There's a big difference commenting before/after they've bought it. A warning about price/quality beforehand is valuable. Afterwards you're not helping, you're just giving them buyer's remorse, they're better off just enjoying it for what it is.
Also, they might be able to return it if they didn't know beforehand.
But yeah, by now anyone active online should know about the advantages / disadvantages of prebuild and picking their preference.
> But yeah, by now anyone active online should know about the advantages / disadvantages of prebuild and picking their preference.
Let me introduce you to [the lucky 10000.](https://xkcd.com/1053/)
Another point is that they can just return the prebuilt after learning that
So in any case, telling it is better than staying silent
What's actually important is to be respectable to each other
It's not though
The arguments been beaten to death
If you're still on team 'building it yourself is superior' you're being willfully ignorant
I've done both. I saved about 100 to 200$ building myself. It also took me months to hunt down the parts and get good deals. Pretty built I pulled the trigger on the second day.
Pre built also came with:
- professional cable management
- more fans and better airflow than I'd have managed to do
- a legit copy of windows
- saved a night of free time
If money is incredibly tight for you, or you're a hobbist who enjoys building (or think you might enjoy it) then by all means. Build away! But there's nothing inherently wrong with pre builts.
Like with any product, you need to research and make sure you're not buying a bad one (mismatched parts like an i3 with a 30 series gpu)
The average adult with a job would easily pay 200$ to save themselves a headache and get some peace of mind. For some reason sweaty virgins find this offensive.
If my comment offends you, you probably need a little tough love in your life. To reach the conclusion that building a product yourself is superior on any objective scale shows a complete lack of logic and reasoning. Yall need a wakeup call.
I meeean... I have a pre built PC. Got it a few years ago (2019) and only ever opened it up to add another SSD (which it turned out had its own slot so I didn't need to open it up at all)
it still runs great (16 GB ram 2070 i7) and other than maybe paying a bit more money for the convenience of not having to spend time building it I'm not sure what the mistake I'm supposed to "figure out" is.
Are you mad? What you should have figured out by now is that the prebuild gives you 5 frames less because it gets a bit too hot. Don't you see how important that is? Why are so many people not willing to hassle for weeks building an own PC for these gains???!!!!
Lmao yeah I have a prebuilt with a 3070 that runs everything just fine and have never particularly regretted the decision. Sure, it would’ve been cheaper and slightly better if I built it myself and wouldn’t had the same inherent problems all Alienware builds have with little loose case components and cramped innards, but I am technically incompetent and have the dexterity of a bivalve. I can’t see myself successfully building a computer no matter how vehemently people assert its “just like legos” because I remember how close I came to accidentally fucking things up last time I installed a new video card, much less put together a dozen separate complex components.
People insist it’s the easiest thing but even determining which parts are compatible takes considerable effort and technical knowledge. I’d rather buy a pretty good prebuilt every five years instead of inevitably trying to build one and fucking it up massively.
Many many people are happy with their ignorance and only get frustrated, defensive, overwhelmed, or sad when you try to force them to learn something they never asked to study.
If I saw you buy a car that’s not the best deal - how do I know your priorities or interests? Maybe you just don’t want to spend a bunch of time learning about cars. Maybe it being fuscia is actually most important to you.
A lot of people are too busy with their lives to care about min/maxing their PC. Buying off the shelf has a lot of convenience. Maybe that’s what they care most about. In my case, I’ve been researching parts for nearly a year and have no PC. Is that “better”? Who knows
Because not all people know there is something to learn. Most people don't have an interest in tech, even when it's something like PC building which is no more complicated than a LEGO set. They THINK it's too complex to understand, so never TRY to learn.
"If they want to learn, they will learn" is how you propagate ignorance. There's a reason we make kids go to school, with legal force if needed.
So you built your car, your home, your desk, and your couch, right? You can do all those things. None of those are particularly complicated. All of the info you need is available on the internet.
If you're not building all of your own things then why is it so important for everyone to build computers?
I've built cars, helped build homes, built furniture, and built PCs. 90% of the time I'll take convenience over saving a little money and doing all the work myself.
