Barebone kit VS Building my own

[christianelliott]

cant decide whether to build with my own components, or buy one of these tiger direct barebone kits:


these are the two:

80$ lexa-s case
140$ sapphire 6850 card
84$ 500gb hard drive
609$ (w/out rebate) B69-1400 barebones kit:
Ga-z68ap-d3 motherboard
Intel core i5-2500k cpu
Corsair 8gb RAM
Patriot 120gb ssd
24x dvdrw
Thermaltake v3 be mid tower case
Ultra 550 w psu

913 dollars total

80$ lexa-s case
70$ (or so) good psu (550w or so)
140$ sapphire 6850 graphics card
404$ B69-0520 gigabyte barebones kit:
Ga-m68mts2 board
Amd phenom 2 x6 1045t cpu
Corsair 8gb ddr3 RAM
Seagate 1.5tb hdd
24x dvdrw
Mid tower diablo tech case
450w psu

650 bucks for this one



i dont see a whole lot of difference between the two. same case, (i buy it) (or should i go with the ones that come with them?) same card ( i buy it) same psu pretty much, both good motherboards, both same ram, one has 1.5 tb hdd, the more expensive one has a 120gb ssd+500gb of hdd. i cant come to a conclusion. they seem almost the same, but one is 300bucks more

 

[ssddx]

one is intel based (i5) and one is amd based (phenom-ii).

although amd used to put out a good product intel is definitely the way to go today.

personally i would say go with your own parts.... unless what they picked is what you would buy anyways.

 

[CaedenV]

A bare bones kit is merely a bundle of hardware that the store picks out for you. You still put everything together, and it is really no different than you going out and purchasing all of the items you want individually. The only difference is that with the kit you know that everything will work together because the parts were picked out for you, and you may get a discount on the parts because the company providing the bundle is either trying to get rid of those parts, or because they have one overpriced part in there that they are making a killing off of anyways.

If you already know that you do not want the case in the bundle (though I like the V3 personally, it has performed great for such a cheap case for my editing rig), then I would see if you can but the rest of the parts on your own and save the cost of the 2nd case ($40).

Also shop around a little. Buying everything from one store generally means you could have saved a little money buying a few parts elsewhere.

 

[Wolfshadw]

The downside that I often see with bare-bones kits are that they often offer some very good parts (like processor and RAM) with some questionable parts (like the Power supply).

I'd much rather have full control over the parts going into my system and so rarely go with bare-bones systems.

-Wolf sends

 

[cdiscoll2012]

I agree with Wolfshadw choosing your own parts as opposed to a bare bone kit normally gives you better reliability

 

[Meou]

Tigerdirect actually has a barebones kit for $499 after rebates that might be worth it. Looking at reviews and benchmarks everything looks reasonably reliable. I'm not sure about the Ultra PSU...

i-5-2500k
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3
120G Pyro SSD
8g (2x 4) Corsair DDR3
24x DVDRW
Thermaltake V3 BE Mid Tower
Ultra 550watt PSU

I'd just pop like a 6870 or 6850 in there and be out the door for like 630 after rebates... Maybe another hard drive.

 

[cdiscoll2012]

if you are going to change the parts just make sure they are compatible and that your power supply would be enough to support the extra load a graphics card puts on your system