Build vs Buy (On a Budget)

MrMegabitDownload

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Jan 17, 2015
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At what price point would you say it is no longer beneficial of build you PC? Obviously if you have a budget of $4,000 - and all you do is play Minecraft - then chances are that buying a PC is the way for you. But I was just wandering what the community's thoughts on the matter was, I'll Start:

I would say after £1,250 it is no longer cheaper to build a PC...
 

Titillating

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Building will always be cheaper than buying a PC with identical specs. There's no getting around that, and there is really no price point where this stops being true. Prebuilts always include a certain degree of price inflation, plus a few hundred extra for "labor". If you think a few hours of your time is worth more than the $200+ premium you'd be paying for a prebuilt, then maybe it's worth it. There's always the aesthetic factor though, as there are some prebuilt setups that can be hard to imitate because the parts are not sold separately (most referring to cases).
 
It really depends on what you want. A lot of times a self built pc will be a bit more expensive due to using higher quality parts. You may end up with the same specs, but a nicer case, better grade power supply etc. There are a lot of prebuilt pc's at least here in the states that seem competitive. They do cut corners though. They use low end budget cases, low quality psu's, lackluster motherboards and slap the term 'gaming' on just about anything. They're quick to point out 'Nvidia' or something else but the unsuspecting customer may not realize that an ati r7 240 (sounds cool) is hardly a gaming gpu. They just show pics of a case with lots of led fans flashing pretty colors so it must be 'gaming' grade.

The mainstream prebuilt systems rely mostly on bulk sales so their markup isn't too bad really. It helps that they get the parts cheaper in bulk as well. If you're talking a boutique builder, then it will be much more expensive than building it yourself. Those are the places that will charge an extra couple hundred dollars just for the labor but in a sense it can be justified. They go to the trouble of installing all of the parts, neatly tucking cables out of the way, will even go so far as to custom sleeve cables if you wish (but they'll charge for their time). Many boutique builders will also have everything set up ready to go meaning the os, all the latest drivers, a lot of them will overclock your system for you and make sure it's solid and stable and will back up their work with their warranty. That's a lot of attention to detail and it's a luxury over a pc in a box grabbed out of a big box store.

It's sort of like buying candy, do you want a big box of generic candy that's mass produced or do you want a box with hand chosen flavors and a custom assortment? If it's made personally for you, you can expect to pay more for the extra service.

In the end, beneficial comes down to the user. Do they want to rely on themselves to be their own tech support? Do they want to fiddle with parts and potentially install something wrong or is there a learning curve they don't have time for? Do they just want a machine that works and a hotline to call for warranty service when it doesn't work properly. If they want someone else to handle all the headaches, I'd say a prebuilt is worth it for them. If they don't mind doing the work themselves, they can often times build a better quality machine of the same specs for the same price (or just slightly over - and the increased parts quality will be well worth it).