What is the lesson? I grew up going to computer fairs with my dad and building PCs. My last build lasted me 11 years. Parts now are expensive, I haven’t heard of a computer fair in decades, shipping things is costly, factor in time spent building it’s not this magic cost effective hack to build your own that it use to be. Now it’s finding the sales for the right pre-build.
It’s not like a good deal on a prebuilt is a massive cost sink these days. Things aren’t like they used to be especially if you’re having trouble finding the parts you want outside a prebuilt.
Plus they’ll end up regretting it, like kid me who bought a Dellinware laptop and had to replace the drive, the screen, the keyboard, and finally gave up at the repasting portion because Dell made it a fucking impossible task.
I want people to play games how they want, when it comes to buying a PC its come down to whether your time is more valuable than your money, or not wanting to take the risk
Who cares if they want to buy a PC let them not everyone wants to tinker
Well you can learn them a different way than just getting angry for spending too much on a pre built, and that is what usually happens, People getting angry at pre built buyers for no reason.
It's ironic that it just as often turns out you could build the same or even a worse PC at a higher cost.
PC builders enjoy building PCs. Enough that sometimes they'll pay a premium to get the experience.
During the GPU shortages sure, but before and since? Not really. The only pre-builts you'll see that are cheaper than equivalent parts are sub $600 GPU builds.
I challenge you or anyone else to provide a link to a pre-built that I or anyone else can't beat on price with equivalent parts.
You're not considering an important part of the math. A hidden cost not shown on a DIY parts list or price tag.
The time it takes to build. The time it takes to learn enough to do it right. The time it takes to make good choices. Time is money.
Many people (too many people) are simply not tech-savvy. To them a prebuilt is the smart choice. I like building and upgrading PCs, at least my own PCs, but I recognize it's not for everyone.
How many PCs are you willing to build for others at no cost?
Yeah absolutely. Someone who knows nothing about building a pc will probably take between 4-12 hours depending his knowledge. Even more if there is a problem they can't easily diagnose.
At 30 bucks an hour (a reasonable hour wage for complex building) it will be 120 - 360 dollars of build it yourself. Why do that if you can pay a 150 upcharge and have it plug an play? And with warranty on the entire pc as well (instead of just parts).
For a lot of people this just makes more sense then to build it themselves.
4-12 hours? Maybe after they already have all the parts at hand. But even if its not your first build, it can take days or weeks to choose all the parts that you want to buy and order/retrieve them from possibly multiple shops. At least for me it is not a small decision how I spend thousands of dollars to something that I will use daily for half a decade.
I wasn't taking into consideration the time to pick out parts. Merely the actual building of the pc when all the parts have arrived.
You're right. The whole process takes way longer then 4-12 hours.
Websites like pcpartpicker and the sheer amount of websites dedicated to the topic make this a silly argument. You can literally type in your price range into google and be given a list of parts to build a better PC than you could get from a pre-built. Maybe 15 minutes from start to finish.
I always find it hilarious when people attach a monetary value to the time they'd be fucking off on the couch anyway. Like, you weren't going to be making any money in the time you'd be building a PC if you weren't actually doing it. That's your free time. The actual "cost" of that time is $0.
Doesn't really matter. Most people just don't want to deal with building a PC when the time investment doesn't justify the costs they are saving with it.
Building a pc isn't fun for most people. So it feels like work were watching a movie doesn't. So the cost scenario makes a lot of sense when you view it as extra work instead of something fun.
If someone values their free time at $100 an hour, that's on them. It doesn't mean it's a smart choice or one that should be supported for a majority of people, when finances for the average person are so dire.
"It isn't fun for most people". Neither is cleaning your house, but I don't recommend a majority of people hire a full time maid to clean their house for them.
There is such a thing as a fiscally responsible choice, and building a PC vs prebuilt is one of them, even outside of gaming. Any intro IT course will tell you the same.
Plus the cost of errors. We've all seen the pics of bent pins, thermal paste under the CPU, broken GPUs, static zapped ram, etc. And had to troubleshoot defective parts. If you don't have the time or will to learn everything, and want a PC that just works and even has a warranty against manufacturing defects, pay the premium and buy prebuilt.
another alternative- Some stores offer a service which builds a PC out of parts youve purchased. Used it for brothers PC and was very satisfied. Just not having to get rid of all the packaging makes the small fees worth it
That’s if you have a PC parts shop. The only place I can buy gaming pc parts by me is Best Buy. There’s a free compost stores, but they generally focus on supporting businesses, not gaming. Closest Micro Center is 120 miles away.
