Is it getting worse for system builders?

[SpoonXps]

Some of the configurations of pre-built systems out there are a little wacky.

But all of that aside, many pre-built systems have their own in-house limited bios. Some of them don't even have an option for a more detailed bios control, nor any type of bios to flash it with. I remember working on a friends AMD system that was locked at 2T memory timings, and I had to use Nvidia's control panel to overclock the processor.

Many warranties don't allow you to open the case to clean or put anything in the system, that has to be done by a technician.

You can show me any pre-built system, and I'll find it for cheaper by building it myself. I refuse to pay extra for someone to snap several parts together like lego's, when I can do that myself.

For the general public what dell is doing is makes sense. For ppl on this forum we are a different kind of breed of knowledge. I'm an amature and here to absorb as much knowledge and good opinions as possoble. This my system I ordered, what kind of money do thing it'll cost. Please don't do detail research, just a rough estimate.


Intel Core i7 920 (2.66GHz, 8MB Cache)
6GB Triple Channel 1333Mhz DDR3
No Monitor
Single ATI Radeon HD 5970, 2GB GDDR5
256GB SSD - Solid State Drive
875W PSU
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
Internal USB Bluetooth
24X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer
Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
Performance Liquid Cooling

 

[720x770]

For the general public what dell is doing is makes sense. For ppl on this forum we are a different kind of breed of knowledge. I'm an amature and here to absorb as much knowledge and good opinions as possoble. This my system I ordered, what kind of money do thing it'll cost. Please don't do detail research, just a rough estimate.


Intel Core i7 920 (2.66GHz, 8MB Cache)
6GB Triple Channel 1333Mhz DDR3
No Monitor
Single ATI Radeon HD 5970, 2GB GDDR5
256GB SSD - Solid State Drive
875W PSU
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
Internal USB Bluetooth
24X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer
Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
Performance Liquid Cooling

offhand, I could build that system for $2,300 (I included MOBO/Case in the price)

but I could also probably build it a few hundred cheaper by cutting corners in a few areas where it would make virtually no difference in performance, and still be using quality parts.

 

[SpoonXps]

Big names like HP and Dell uses cheap PSU that will blow up if you added more than 1 hard drives, cheap mobo with BIOS that offers very limited option, never overclocking options, gets Windows OS in bulk (very cheap) that is absolutely non-transferable, keyboard that are often POS for gaming, and cheap cases that weights a ton yet has only room for 1 extra internal HDs. To top it off, their case are often full of razor sharp edges inside that is sure to cause you to donate a pint of blood just trying to add one extra HD.

I still prefer to assemble my own computer. That way I can get nice looking case, a PSU that actually meets ATX specs and can handle double what I got, have lots of room in the case for all the upgrades, case that don't have razor sharp edges inside, have mobo that is decent, RAM that can handle overclocking, and no warranty to void.

Man..bet you've never own a dell before. You wrong about adding hd's. Not only that you can their cases are ready for that. With adapters that just slides in and cables ready to plug. PSU's might generic, but it's fine for the general public. For their non gaming line, yes, no overclocking, but there gaming line like Alienware...yes you can over clock. Dell won't question you on changing hardware like HD, memories, or video cards. If your board or other hardware fails, they'll send a tech and swap it the same day. As long as you're under warranty.
I don't know how much you've experience with Dell or just heard other ppl rambling. I'm just telling you from experience and I've own many dell stuff.

 

[SpoonXps]

offhand, I could build that system for $2,300 (I included MOBO/Case in the price)

but I could also probably build it a few hundred cheaper by cutting corners in a few areas where it would make virtually no difference in performance, and still be using quality parts.

That is eactly what i'm paying for with 12 month interest free.
So you see, it's not much off then building it myself. Yes, I will lack
the experience in building a system myself, but I also won't gain the headaches of down time and bad parts. I will likely build my next rig after
paying off this current one for the experience.

