SHould I let my son build a gaming pc!?

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Whatisgoingonherethen

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Oct 8, 2013
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So my son's been wanting to build one for ages, he has all the cost tallied up and in the amazon basket, however I strongly want him to get a pre-built one. He keeps complaining that they're simply not good enough for the money. His computer comes up to about a £1000 (with monitor) but says when I find one that's £900 it's not good enough, and that the graphics card is crap, e.g. he says the gtx 760 is awful for £900 because in his system he wants an r9 280x. He claims they seem to go all out on storage, cpu but then cheap out on the psu, motherboard and graphics card.
1)He is paying for it, is he making sense or is he just talking non-sense. Is there really much difference between building one and about a prebuilt pc.
2)My main concern is him building it and it not working out of the box and then having to pay for postage and packaging, does this happen often? Do websites like amazon accept returns easily?
3) Is the return process on prebuilt pc's easier? Would it be really difficult to identify a faulty component?
4) how difficult is building a pc
5) just in general is building a pc worth it? He thinks spending an extra £400 for less performance is ridiculous, he says some use "stock cards" although I have no idea why that matters or what it means. Help!
 
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AnthonyStew
I will try my best to keep my answers here concise.

1). Is it better to build a custom pc or purchase a pre-built? It isn't "Better" but 99% of them time you will be saving a pretty good deal of money by building the PC yourself.

2) I am 19 and can feel where your son may be coming from. I didn't know if I could build my own PC by myself two years ago, so I ordered a pre-built from NewEgg. If I could do it all over again with my current knowledge about PCs, I would have built my own.

3) Building a PC may seem difficult, but with patience and a few hours of time, it is very easy and satisfying when you are done. Building my first PC also gave me TONS of experience when it comes to working with parts hands-on which could give you and...
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ak47jar3d

ak47jar3d

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Mar 3, 2014
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1) It depends. Some prebuilt are just as good as custom. In general, customs builds are tailed for your needs making them better for you.
2) If something doesn't work he can sent back (at least it works for me on Newegg, Ebay, or Amazon).
3)Some process. The only difference is that each part will carry its own warranty as opposed to one entire computer containing one warranty.
4) Its pretty simple. Just don't assume anything and do your research and you will be fine.
5) Yes, to game you need a great video card and on board graphics really suck for gaming (if thats what is meant by stock cards).

FYI, the difference between gtx 760 and 280x is not that much, I wouldn't pay the difference.
 
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NBSN

NBSN

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Agreed, and I want to add that warranties are a huge mess for pre-built computers. Typically they will offer maybe a one year warranty, and if you want a 2, 3, or 4 year warranty it costs hundreds more. However individual parts can have really good warranties themselves without paying for that additional warranty. For example my power supply has a 5 year warranty.
 
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AnthonyStew

AnthonyStew

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May 1, 2014
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I will try my best to keep my answers here concise.

1). Is it better to build a custom pc or purchase a pre-built? It isn't "Better" but 99% of them time you will be saving a pretty good deal of money by building the PC yourself.

2) I am 19 and can feel where your son may be coming from. I didn't know if I could build my own PC by myself two years ago, so I ordered a pre-built from NewEgg. If I could do it all over again with my current knowledge about PCs, I would have built my own.

3) Building a PC may seem difficult, but with patience and a few hours of time, it is very easy and satisfying when you are done. Building my first PC also gave me TONS of experience when it comes to working with parts hands-on which could give you and your son some insight in computers in years to come.

4) The return policies depend on where you buy from honestly. Pre-builts could potentially be easier to return considering you are receiving everything together, instead of 10 separate boxes. If your son does purchase PC parts or a pre-built, I recommend Newegg or Trusted Amazon manufactures. Newegg and Amazon have quick deliveries and great refund policies. I have purchased my own pre-built from them as well as all my new PC parts (amazon as well).

5) Pre-built vs Building yourself : Pre-builts tend to excel in one area, instead of being all-around good PCs. Most pre-builds usually either come with a good CPU with a low end GPU, or vice versa. Also, 99% of pre-builds usually come with low-end minium Power Supplies, which can lead to issues. With building things yourself, you are removing the labor fee aspect and can save money by picking out your own parts yourself. There are countless guides and videos to teach you how to build PCs with all different parts.

If you son needs a reference to see what parts are compatible, I recommend PC Part Picker which only allows you to select parts that are compatible with each so that you have no issues: http://pcpartpicker.com/

If your son knows what he is doing and feels confident in himself, I see no harm in letting him give it a go. It is a great experience to build your own pc and there is a lot to learn from it. If anything goes wrong? You can return it all no questions asked. I hope this helped, peace.
 
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Whatisgoingonherethen

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Oct 8, 2013
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thanks, he seems to know what he's doing, but the general idea i'm getting is building your own is actually better than pre-built. He wants to game, especially bf4. He says that even if he customised a pre-built one on a website they would usually be worse as many use stock cards opposed to custom cooled, or whatever OC means.
The main reason I want to get a pre-built is incase something breaks, but am I being ignorant? He seems adamant that he's paying extra on parts just to get them on amazon opposed to cheaper websites as he knows amazon will accept a return. So is fixing a custom pc actually not all that bad?
 
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AnthonyStew

AnthonyStew

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You only are trying to do what is safe, which is fine I understand that. Your son is partially correct about stock cards being worse. OC stands for Overclocked. There are custom builds that contain Overclocked cards, but as I said, they may be lacking in other ares. The reason your son wants an overclocked card (which is what I have) is to get better gaming performance. OCing a card turns up its "Core Speeds", by increasing the core clocks you get more performance out of the card at the cost of power consumption and extra heat. I am not sure about many other sites about parts, but I do know that you can trust Newegg, NCIX, and Amazon for sure. You can be the judge of whether or not a site is bootleg or not by just looking at it or google info about it. If you son wants to OC a card, I recommend he buys a card that comes pre-OC it should say for example: "Sapphire R9 290 TRI-X OC Edition". Overclocking cards yourself is a long process which requires days of monitoring to obtain a stable clock speed. Building a PC is not difficult, it only takes time. Swapping parts in a pre-built is also very easy. I hope this helps you out

Different sites have different return policies. I wouldn't recommend ordering from more than 2 different sites either, because if something goes wrong it can be a hassle.
 
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Iron124

Iron124

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Let him build it.

It is his money, and if he's willing to pay for it, I don't see what the problem is here. Pre-builds do have a very large markup, sometimes 25-35%. Not to mention with a prebuilt, you can tailor your components to your needs and desires, as opposed to a "one-size-fits-all" dynamic that companies take.

Building a PC is involved but assuming you are mechanically inclined, patient, and watch a few simple tutorials or guides, anybody can do it. Amazon's return policy is fantastic, I've personally never had a problem. I've heard of people who have had issues with sellers before, but filing a complaint with Amazon will get the issue solved very quickly. This is rarely necessary.

Overall, it is a great experience, I would never recommend a prebuilt PC to anybody except maybe for a home-office use or someone who is hopelessly computer illiterate.

 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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BUild.
It can be a good father-son project.

And with prebuilts, very, very often one or more parts is substandard. It 'works', but if/when you want to increase the performance....that thing has to be replaced.
Generally, the power supply. "600W GAMING PSU!" actually means little. It could actually only deliver 450W, and when you try to push it....smoke, flames, etc. (Yes, that does happen)

If he builds it, you can specify exactly what parts you get, rather than what they have in the warehouse they need to get rid of this week.
 
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