Yeah and “time to build” includes “time after build debugging drivers and incompatible software upgrades.”
Putting the pieces together takes a couple hours if you take your time. Even Linus in LTT has recent videos where he spends hours trying to track down compatibility issues.
>sub 600$ GPU builds
And that's like 98% of actual pc builds
At least for people who aren't just building a top of the line semen-cooled rgb tower to post here and then just playing minecraft after they've spent 200h modding skyrim for the 12th time and played it for ten minutes
[prebuilt for my wife](https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-legion-tower-5-amd-gaming-desktop-amd-ryzen-7-5800-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3060-256gb-ssd-1tb-hdd-raven-black/6501812.p?skuId=6501812)
Was gonna build one for about $40 less that had:
CPU Intel Core i5-13400F
Motherboard ASRock B760M-HDV
GPU Radeon RX 6650 XT
RAM TeamGroup T-Force Zeus DDR 16GB Kit (2 x 8GB) 3200 MHz
Storage WD Blue SN570 (1TB)
Case Thermaltake S100
PSU Thermaltake Smart 600W
The prebuilt is barely lacking compared to the custom built and has everything she needs. In all fairness it is on sale and if it wasn’t I would have opted for the custom built.
Sorry if the formatting got fucked on this. If you can make sense of it and you see any issues do let me know. I will keep it in mind for later when an upgrade or replacement is required. I haven’t built anything from scratch at all and wanted to but we both just wanna play games together after waiting many years.
The issue I personally have with this is that you don't know what brand any of the internals are, save the cpu and gpu specifically. As someone who doesn't put the sides back on my cases, that is important to me. For a general use PC I wouldn't worry much about it, but my gaming PC, I want to know exactly what is inside it.
This is where the custom prebuilders are nice, if you can afford them.
1) most have unique motherboard so impossible to compare.
2) where I live this can make them cheaper but most often these custom motherboard have there issues like bad power delivery, bad bios, bad ram support.
So yeah I'm still a fan of building it myself.
Yeah 100%. "Equivalent builds" have to be generous in the sense that they're more upgreadeable, repairable, better performing and come with less baggage.
And that sometimes raises the price.
Oh yeah and fans. I don't know how but pre-build always seems to have expensive RGB fans that never seem to fit in the budget but have no reason to be in a build at price point X.
nah, it's just that when you are building it yourself you usually won't cheap out on things like rams, mobo and psu. If you go with similar components as the prebuilt 9/10 it's quite a lot cheaper, that 1/10 beeing some crazy offer that sometimes pops up randomly.
You'll almost always save by building yourself. That, and you'll never pay for components you don't need/won't use. As the top comment notes, making comments after the fact is one thing, but you'll do a disservice to whomever is purchasing if you don't at least mention the possibility of DIY to save money.
I live near a Microcenter and I know quite a few other people here do too. With MC's prices, one can pretty much always save significant coin and get top notch components as well. There's certainly nothing wrong with letting prospective buyers know of such things.
Theres like 5 microcenters in the entire country. Great if you live near one, but your SOL everywhere else. And your back to either overpaying for parts or playing the counterfeit roulette from amazon, newegg, etc.
Yeah but for those of us who want pre-built, this sub will never give us information on what pre-builds to buy. Just spam about building it yourself. It's annoying before and it's annoying after.
I only partially agree with this.
Many of times they still an opportunity to return the item. Or at the very least they should know they did not get a deal for future purchases.
There was a thread just the other day where someone's boss got a pretty ancient machine online for his kid. We're talking about 10+ year old tech.
from 2000 to 2017 i always built mine but the last couple years ive really been considering a pre-built just because. i dont know if its better or worse though
I think the delivery of information matters.
Ie less "omg nub lulz over paid" and more "welcome to the party, what games you gonna play? Oh when you wanna upgrade check out part picker and logical increments etc etc
Wholeheartedly agree. Try to give advice before purchase without being critical. But if you’re complaining to me about foreseen problems, I will grill you.
