A New Desktop Computer: Build or Buy An Assembled Machine

Buy pre-assembled. It WILL cost less and do everything you could ask of it.
If heavy 3d games are your thing, swap out the video card for something else. Computer hardware surpassed peoples needs many years ago. That’s why netbooks are so popular.

Oh, and hardware-raid only works well on scsi enterprise machinery. Those cheap Asus raid chips are trash. Software raid may work for you, try MirrorFolder for that.

Build your own & that WILL cost less.In that way you’ll have the best of everything if that’s what you want. No cheap mobos that only the company that pre-assembled it has any info about. (which of course is how they make even more $$$.) 100-300% mark-up ect. plus how about those labor cost? How deep are your pocket s anyway? Hook/line I’m sinking. John? Computer hardware surpassed peoples needs many years ago. So what color IS the sky where live?

Another thing John 3D video games if you want to have anykind of a chance of winning require at least two cards. and at this point in time I have’nt heard of ANY Compatible Computers that give you that choice. Oh yeah , I heard that Notebooks are so popular because they are portable unlike a desktop Mach. Duh! LET”S Rant!!

Make it yourself, half the time the warrenties are useless anyway, a local computer shop will do any repairs a lot quicker than sending it off. You can save an awful lot of money doing it yourself and end up with a far better PC.

All depends on what you want to do and how much you want to spend. If you want a kick a** gaming machine and you can afford it I suggest building your own - that way you can have it EXACTLY the way you want.

But in general the OEMs can offer a pre-built for much less, especially if you can wait for the killer deals. A couple of weeks ago Dell had a server for sale - albeit it is not the latest nor fastest - for $279! I don’t think I can beat that.

My next PC will be a Tigerdirect bare-bones. I figure I can spend 500 bucks on white-hot hardware (not gaming) and Ubuntu will fly. My XP and 2K Vmachines will seamlessly migrate over.

Interestingly, a 300 barebones is still pretty darned hot. Dual-core, DVD writer, 2 gigs ram. Why buy new? Oh yeah, Windows addiction

If you’re asking whether to build or buy, the main question which occurs to me is “How much time do you have to research?”. To build a computer that you’ll be happy with, you really need to have a strong interest and desire, and it takes considerable time and diligence to gather all the knowledge of the various components and to be careful of compatibilities between them (ie., mainboard and processor, processor and RAM, video adapter ports for the style of monitor connection). If you don’t have a strong intrinsic desire or enjoy making something with your own hands and brain, it definitely would be better to buy an ‘off-the-shelf’ model from a highly-rated vendor.

they say “build your machine and that will cost less”, I say, NOT!!

turn all the help you got from around the world into a CASH value and how much does it cost with what you would have paid for a ready made, with support??

NO. I used make my machines but NOT anymore… the trouble you run into sucks up your time like it was a money pit. It’s better to pay the extra cash and get a ready made machine cause you KNOW it will work and you get that support if it doesn’t.

building your machine is for people who have nothing better to do but spend endless hours tinkering with the machine, cause it periodically crash… it can be a buggy MB, or bad memory or a bad drive… all off which are NOT easy and quick to diagnose.

I for one will NEVER buy anything but a ready made machine.

it, ofcouse, goes without saying you have to be informed what you’re are buying and why one model costs less than another when buying ready made machines…like the use of shared memory or integrated video. It all depends on your needs.

The last PC that I bought off-the-shelf was a 386SX-20 Packard Bell back in 1989, for which I paid at least twice what it could have been built from scratch, but didn’t know better at the time. Every machine I’ve owned since then has been spec’d-out by me after performing lengthy research on all of the component manufacturers’ websites, review sites and user forums, but of course very early on research involved digesting the 1000+ pages of the Computer Shopper monthly. Of course, I make my living as a PC tech, so must keep abreast of the latest information anyway. A DIY PC is not for the feint of heart.

Each time I have upgraded, which has been on average about once every 16 months, I was able to find a friend / neighbor / relative who needed an upgrade from a 4 or more year-old system, gave them a good deal on the used-but-not-too-old components from my then current system, and applied the money toward my upgrades.

I have kept myself in cutting-edge machines for years this way, and my friends / neighbors / relatives in worthwhile machines, without breaking the bank. Heck, I had been giving them free/cut-rate tech support anyway, so at least I knew beyond the nut-and-bolts of the machines I was supporting, having used the equipment for many months before they took them over. Besides, I got great referrals for building their friends and neighbors machines as well, and so on, etc.

I generally can put together a killer PC for less than $1000 that would cost well over $2000 if I bought it retail.

Just terrific comments! Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this question…

Catherine

[...] an article about building or buying a desktop computer, I mentioned that I regretted having RAID installed on my present machine. Numerous people agreed [...]

In the past, I’d always built my own. But for my current machine I used a custom builder who built to my specification. I researched via Tom’s hardware to specify what I wanted. Machine arrived preloaded with Linux and the hardware I wanted. It actually was less $$ than me buying the parts and assembling.