Some Build Pros:
- Most home built machines are easier to upgrade later, and there's no pesky warranty to break by cutting a little strip of plastic over the case
- With research, you can determine your exact needs, plus a little future-proofing, and then assemble exactly what you need rather than getting the one closest to your requirements
- For higher end machines the sums of the costs of the pieces are not usually as high as the prebuilt total would cost
- You can buy pieces one at a time as you have money or see them on sale for an even steeper improvement on cost
- Most techie geeks like me actually think it's FUN to build these things
Some Buy Pros:
- No chance of forgetting a key part you needed, like a wireless card
- No chance of buying the wrong motherboard/chip/ram/etc
- No chance of one bad piece shorting out several others and causing a cascade of warranty phone calls
- One Warranty covers everything, just buy it, plug it in, and go
- All the pieces work together, no worries about surprise hardware conflicts, things fitting in the case together right, etc
- OS is usually included
Final Thoughts:
First I want to remind everyone that I'm a hobbyist, my real job is software, but I enjoy building machines when I have the time or funds to build one. That said, I'm sure there are lots of points I'm not mentioning, so feel free to leave them in the comments below, but these are my hit-list of points that I wanted to make sure I mentioned. That said, the most common rule of thumb to keep in mind is that the more specialized the computer use (Gaming, Cad design, etc) the larger the gap in price between build and buy. If you're looking for a top of the line gaming machine, then the prebuilt ones are nice, and powerful, but tend to cost a lot more than the sum of the parts. If you're looking for a generic work machine, to use office, maybe an editor or two, Quicken, and basic programs like that then the difference in price you'd save buy building it likely wouldn't be worth your time.
To put the finest nail on the topic, if you need a high end machine, most likely you'll save money building it yourself. If you just want a basic machine to use facebook, youtube, and email, then you'll probably do better buying it.
Oh, and if you don't know how to build one yourself, don't ASSUME your techie friend wants to do it for you... for free... at 2 AM... on a weeknight...
Really people, come on! Techies are people too, have a heart!
Techies are people too? Rubbish! They're clockwork minions put on the earth to serve my every whim! They have no feelings in their mechanical hearts! They're...
ReplyDelete...Wait, you said techies? Never mind. Be good to them. They keep the blue smoke inside your computer!
I'll add a buy pro: quicker setup. If you're into instant gratification, you can push that little button and be up and running in a couple of minutes.
Also? Most of your drivers should be preinstalled, which is nice. Depending on what you get, sometimes the drivers can be hard to track down.
And to expound on your build pro about upgrading, that generally means that your investment will last longer. You could easily spend $500 on a buy or a build, but in 2-3 years, you may only need to put an additional $100 into the build to keep it relevant for another 2-3 years. The buy you're going to have to invest another $500. You can't do that forever, but it's a lot cheaper in the long run.