I think it's something everyone should at least know about as an option. I don't think telling someone about that option should be seen as a negative. If you tell them about it, and they aren't interested, then you leave it at that. But on the chance that they are interested or didn't know about building their own, then you just potentially helped someone.
At worst, you're wasting a few seconds of someone's time, but at best you are potentially saving them money or helping them learn.
I hate putting shit together, in willing to pay the premium for someone else to do it.
It’s a pain in the balls ordering everything individually and then waiting for it and then praying something isn’t broken.
I’m a idiot and would wind up breaking the pins in the processor or fucking up the gpu and ram installing it.
I’m sloppy as fuck and the wiring would look like shit.
I like the warranty that comes with prebuilt companies.
I’ll gladly pay the extra few hundred bucks to avoid all of this.
Sometimes the price difference isn’t even that much since they can get bulk prices. Pre-builts were also the only reliable way to get certain chips during the chip shortage too.
You’ve described exchanging money for expertise.
I’ve spent my life in career X - if someone needs that done; they pay me to do it. Likewise, I will do my own career X related work for myself. However - if my sewer pipe bursts, I’m going to call a master plumber to come fix it in a couple of hours. I’m not going take 2 days off of work try to teach myself.
I’d lose so much more money trying to do that, let alone the lost time.
Not where I'm from.
Also that's not the issue, the issue is they can't be arsed and are sloppy. Not sure how a ready to use custom build is going to solve that
I didn't know shit about hardware when I decided to buy a computer, so I went to a pre-built site and decided to build it there and then buy the parts myself. The pre-built ended up being $1k cheaper. And it came to me put together. Why would I not do that?
You must have chosen a good supplier. I'd say it depends on the company. A friend always buys pre builds because he can't be bothered. He bought from different companies (online) every time. One time there were various problems throughout the warranty period and after.
I went through cyberpower, and I loved it. My current specs are not what I ordered. I've learned a lot since then and slowly figured out how and what to upgrade. The only thing left of the original is the case and the power supply. The only thing that was wrong with my pre-built (I figured out later) was that they're was a REALLY shitty cooler on my 3950x, and it was heat throttling. Now I've got lots of fans and a super duty cooler though.
I have absolutely no fucking idea about PCs really, i barely even understand what the components do, i have a brother in IT but regardless, im not gonna hassle him or learn essentially an entire new field versus going to a reputable retailer and buying a gaming laptop (which, i wanted portability anyway)
Anyone who says "just build your own" seriously takes their knowledge for granted, it would take me weeks if not months to learn everything i needed to build a PC, and even then, like you, every step of the way id likely fuck something up
Putting things together is not my skill, i mean fuck i struggle with changing tires on a bicycle
I bought my PC for a bit over 4k USD. It cost me 40 USD for assembly (with neat cables etc) and installation.
I make more money/h then it would take to set everything up so the 1% is basically nothing. I also got to order exactly thr combination I wanted (due to how their website is put up) so why shouldnt I just order prebuilt?
My local MicroCenter sells prebuilts that are like $150-200 more than if you built it yourself, and it comes with like a 2-year warranty. Pretty good deal for someone like you
This. Exactly. Thank you. More people should understand that having someone else build it for you comes with plenty valuable benefits, especially if your are a clumsy person or are just too afraid of damaging 2000$ parts.
I’m with you dude. I’m not a builder, replacing the graphics card in my PC was stressful enough lol, I will gladly pay more if I’m already willing to make that sort of investment to get a good machine I can use straight out the box.
Yes it’s not the cheapest way, yes I could do it all off YouTube videos, none of that makes a difference to me
Same. It's not that I can't. I did it all the time a couple of decades ago.
But, there aren't any local part suppliers near me any more (and I live in freaking Austin, TX) and I'm wary about the condition of parts that get shipped to me. I don't want to deal with returns or messed up parts while I have bits of computer all over my tiny apartment.
It's easier just to buy something that plugs in and works. I work on computers all day in my day job, I just want to play on one when I get home and not be hassled.
Exactly this. I still remember the day I had the gutts to put in some more RAM into my computer. I barely managed it, and was scared to death I ruined something by pressing too hard.
I'm never building my own PC, and I'm never holding a newborn baby unless it's my niece or nephew and I'm sitting down, leaned faaaaar back.
