Building a PC can be a pain in the butt, especially if you're not an experienced builder, and doubly so if you want a personalized machine. That's exactly why boutiques like Falcon Northwest and Maingear exist; they'll build you a machine tuned for high performance out of the box and personalized in all kinds of ways. There are a lot of smaller boutique builders, too, but standards and practices vary a lot. Take the case of this Redditor, New_Midnight2686, who got quoted for a custom build and was asked to pay over $11,000 USD in labor fees for a PC worth $3,849, bringing the total cost to almost $15,000.
Now look, we understand the reality of being a boutique PC vendor. It's hard to find customers, and it's hard to explain the value of your work. Why would someone buy a PC from you when they can walk down the street to Walmart and buy a pre-boxed Lenovo system that will probably do most of the same things for half the price? Your author, in particular, ran his own boutique shop for a time and is well acquainted with these questions.
However, the invoice that the Redditor shared includes charges for four full-time weeks of labor to build the PC. If you're reading Tom's Hardware, you've probably built your own PC before, or seen someone else do it. In the very worst possible case, it might take you a week to get a PC built, like if you end up needing an obscure cable or custom part. The idea of taking an entire month of full-time work weeks — 160 billable hours — seems frankly absurd, even considering all of the custom art that goes into this particular builder's systems.
That's not even the extent of the absurdity, though. This builder also apparently charges for an additional three weeks of labor—again, at 40 hours per week—flagged as pre-production. There is certainly some pre-production that has to go into intricate PC builds like this, with the sugary customized aesthetics that the builder uses, but count us dubious at the thought of it taking a full 120 hours to design and plan.
Even that doesn't fully capture the completely gonzo nature of the system's pricing. The builder lists prices for the individual parts that are, let's say, "pessimistic"—even relative to retail pricing, to say nothing of wholesale vendor pricing. $3,849 is the price given for the parts, which include a 7900X and an RTX 4080. We parted out a similar build using their native UK pricing and came out about £500 GBP ahead for what are, in some cases, actually better parts. On top of all this, the Redditor claims that if you decline the quote you are given, the builder demands a $4,000 cancellation fee.
Many people in the Reddit thread, posted today by /u/New_Midnight2686, are referring to the builder as a 'scammer,' going so far as to claim that the labor fees are an outright grift. There's a fine line between a premium, customized product and a con operation, and which side of that line this kind of thing falls on is often up to the observer; many people feel the same way about luxury goods like Rolex watches, for example. In this case, however, we're talking about a practical item; essentially, a tool. The pricing quoted for what is honestly not one of the best gaming PCs possible is almost impossible to justify.
Instead, this story serves as a reminder that if you offer something unique, someone will pay for it—and also as a reminder that Paper Collar Joe was right.
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