This is the exact build.
1 224-6493 Alienware Aurora Desktop
1 317-1885 Intel Core i7 920 (2.66GHz, 8MB Cache)
1 317-2663 6GB Triple Channel 1333Mhz DDR3
1 330-6074 Alienware MM Keyboard, US
1 320-7810 No Monitor
1 320-8780 Single ATI Radeon HD 5970, 2GB GDDR5
1 341-0482 256GB SSD - Solid State Drive
1 313-8322 Cosmic Black, Alienware Aurora Chassis, 875W PSU
1 421-2064 Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
1 420-9691 DataSafe Local BackUp 2.0 Basic
1 420-6436 PC-Restore, Dim/Insp
1 317-2818 Accessory Kit, Aurora, Eng
1 330-4769 Dell Resource DVD with Application Backup
1 330-6082 Alienware Optical Mouse, MG100
1 430-0635 Internal USB Bluetooth
1 313-8751 AlienFX Color, Mars Red
1 410-1867 ADOBE READER 9.0 MULTI- LANGUAGE
1 313-8339 Single Drive: 24X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability
1 421-0975 NERO 9, ANW
1 421-0974 CYBERLINK PDVD 8.0 ANW
1 313-8947 Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
1 330-6350 Automatic Updates: Critical Updates Only
1 421-1424 Alienhead 3D
1 906-5260 Dell Limited Hardware Warranty 7X24 Technical Support, Initial Year
1 905-6137 Dell Limited Hardware Warranty Plus In-Home Service [after Remote Diagnosis], Initial Year
1 906-6980 In-home Service after Remote Diagnosis, Initial Year
1 988-7347 No Warranty beyond 1 year
1 990-8029 1 Year Limited Warranty and Next Business Day,Desktop
1 421-1721 Soft Contracts,Banktec Care,Alienware
1 317-1904 Alienware High-Performance Liquid Cooling
1 421-1439 Alien Red Glyphs
1 421-1443 Steam and Portal Factory Installed

 

[Marshmallow64]

I use to have a dell as well and there is a lot of expansion room with them for the mid-size cases. The wire management is usually very nice since everything is custom to be the right size. It is also very quiet.

For the cons, as someone mentioned above, they use cheap PSUs and motherboards. Ram is pretty generic if I remember and overclocking is out of the question.

Pretty much building your own system will always be better than buying a pre-built, to us it seems like a no brainer to just build, but most of the marketplace in the world do not know anything about computers which is why hp/dell/acer/etc. do so well.

 

[dgb303]

Quality, customization, and the sheer fun of designing and building a computer trump anything these pre-built boxes can offer. You ALWAYS pay for what you get.

 

[Marshmallow64]

Yup I've been building computers since age 12 and never looked back. I also got quite a few friends to start building computers.

 

[madhatter256]

With HP you get 1 year warranty.

With that custom PC, the warranty varies per part.

RAM = lifetime
Motherboard = 2 years (ECS)
Case/PSU = 3 years (antec)
Video card = ??? not sure, but MORE than 1 year, for sure.

With HP... you get 1 year for all of those parts. So if the hard drive fails in 1 year and 2 days... you're SOL. That alone costs $80+ to replace with the same size HDD.

I've noticed that parts, such as HDDs, video cards, and RAM tend to fail a lot quicker in HPs and Dells than through custom built PCs.

Power supply also matters as I've seen almost every HP, Dell, Emachine come in with a failing PSU.

When you factor in all of these serviceability costs.... you save money on a custom PC.

 

[mrgoodkat]

I bought a Dell back in '99, that was pretty much my first PC. And I haven't even seen inside another since. But it was entirely proprietary beyond the GPU. But I have heard they are completely upgradeable now.

Does Dell/HP re-badge components like ram, PSU, etc, so that there is no warranty beyond theirs? I mean, Im guessing Dell isn't going to throw in Corsair badged ram...

I guess I never really thought of that. Lifetime warranty's on ram is a huge plus. And the typical multi-year year warranty's on most everything else, which also fail often, is also big.

 

[Ben333]

Man, you guys are slamming the prebuilts. I was pricing out someone a computer two or so years ago, and dell had better stuff for a lower price, plus it was ready to go. No way I could have had the same monitor, same specs, etc for a lower price so I told them to buy the Dell. That thing works great.

