low budget pre-built vs home built PC?

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Rarened

Reputable
Oct 31, 2014
2
0
4,510
Hi, since my desktop died a month or so back, Ive been weighing up the pros & cons of buying a pre-built PC versus sourcing & building my own. If I was spending £500+ I would definitely make my own, however, my budget is £300-400 which makes a pre-built far more attractive. Any advice????
I'm not a huge gamer but I do like to play around with music software like Reason, Ableton, etc.
I've seen decent looking home builds for around £330 (not including GPU, sound cards, DVD, wireless) such as:
G3258
MSI HSI M-p33 micro ATX lga1150
Kingston Blu Red 8GB (2x4GB) 1600
Seagate Barracuda 1TB
NZXT 210
EVGA 500w 80+ bronze cert
Windows 7 home premium

Alternatively, I've seen pre-builds for £340 (without GPU & sound card but with wireless & DVD rw drive) like the ACER imedia S2885:
i5 4440
Intel H81 express chip set
Windows 8.1
1TB HDD 5400 rpm
8GB DDR3

Am I better off with this better processor/all round deal? I'm guessing the MB ain't great as it's retailing at £20

Thanks, Neil



 
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B
Problem with pre-built is that once you start to upgrade you spend more moeny. The PSU wont be up to handling even medium-low end GPUs, case cooling is limited and can easily be inssufficiant. Motherboard lacks features/quality.

With home built you know what you are going to get, and the parts you get will have more then 1 yr warranty.
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B

boosted1g

Titan
Jun 12, 2013
14,846
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Problem with pre-built is that once you start to upgrade you spend more moeny. The PSU wont be up to handling even medium-low end GPUs, case cooling is limited and can easily be inssufficiant. Motherboard lacks features/quality.

With home built you know what you are going to get, and the parts you get will have more then 1 yr warranty.
 
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Its_Byte_00

Honorable
Nov 15, 2013
373
0
10,860


i highly doubt you will ever actually need a "real" soundcard. most motherboards have 6ch (5.1) out and a optical out.

as for a gpu, wait for the gddr5 editions of the gtx 740 to come out or for the 750/ti's to drop a bit.

[strike]i hate to say it but i think you need to throw your money at acer[/strike]

EDIT: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/kYrVbv i know you are not coming from the US but i think the price varyation will be small still.

i know that reason does gain a lot from more cores but im not sure about anything else you use
 
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Y

yumri

Distinguished
Sep 5, 2010
703
0
19,160
on most low budget PC builds either the premade one is cheaper or you will have to cut corners in building it either way you are going to not get that high of quality it just depends on who do you want to blame when something goes wrong yourself or a company who will hopefully provide a IT call line for you to call when it doesnt work properly?
 
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