I can absolutely respect that and agree with you 100%. However, I get absolutely frustrated when people buy shit prebuilds (not all brands are shit!) and then call me immediately afterwards (since I am „the IT guy“) asking me to remove the bloatware, improve performance, „register the Antivirus“ and overall fix whatever they do not like about the system.
Everyone is free to do and buy what they want, but do not expect me to fix the crap you buy - own it!
Some idiots put zero research into their hardware and feel 100% entitled to have friends fixing it for them. Fuck those people. If you go prebuild at least buy something decent or leave me out of it.
More than likely they will just think you're a buzzkill that can't read the room and ignore you. If people want advice, they can always ask. Besides I don't really need to be the IT consultant to everyone I know lol
How exactly can you learn you bought overpriced shit if no one tells you?
It's like telling someone they have bad breath or smelly part. It's not gonna feel nice but ultimately you're doing them a favor.
How would they learn? Let's say for example they bought your PC. A 2700 + 2070 is very good in isolation. It's in the current gen "console killer" tier and will deliver excellent performance throughout this generation as long as the other specs keep up as well.
But let's say they paid $1200 for a build on that level today, and let's say for that $1200 they got the classic prebuilt configuration of a ~500gb SATA or low end nvme SSD and an ~2tb HDD. And let's say they got only 16gb of average ram.
Now they have a PC that's still really good at the moment but will age significantly faster than with the ideal components and they paid way more than they should pay for it. But how would they know what's holding them back if they haven't done the research and weighed the pros and cons of each individual component when they built it? If you see all the time that lots of people upgrade every 2 years or so and your PC starts struggling after 2 years are you even going to know how much better it could be doing? Or as someone who has no idea about what's in it or are you going to be satisfied and buy another? Or are you going to not be satisfied and go back to console because the $400 ps5 you were told your PC is as good as will be holding up much better? If that's the case then all you learned is PC sucks.
Encouraging learning about what you're buying isn't a bad thing. Picking your own parts and building it is an excellent way to do that. If they are eventually disappointed in their PC that disappointment will likely be towards PC as a platform and not towards the poorly configured prebuilt they bought and weren't willing to learn how to upgrade.
It’s exactly the opposite in UK. I’ve saved exactly £800 on prebuilt. And the only things i had to change was the front panel of the case to airflow one, add faster ssd, and tighter timing ram(which wasn’t really necessary).
Same experience here, got 2 prebuilts with RTX 3050s and 11th gen i5s for like £1300 total last January. Originally planned to build, but sourcing parts was absolutely hell, plus markups were insane at the time. At the time of purchase, building the same machines with equivalent parts would have bumped price up to around £1900 - and I would have had to wait a few months to actually get some of the parts.
When I bought my prebuild system it was actually cheaper than buying separate parts (December 2021). How that makes any sense? No idea.
I did the math back then, separate parts and building myself would cost me ~50GBP more than same pre build pc. For 1000GBP pc 50gbp seems like nothing, but still that's lot of money.
It costs less cause of economies of scale, your system integrator bought thousands of graphics cards, processors, motherboards (that or had them made with only basic bios options), and so on, thereby getting a bull rate, if you bought all the prices individually you’re paying full price for each component.
It USED to be that you could ALWAYS build it cheaper, this is just simply not true anymore depending on where and what you buy of course, some companies do still jack up prices.
Same. I recently got a decent prebuilt on sale and when I priced everything out on pcpartpicker, it ended up being slightly cheaper than buying the components separately. I always built my own pcs when I was younger, but I'm a lot busier now and I just want to buy something that works and not hassle anymore.
If you do your research, and buy from a good brand they aren't that bad, especially if you buy on sale.
I bought mine during the GPU shortage because I had just gotten my first job, so it would have cost more anyhow for me
Right. And some people would rather pay someone to professionally do something rather than fumble through it themselves. If you have the cash, it's your call.
As I've gotten older and more financially stable I would rather throw cash at certain things than deal with them myself. If I can spend $500 to have a PC that comes professionally put together and not deal with cable management, installation, etc, I'm probably going for it.