Saying parts fail faster in OEM machines? Here's a wake up call, the big guys often use the same parts we do. I buy OEM drives because they are cheaper. They don't fail faster, and it's silly to think they fail faster in a dell or hp or whatever. Saying a motherboard is cheap because its in an HP - that board very well could be a re-flashed asus board, one you could have bought yourself to do a build. Faulty power supplies? I think the companies know a little bit about this business too... and these PSUs are from some of the same companies we get ours from. Do they fail sometimes? Yes, they aren't top of the line. But while they may not be $100 PC Power and Cooling units, the PC you're buying also doesn't cost you a ton. If I were building someone a low cost PC, I assure you, it would be more likely to fail than a new low cost dell. Maybe you guys are speaking from experience, but from my experience the majority of PSU failures are on any OLD computers. Built by the local builder down the street or the large one far away. Specifically the cheap mATX ones. I don't really blame the large computer companies though... I blame the company that made the power supplies. As for the capacitor issue... get real here. I've seen far more boards in need of recapping that did not come in prebuilt systems. I do however have a board on my work bench that I just recapped that was not from a prebuilt and several dell boards in boxes that look like they'll never need it. And proprietary? Most things built in the last 10+ years that aren't meant to be extra small are pretty standard. Mostly micro atx... you can swap out anything you want... Cooling? Lets be real folks, unless the thing is clogged with dust, most prebuilts I've seen have sufficent cooling since they aren't overclocked and are OK on the noise too. No reason to upgrade.

Reasons for building it yourself:

Custom options required, cheaper (if it is)

And I suppose the extended warranties might be another reason. The OEM parts system builders like dell (or you) may use might have limited support/warranties.

 

[doz]

You know what scares me more? Neweggs pricing!

I configured the EXACT same system, all components were THE SAME from both Fry's locally, and Newegg.

Neweggs price with shipping (no tax, Im in another state): $941.52
Fry's price with tax, (local pickup): $995

Asus P7P55 LE
Intel i5-750
Corsair 4gb 1600mhz DDR3 CAS-8
Diamond HD5850
Corsair TX-650watt
Antec 300

That is downright depressing. I must say, Ive been a loyal newegg customer since 2001/2002, but if I can get almost the same price locally, Im more inclined to do that, due to the fact that I can just return a part easily and quickly if its defective. And those prices are dependent upon neweggs pricing scheme being good the day I want to purchase

 

[Brutal-Force]

The question is do you also have rebates and such included in that bill?

Also, not everyone has a local Fry's or Microcenter.

For instance, the only chain stores we have are Bestbuy and CompUSA. Best Buy's prices have always been outrageous, and since they are CompUSA's only competition, their prices are going up as well.

New egg almost always has cheaper stuff or a bigger selection. If you want quality hardware from either BB or CUSA you have to settle for OCZ for RAM for example. Otherwise your left with Centon or Kingston or PNY.

I think Newegg still has a nitch, although it is probably shrinking, because all good business that cut their own throats either die at their own hand or are forced to compete and raise prices until they price themselves out of the competition (this is usually because some greedy CEO steps in).

 

[MadMan007]

I think people are missing the point of the thread - it used to always be a lot cheaper to custom build a PC with decent quality parts even if you didn't compare to the bargain basement prebuilts which are impossible to match on price. The difference is not so huge any more.

 

[hovercast]

I think people are missing the point of the thread - it used to always be a lot cheaper to custom build a PC with decent quality parts even if you didn't compare to the bargain basement prebuilts which are impossible to match on price. The difference is not so huge any more.

I’m glad MadMan007 gets the point as well.

Getting better quality parts and getting lower total cost is what got me started on computer building.
I used to save loads of money because I wasn’t paying someone to build the computer for me. Although I still build my own computers, my savings for building it myself are very small.

But like others noted, savings is not the only reason to build your own computer
So for a lot of people, this crazy prices is not a problem.

It becomes a problem however for people building a computer for someone else and trying to make a slight profit and at the same time trying to convince them you are giving them a better deal than they can get from dell or hp.

 

[720x770]

You know what scares me more? Neweggs pricing!

I configured the EXACT same system, all components were THE SAME from both Fry's locally, and Newegg.

Neweggs price with shipping (no tax, Im in another state): $941.52
Fry's price with tax, (local pickup): $995

Asus P7P55 LE
Intel i5-750
Corsair 4gb 1600mhz DDR3 CAS-8
Diamond HD5850
Corsair TX-650watt
Antec 300

That is downright depressing. I must say, Ive been a loyal newegg customer since 2001/2002, but if I can get almost the same price locally, Im more inclined to do that, due to the fact that I can just return a part easily and quickly if its defective. And those prices are dependent upon neweggs pricing scheme being good the day I want to purchase

the price difference is $53.48, That's a decent savings especially considering it includes shipping. Defective parts don't crop up enough to bother paying more just so it's easier to send back, especially considering the quickness of newegg's return service most of the time.

