I am thinking about picking up a new PC sometime next year. I mentioned to the wife that it would be cool to get the parts, and build it myself. She said she would much rather we got a customized Dell or HP.
When I asked why, she said that the prebuilt would have a full warranty, whereas a self built would have individual warranties for everything. Then she punched me, in accordance with the prophecy.
So, what I’m hoping to do, is convince her that it’s better, financially, to build my own.
Am I right? Would I get more computer for less money?
Or is she right, and I should just shut up, again?
It depends on how high-end you want to go. It is hard to save money over a $700 Dell. You have to pay retail for every component and they have massive buying power. It is fairly easy to save money on a higher end system and you can get exactly what you want. I built my computer because I wanted to and I enjoyed the experience and that is really the main point. If you can reuse exiting components, you obviously save more more.
As to warranties, I don’t think she gets it. If you build the computer yourself, you are the warranty and you can obviously fix it yourself. Individual components usually don’t cost that much with the exception of the CPU and maybe the video card so there isn’t much risk in losing a lot unless you screw up the power supply and fry the whole thing (not very likely for a competent person).
Yeah, generally the cheaper the prefab PC, the harder it is to beat that price with a self-built. If you want a cheap, low-power computer, buying prefab is as economical as anything else, and slightly easier.
But if you’re buying anything from Dell that costs more than $1000, you could probably save several hundred by building it yourself. Last time I checked the numbers, a $1600 Dell XPS was about $500 overpriced, and that includes Windows XP and their free 19" monitor bundled in.
As Shagnasty said, it depends on what you need. If you are going for a superfast computer with a serious graphics card, HD, etc you can do better building yourself. If, on the other hand, you just need something decent it is hard to beat some of the sales out there. I got a new computer last year. I would have had a hard time building it myself for what I paid (~$550 after rebates). I added RAM and a dual monitor video card but I still got a heck of deal on it. It wasn’t the fastest thing available at the time but it was what I needed and it was pretty cheap.
If you don’t know the answer to this by now, you haven’t been married long enough.
But I agree with everybody else here, except I’d say that the cutoff is about $1200 rather than $1000 before it makes sense to do it yourself.
On the other hand, I build most of my computers (I go through a lot of them, don’t ask), and usually it’s not a cost issue so much as an availability one: if you want a high-end graphics card, for example, you often just can’t get them at all. Dual processors used to the the same way (quad ones still are), and if you want anything esoteric like silence (water-cooled), you’re not going to get it from any baseline vendor. Often these options are associated with high-priced computers, but not always. For example, anything that’s meant to be a “Media” PC for the living room will usually want cheap, silent, and with a tuner or two. This combination isn’t going to come from Dell.
Buy pre-fab. Not for the hardware but for the software. It’s possible to beat Dell & co when buying the hardware, but impossible when you add in the cost of the software, especially the OS. You do want a copy of Vista. Not necessarily to install right away but to install once the bugs have been worked out. And to get that at a reasonable price, you’ll need to take advantage of the volume discount that the likes of Dell get.
Most places that sell motherboards will also sell you an OEM license for Windows to go with it, you don’t have to pay full retail, and it’s legal as long as you follow the terms of the license (which is usually that you have to buy it with the parts for a computer, not separately). It’s a little secret many people don’t know about. For example, Windows XP Pro SP2, with an upgrade coupon to Vista (not clear which version) is $139 right now at NewEgg. Without the OEM deal, even an UPGRADE to XP Pro is about $199. So don’t forget to get your copy of Windows with your system. (And beware folks that offer to sell it to you without a system purchase at the same time – they’re often grey market).
This probably isn’t quite the same deal the big boys get (no way to know, those deals are confidential), but it’s quite reasonable. And for a high-end system ($2K+), you can be pretty sure of saving enough on the other components that it will make the cost of Windows almost irrelevant.