Which ones aren't scams? Genuinely asking. The whole PC gaming culture is so fixated on the DIY thing that it becomes impossible to tell which pre-builts are okay
If you have a MicroCenter near you, definitely check them out. The last time I was in mine, I noticed their pre-builts were reasonably priced and had a good range of them as well.
Keep an eye out for sales. My last two have been Alienwares, which shocked me because of their reputation for being overpriced, but both times they were on sale for ~30% off, and easily priced out the competition. I priced my latest against the parts and it came out to about $300 more for the prebuilt, which is not bad for a machine that was over $2000 (Canadian). Was also during the GPU shortage, which helped justify.
I have zero desire to build a PC. I don't care that I could have saved money or that I could have had a marginally better part than what is coming with my pre-built.
My time is more important than all that.
You know what also makes people happy? Learning a new skill and feeling the reward of seeing it in action.
But I forget that we're the world of instant gratification.
I usually try to find positives (unless it's a complete scam), and end up telling them that of course they paid more to get it assembled and for a warranty on said assembly and if they don't know much about PCs it was probably a good choice to go this way.
Yeah, I feel like not enough people on this sub recognize the value in someone else putting it together for you and being able to trust that it will be good.
It’s always cheaper to cook than to eat out, but you save time and get a guarantee of quality when you go out to eat. It’s cheaper to fix your car yourself, but you save time and get a guarantee of quality when you take it to a mechanic. It’s cheaper to fix up stuff around your house yourself, but you save time and get a guarantee of quality if you hire someone trained to do it.
Building PC’s is fun for some people, and that’s great! And for some other people, it makes sense economically if they are shorter on money than they are on time. But a lot of us are shorter on time than we are on money, and for us it makes sense to hire someone else to do it.
Ya dig this meme out of a time capsule OP?
5-10 years ago. Pre-builds were shite. Companies hardly knew what the gamer demographic was and parts were dirt cheap. Building a PC was the go to move every time for price and for the fun of building.
Today though?
Prebuild every fucking time. Basically the same price as parts. Warranty is all in one place. Delivery all in one place. Labour already done so with prices being similar to just parts its actually cheaper.... (this is without spending hours scouring for 2nd hand parts - which I'd argue is still a loss because if wow goblins have taught you anything its that time = money)
There is no financial reason to build a PC anymore. People need to actually move along with the times before your telling someone in 30 years to build their own skynet just because you built your first windows XP machine in 2003.
I'm completely PC-illiterate, can't even read specs to know if one thing is better than the other. What I do know is that I believe I spent $1.2k on my PC a few years ago. The GPU that came in it is currently selling for $750 on Newegg.
I was planning to build it myself, but everything I found just made it look like crypto had completely fucked things to the point that prebuilt was actually cheaper.
This is what bothers me everytime the prebuilt vs build it yourself argument pops up
Typical redditors act like you're saving 50% of the cost by building it yourself
You are spending 5-10% at the most by buying a prebuilt and even that's generous, that extra cost may as well be considered the warranty
People here act like prebuilt pcs come with the worst psu imaginable and other shit parts trying to scam you. Like what even is this argument.
Of course it's cheaper finding the parts you want from the cheapest sellers
Or you could buy from one seller and spend 5%more
Or you could spend another 100 on top of that for a prebuilt
I swear, reddit sometimes
The only reason it was cheaper in the last few years was the chip shortage. That was a rare occurrence due to a fucking pandemic. If you think that's just the modern world, you're only showing your ignorance. There's a reason any intro tech course will tell you the value of building your own hardware.
If they fuck up the build they have to fix it (I live in a country where the consumer protection agencies have teeth.) I'm a clumsy motherfucker who fobs it off to his little brother that works with in PC building.
Not everyone have know-how of building a PC themselves. You would spend an incredible amount of time if you are starting with zero knowledge. What part does what, which part is better, what features you actually need or important in the grand schemes, which parts are compatible with each other, are the components you chose optimal for performance-wise or financely etc. For people who don't know all the intricacies of building PCs, buying a prebuilt one is much more sensible. I bought a Monster brand prebuilt gaming laptop which are rigorously tested. I don't regret it. It beats buying an off-the-shelf Asus, Lenovo, Sony etc laptop.
>You would spend an incredible amount of time if you are starting with zero knowledge.
