DIYbanter - View Single Post

Percival P. Cassidy

On 01/04/11 01:35 pm, wrote:

I'm glad you learned it. I build my own, so I don't shop for
off-the-shelf desktop pcs for myself.

I just went through that exercise, and there is essentially zero
money to be saved if you buy all the parts and assemble it yourself.
Just buying the hardware, ie MB, CPU, memory, chasis, etc on Ebay,
from God
knows who, puts you you close to what you could get it from HP or
similar already integrated, software loaded, and tested. Integrate
it yourself and
if it doesn't work right, or there are compatibility issues, then
what? And then if you
need Windows, unless you already have it, that's another $110. By
comparison, an
HP comes pre-loaded with Win 7 and limited version of Microsoft Office
for free, which is good
enough for most people. For another $100, you could get the full
version. 3 years of Norton, $30.

Add it all up and I fail to see the point to building your own, unless
you're
putting together a high end gaming system or similar. But for the
typical $500 to
$1000 system, it makes no sense to me. It's gettin more and more like
building
your own HDTV instead of buying one.

When you build your own, you know what's in it. I know a guy who used to
work for a company that bought pallet loads of same-model PCs (Compaq, I
think), but often no two had precisely the same internals. When that is
the case, a report that such-and-such a model is good is meaningless.
And that's quite apart from whether you can upgrade it -- e.g., by
adding an extra card for some particular purpose.

Apart from notebooks, I haven't bought an off-the-shelf computer since 1986.

Perce