Patience is a virtue. A few days or even a week shouldn't kill you, you'll have all the time in the world to use it once it gets back.

And the problem being, the more parts you buy, the more you end up spending extra. It adds up.

 

[hovercast]

Some of the configurations of pre-built systems out there are a little wacky.

But all of that aside, many pre-built systems have their own in-house limited bios. Some of them don't even have an option for a more detailed bios control, nor any type of bios to flash it with. I remember working on a friends AMD system that was locked at 2T memory timings, and I had to use Nvidia's control panel to overclock the processor.

Many warranties don't allow you to open the case to clean or put anything in the system, that has to be done by a technician.

You can show me any pre-built system, and I'll find it for cheaper by building it myself. I refuse to pay extra for someone to snap several parts together like lego's, when I can do that myself.

Building yourself ensures you get all of the features you want, and mostly none of the features you won't need.

I like the way you think 720x770 but the problem comes when you try to make a slight profit and try to convince the person they are geting a better deal. Like the estimate you did for SpoonXps and I don't think you were including any profit for yourself on that estimate.

 

[baris_]

Maybe the gap is smaller, but seperate components > all.

 

[720x770]

I like the way you think 720x770 but the problem comes when you try to make a slight profit and try to convince the person they are geting a better deal. Like the estimate you did for SpoonXps and I don't think you were including any profit for yourself on that estimate.

I don't think he was exactly forthcoming about how much he paid. he said that I guessed pretty much exactly how much he paid, but if that were true then they wouldn't be able to make a profit. no company in their right mind would sell 2k+ worth of hardware and make only a few dollars off of it, they would go out of business.

I just went to the dell site and punched in the specifications he listed. The cart price is $2,574! (before taxes and shipping). Minimum price for 7 day S&H is $19 with a $6 discount, so $13 shipping isn't bad at all, but the Tax is $161.69!

Combine all that together and you get a final price of $2,748!!! So I could build his entire system for $2,300 (w/ 3-4 day shipping, taxes if any, and 1-3 year warranties) while he paid $448 more than he would have if he built it himself. Ouch! I'd be ashamed to admit that too! If doing something so simple yourself saves you nearly $500 for an hour of your time, why not?

 

[hovercast]

I don't think he was exactly forthcoming about how much he paid. he said that I guessed pretty much exactly how much he paid, but if that were true then they wouldn't be able to make a profit. no company in their right mind would sell 2k+ worth of hardware and make only a few dollars off of it, they would go out of business.

I just went to the dell site and punched in the specifications he listed. The cart price is $2,574! (before taxes and shipping). Minimum price for 7 day S&H (I'd get mine in 3-4 days) is $19 with a $6 discount, so $13 shipping isn't bad at all, but the Tax is $161.69!

Combine all that together and you get a final price of $2,748!!! So I could build his entire system for $2,300 (w/ shipping and taxes if any) with 1-3 year warranties, while he paid $448 more than he would have if he built it himself with only a 1 year warranty in total. Ouch! I'd be ashamed to admit that too! If doing something so simple yourself saves you nearly $500 for an hour of your time, why not?

Well I don't think dell paid anything close to 2K for the hardware and maybe he had some big coupon or something.... or maybe not lol
I think you are right though, at this price range profit margin can be a lot bigger building it yourself especially considering it included water cooling so someone would have to get payed to do the work.
but at 1000 price range savings of building it yourself has gotten a lot smaller compared to a few years ago

 

[720x770]

Well I don't think dell paid anything close to 2K for the hardware and maybe he had some big coupon or something.... or maybe not lol
I think you are right though, at this price range profit margin can be a lot bigger building it yourself especially considering it included water cooling so someone would have to get payed to do the work.
but at 1000 price range savings of building it yourself has gotten a lot smaller compared to a few years ago

I built my entire system for $485 (including shipping), nearly 6 months ago. I'd like to see a computer with the same hardware in a pre-built system for less than that at the time. Although, by now I'm sure the prices on all components I have are a bit cheaper, it's probably not too much off and a pre-built would probably still cost more even now.

So as I see it, whether you're buying big or small it's better to build yourself.