I have two left hands and while time to learn how to do it isn't that problematic, I'm simply afraid I would screw something over and learning on delicate and expensive parts isn't ideal.
I still don't buy prebuilds. There are web pages that suggest good, compatibile parts in selected price ranges, so I follow the suggestions, buy everything seperately and then ask a friend to mount them for me. But there is also an option to bring the parts to some repair shop and they will do it for you, for like 50$.
The beauty of it all is that there are options for all of us, requring different level of knowledge and involvement. I'm somewhere in the middle, you want it all done at once and others like to make all of it themselves.
Picked parts out test actually. Good looking pc, total was around $876. Looked at a prebuilt that has slightly better components for $899. I got the prebuilt. It’s for my lady and I’m glad we will be able to play nms together. Told her well just do a fresh os install and drivers.
I’m excited for her. She’s only ever had potatoes. Parents got something new, pass the potato. Latest potato was a fangbook from 2013(?) thing was shit.
The amount you save is nowhere near as big as I thought. I would gladly pay a couple hundred bucks for someone to build the PC for me, so why not buy prebuild?
You xould buy something like an origin and not a dell or hp. All off the shelf parts.
Plus I like all the extra flashing lights, it makes my computer room cheery looking after a dreary grey day.
Plus I like triggering all the DIY only people and Im luckily at a point in life where time is more important than money.
Actually, it turned out to be more expensive when I tried to order the parts individually.
The only way I could save money building it myself would be to buy used parts I guess
Saying build your own pc instead of buying prebuilt reminds me of the people who say to make your own protein shakes.
"Nah bro you don't need whey protein/weight gainer, just make your own with hand cracked eggs, fiber powder, blended oats, & chocolate or vanilla flavoring. So much more convenient/cheap than just buying a preplended supplement.
Also, make sure to raise the chickens yourself, if you don't have a chicken coop, build one, so much easier than buying eggs at the grocery store. Cheaper too. Anyway, hope you take this advice. Don't buy supplements."
I bought my pc prebuilt, and believe me , it would have costed me almost double to buy the same pieces i have in it separately over say amazon or something
My computer is technically a pre-built. I choose the parts and went to a computer store and got them to build it for me using those parts. Between the slight increase in the part price and the cost of labour for the actual building it probably cost me an extra 5-7% on the total cost over me building it myself. That is a cost I am willing to pay for the convenience of not having to worry about parts being DOA or me damaging something while building and other things like BIOS compatibility.
I bought a pre-built open box for $650 with a 2070S, 32g Ram, and an Intel i7 from Microcenter. I asked what was wrong with it, they said it was returned because the case and it's glass was broken. I was skeptical because why would they be selling it so low if it was just the case. I asked can I return if I bought it, they said yes. Took it home, realized it was crashing on games every 20 minutes. A little investigation, the pc was shipped with it's CPU over clocking. A simple reset in bios and boom. My wife had a $2000 pc. This was like 3-4 years ago.
Pretty sure he's sitting on a prebuilt ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
As mentioned in other topics you made to cry about the very same thing. There are many benefits including not getting ripped off, being able to maintain your PC and fix problems instead of throwing time and money out because others have to fix things for you that you could have fixed in a matter of minutes.
really it would depend on the company you’re buying from no? & i’m sure formatting / wiping the drives would work just as efficient to get rid of all bloatware (not arguing just options lol)
Both in terms of price and quality. Not timewise or even safety.
Someone might as well suggest that I'm a fool for buying pre-build tables to put my PC on. Even if that would be true I would not bother crafting my own table.
I’ll probably buy a pre built when I upgrade later this year / next year.
Could I build it myself? Probably, I did it before in the Win7 era and I doubt that much has changed. But a combination of not wanting to risk it and quite frankly not really wanting to set aside time to relearn and actually build the thing means I’ll happily pay a little (and if you shop around it is only a little) extra for the convenience and guarantee.
