroe 945 mobo
1gb pc6400 DDR2
250gb sata hdd
19" Widescreen TFT
DVD RW
ATI x1950 Pro GFX card

Came to around £650 in total. much better spec than anything for a similar price in a shop, and with all known-brand parts gone into it - i know its all going to last, and will have decent driver support etc.

 

[Liam]

Build yes but will always be more expensive as your buying one processor whereas the manufacturer is buying thousands.

Liam

 

[pinin__prestatyn]

Funny how the manager of PC world said that, what with all those pre-built PC's they sell and all...

Seriously though, it's a case of, have you time/can you be arsed to build it yourself? Because unless you're lucky, it WILL take hours to set up a PC you build yourself. I've took a week solid making sure my new PC is running right. I've also done 8 installs of XP mine was an extreme one but they do take time.

Or you can walk into a place like PC world, hand over £600, and get a stress-free PC with a piece of mind return to base warranty. It will be fine for surfing, word processing, and a minor bit of gaming.

To tempt you though, here's my £800 build (red bar) SPANKING a X6800 (orange)

Here's the price of a X6800 chip for comparison (mine cost £200 )

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-130-IN


So if you self build and do a bit of tweaking, there's no pre-built PC that can touch you (this side of £2 grand, at least).

 

[Trancendental]

I built my first one (the one I'm using now) at the time I spent about £1600 that was including a Desk and Office Chair *swish*. The most expensive part of my computer by far was the Intel P4 2.53 GHZ which was the fastest at the time and set me back £585 on its own. then The Nvidia GeForce Ti4600 which was also one of the best desktop cards at the time (excluding the office Quadros and Matrox G400's) and set me back just over £200 thats £700 on Processor n Graphics the rest was minor in comparison.

Didn't take long to build or set up. All the parts came and it had power in about 30 mins and was running an OS about and hour and a bit later.

I used to build PC's for MESH computers when I was 16yrs and built about 50 - 60 computers per shift. Thats a 0900 - 1700 with a 90 minute break. Din't have to install an OS on machines that was the job for another dept.

I think I'll probably build it.

 

[soap_dodger]

Personally I would choose to build. Like others have said, you get to have the spec YOU want, not get stuck with a factory built one which is no where near what you wanted.. You can choose what software you want on it, so no spyware like you get on Dell PC's and best of all you can say, I built that and have a big smile on your face!

Good luck!

J

 

[OwenS]

I used to build PC's for MESH computers when I was 16yrs and built about 50 - 60 computers per shift. Thats a 0900 - 1700 with a 90 minute break. Din't have to install an OS on machines that was the job for another dept.

You've probibly built quite a few of mine then (including this one )

 

[platty599]

www.aria.co.uk
www.scan.co.uk

those are the two places i used to build my current computer! Im just about to go onto 2142!
Both are real cheap places to buy gear from!

Si

 

[pinin__prestatyn]

I wouldn't recommend Aria, I built the MK1 of this PC with parts from them, and their customer service suck. These are the sites I woud recommend:

www.dabs.com - Cheap parts

www.ebuyer.com - again very cheap

www.overclockers.co.uk - Not the cheapest most times, but very informative and they get some ace stock in like my HIS x1950 pro that was on special for £108 The forum is invaluable too.

 

[Trancendental]

I use scan and have no reason to use anyone else. They are the best.

Customer Service ROCKS! The people on the end actually know what htey are talking about. I would have sent them a box of chocolates for new years but I was drunk and so therfore could not be bothered

 

[Ransoman]

I actually bought my machine from pc world. It was a compaq 1909. Amd athlon 64 3500 with nvidia chipset, dvd-rw combo drive, 80gb hard drive and a decent case all for £325 (ask to buy it without the moniter, they knock about £200 off). I bought it because it had the chipset i wanted and had plenty of upgrade potential (pci express and everything).

Since then i have added a 400w power supply, gainward bliss 7900GS graphics card and an extra gig of ram, It goes like stink and only cost about £500 in total (all with legit windows too).

Outperforms my xbox 360 and is much quiter too!. Next upgrade is going to be a hybrid hard-drive.

 

[Trancendental]

I actually bought my machine from pc world. It was a compaq 1909. Amd athlon 64 3500 with nvidia chipset, dvd-rw combo drive, 80gb hard drive and a decent case all for £325 (ask to buy it without the moniter, they knock about £200 off). I bought it because it had the chipset i wanted and had plenty of upgrade potential (pci express and everything).

Since then i have added a 400w power supply, gainward bliss 7900GS graphics card and an extra gig of ram, It goes like stink and only cost about £500 in total (all with legit windows too).

Still not as powerful as what I have in the works and when I asked PC world how much one of their machines would cost without the monitor they were going to knock about £70 off only.

 

[pinin__prestatyn]

Scan suck! which is why they asked me why I hadn't considered selling the hard drive I was RMA'ing locally. well because it's fccucked you bunch of numbnuts Bunch of cowboys that aren't getting a penny more of my money! Also every time I had a question, I got "I don't know the answer to that, please phone our technical section (£1/min). Overclockers are an infinitely better company IMO.

 

[BigJohnD]

There's some good advice above. If you're upgrading then it's build it yourself so you can carry over stuff like DVD recorders, speakers, sound card, network card and maybe the monitor.

Komplett offer some deals on core components for upgraders.