cogent1 said:
I'm not too bright, as my wife is constantly pointing out, but even I had the wit to work out what it would cost to build my own computer,and surprise, surprise! It costs you more to build your own.
I would disagree, but it's a fine margin and it does depend on where you buy your components from.
This is because every item you buy has the full manufacturer's mark-up and delivery cost factored in. Plus, you have to deal with multiple suppliers, you have to handle your own warranty claims and you don't have a three year guarantee period to play with.
Agreed, to a certain degree. I always try to buy all components from the same supplier, as shipping costs do more than anything to add to the price. I also only buy from those suppliers I have found to have a good RMA service.
If you build your own, often you can overcome a lot of the simpler problems immediately, without having to wait for an engineer to arrive from your complete system supplier. Also, if a fault is traced and proved to one component, it's a likely chance that if you're a self-builder, you may have a spare component to keep you going until your RMA replacement arrives.
You may even wish to upgrade that component and just buy a new and better one.
Unless you are a masochist who loves to see thin wisps of smoke rising from your motherboard or you actually have some vague idea of what you are undertaking, you would be better off letting computer manufacturers run the risks of self assembly. You might get a computer that doesn't show a pretty blue screen every five minutes. Then again, you might not....
I am not a masochist but I do confess to having some vague idea of what I'm doing. But, in my opinion, you don't need a degree in rocket science to build your own, particularly with Forums such as this one to help you.
If you're
totally clueless, then yes, I would agree to buying an off the shelf model.
However, the attractiveness of building your own is flexibility. You can buy exactly the parts you want, and according to your budget, you won't cut corners anywhere, you'll know all your parts are good. This cannot be said of readymades, imo they always economise somewhere, probably with a cheap batch of parts they've bought in bulk and cheap. A perfect readymade system is expensive, and from my experience, is a rarity.
And you think you're covered by that three year warranty. I'll allow myself a smug grin and point you to the countless stories of poor backup from firms such as Mesh, Dell, Gateway et al. The internet is choked with bad news stories about suppliers such as these.
One simple problem with an off-the-shelf system and you may very well be without the use of your computer for a month or more. I've rarely known an RMA to take that long for an individual component from an online supplier. Alright, I'll admit, two weeks is common, but it's still usually quicker than a vist from a Mesh engineer, for instance.
One last thing, when building, nothing can beat the sheer satisfaction of seeing a system you've specced, ordered, purchased and assembled working really fast and smooth and behaving very well indeed. It's a buzz
Fair points, cogent1, and I've replied with my point of view, for right or for wrong.
