Quality difference for components with equal specs?

[Cardinal]

Reading through this board, I see that one advantage of homebuilt vs. prebuilt (dell, hp, gateway, etc.) is that for homebuilt you can choose better quality components. What does that really mean? Is a "quality" component less likely to fail, going to perform better, or what? In other words, given equal specs, what's the real benefit to buying a "name" component?

i.e.:
- generic DDR2-667 memory vs. Corsair DDR2-667 memory
- generic 7950GT graphics card vs. eVGA 7950GT graphics card
- generic 700W power supply vs. "name" 700W power supply
- generic 975X motherboard with PCI-E x16 slot vs. ASUS 975X motherboard with PCI-E x16 slot
- etc.

(for purposes of this discussion, please leave price considerations out...what I'm interested in is the "quality" difference between equally spec'ed components, not whether or not I could build an equally spec'ed system for less money than prebuilt)

 

[madmurph]

It depends on who is supplying those parts to the vending company. For example, Dell often uses Intel manufactured boards, while Gateway used a lot of ECS mb's in their product. Sometimes the company will have a specific layout they want from the part manufacturer -- like leaving an AGP slot or PCI-X slot completly off the pcb because there is onboard video, or special connectors for the front panel. So there isn't necessarily a difference in quality. On the other hand, they often get RAM in bulk, depending on low bid, so there you might get a difference in quality depending on which memory chips are used on the stick in your machine. I think companies like Dell usually build with quality parts*, it's just that their architecture is so proprietary that you can't really do anything with it like overclock or upgrade, outside what they want you to. They are very stable, vanilla, intended for mainstream consumers that want to be able to plug it in and turn it on with a minimum amount of ceremony or fiddling. IMHO, companies like Gateway, in order to be price competitive, cut corners on the internals based on low bids by suppliers. So, they just take what they can get at that specific time. Consequently you don't get the part matching/compatibility, stability, or longevity. You could have the exact same model as your neighbor, but have different internals. The whole idea of user-built, is that you can hand pick the level of quality and features you want on your machine, based on your needs and use.

*laptop batteries aside

 

[harty23690]

Get a name brand PSU and motherboard. These are elements that really need to be quality as they will most likely outlast your video card/ram etc.

Video card and RAM, i've had no issue with going generic before...

 

[farmkid]

... I think companies like Dell usually build with quality parts*...

My brother-in-law used to work for Micron in their DRAM chip fab. He told me about how they test each chip as it comes off the line and the chips are binned for different customers. From what he told me, the best ones all go to OEMs like Dell, etc. and the ones that don't test so well go to other memory manufacturers (assemblers). Now, that was a few years ago, before we started seeing so much high performance RAM. I suspect that the high-end stuff you pay a premium for is made of the better chips that roll off the line and used to go only to OEMs.

In this case, I would define "better" as being more tolerant of faster timings, less likely to fail/produce errors at faster speeds.