Question about $650 build...

Re-posting this here because I'm not sure if the comment thread in the article is being eyed anymore.

This is going to seem like a very silly question buuuut...is the $650 build "mainstream"? Meaning, were I to buy a comparable Dell or HP, how much money would I have to spend to achieve the results of the $650? The technical benchmarks are helpful, but they don't give me a common sense mental benchmark to evaluate the builds against...

Hope I'm making sense.

EDIT: sorry, I should have included the link to the $650 build for those forumites who have yet to read the article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2082.html

there are a few factors... while dell might be able to supply a system with the same specs for the same price they will chince you in one of the following benefits that you would normally get with a home built...

expandability... so you bought a dell/hp and down the road you want to upgrade...you open the case to find that they chinced you on ram slots, the board is custom fitted to the case, the psu is not standard and the cpu coolers connectors arent the same. a few pci slots are missing... ontop of that they only supplied enough drive bays for the components that were already there...even if you gutted the machine you could not reuse the case with off the shelf boards and psus...

warranties...mainstream machines warranties are usually crappy...and you have to pay extra for longer shoddy coverage...the warranty on most quality components is often longer than the dells stock warranty...some companies would even void your warranty if you open the case or install another os, build your own machine and you can tinker with your system all you want and the parts are still covered...

a seagate drive might have a 5 year warranty....but if it was in a dell it would only be supported by dell for 2/3 years....dell wants your system to fail after 2-3 years so that you go back and buy another one...

returns....if a component in a dell dies you have to take/send the whole system in (cause they sold it to you as one)...when you buy individual parts you only take in the part that dies...if its within 30 days (my shops policy) they will swap it on the spot... take it into dell/bestbuy and youll have to wait a while before the 2nd trip back to pick up the questionably repaired machine...

quality...there is no doubt in my mind that you get better quality with off the shelf parts...(reputable brands)...a 650$ dell and a 650$ home cooked machine might have the same specs...but when you open the dells case you see that the optical drive is generic, the harddrive is a cheap brand, the mobo is chinced for connectors ram and pci slots, the igp board might not have a video card slot...etc etc...the whole thing is being held together with cheap plastic connectors...

bloatware...its better to install the os yourself...when dell does it they do a half assed job (no data partition) and they have a bunch of bloatware and demos running out of the box...you have to reinstall the system with there recovery disk and whatnot (no clean os install)...dell gets paid to install this stuff by other companies and they dont pass the savings on to you...the only software a new computer needs is an os, hardware drivers/utilities and programs that YOU choose!...

just build your system...even if dell can give you the same thing for 40-80 $ less its still not worth it!!!

Vista 64 is more stable and more supported by a wider range of software and hardware developers.