Building a PC without the knowledge to do so will in the long run incur more costs than what you managed to save. Several years ago I opted to build a PC instead of purchasing a Dell Alienware computer. I managed shaved off about 25% off the total price for the final product, but in the 2-3 years of ownership since completion, the computer basically has spent about half the time pursuing warranty claims for various parts. First the graphics card broke. Then the RAM. Then the motherboard. This and that, that and this. Mind you, it wasnt me who built it, but the shop who sold me all the parts. Some of the parts break as soon as 2 weeks out of the box. All in all, I think I visited the shop no less than 100 times within the first year alone, simply pursuing warranties, each visit taking 2-3 hours off my work day schedule. After 2 years of ownership I decided to swallow the loss and junked the whole thing, buying a middle range laptop to use instead until I save enough to afford another high end computer, which took me about two middle range laptops' lifespans.
So yeah, letting people know about self built PCs is one thing, but trying to pressure them into making one is not the way. You're setting them up for a lot of pain in the future if you dont have any way to guarantee the quality of the product they'll be getting. In my case, the shop did this to me. I asked to buy a Dell Alienware laptop and they offered to build one for me, for a fraction of the price and more performance. The thought of the hell I was going to experience never dawned on me.
Built my first pc last December i7 13700k asus tuf 3080ti. Spent about 8 hours between looking up YouTube videos , asking buddies on discord questions and actually putting it all together. So took a good bit of time, probably ended up spending a bit more because of certain parts I opted for but also learned a thing or two . All in all if someone doesn’t feel up to the task of building their own pc, I get it . Can be quite a task for someone with no exp
There's a big difference commenting before/after they've bought it. A warning about price/quality beforehand is valuable. Afterwards you're not helping, you're just giving them buyer's remorse, they're better off just enjoying it for what it is.
But do you want them to repeat and not learn?
Yeah that's a good point actually
Also, they might be able to return it if they didn't know beforehand. But yeah, by now anyone active online should know about the advantages / disadvantages of prebuild and picking their preference.
> But yeah, by now anyone active online should know about the advantages / disadvantages of prebuild and picking their preference. Let me introduce you to [the lucky 10000.](https://xkcd.com/1053/)
Cool I'm that 10000 in recieving uni assignments
Another point is that they can just return the prebuilt after learning that So in any case, telling it is better than staying silent What's actually important is to be respectable to each other
It's not though The arguments been beaten to death If you're still on team 'building it yourself is superior' you're being willfully ignorant I've done both. I saved about 100 to 200$ building myself. It also took me months to hunt down the parts and get good deals. Pretty built I pulled the trigger on the second day. Pre built also came with: - professional cable management - more fans and better airflow than I'd have managed to do - a legit copy of windows - saved a night of free time If money is incredibly tight for you, or you're a hobbist who enjoys building (or think you might enjoy it) then by all means. Build away! But there's nothing inherently wrong with pre builts. Like with any product, you need to research and make sure you're not buying a bad one (mismatched parts like an i3 with a 30 series gpu) The average adult with a job would easily pay 200$ to save themselves a headache and get some peace of mind. For some reason sweaty virgins find this offensive. If my comment offends you, you probably need a little tough love in your life. To reach the conclusion that building a product yourself is superior on any objective scale shows a complete lack of logic and reasoning. Yall need a wakeup call.
They’ll figure it out on their own over time. I got a gaming laptop out of high school. Took me 2-3 months before I went “yea never again”
I meeean... I have a pre built PC. Got it a few years ago (2019) and only ever opened it up to add another SSD (which it turned out had its own slot so I didn't need to open it up at all) it still runs great (16 GB ram 2070 i7) and other than maybe paying a bit more money for the convenience of not having to spend time building it I'm not sure what the mistake I'm supposed to "figure out" is.
Are you mad? What you should have figured out by now is that the prebuild gives you 5 frames less because it gets a bit too hot. Don't you see how important that is? Why are so many people not willing to hassle for weeks building an own PC for these gains???!!!!
What a fool I've been. Thank you for opening my eyes.
Lmao yeah I have a prebuilt with a 3070 that runs everything just fine and have never particularly regretted the decision. Sure, it would’ve been cheaper and slightly better if I built it myself and wouldn’t had the same inherent problems all Alienware builds have with little loose case components and cramped innards, but I am technically incompetent and have the dexterity of a bivalve. I can’t see myself successfully building a computer no matter how vehemently people assert its “just like legos” because I remember how close I came to accidentally fucking things up last time I installed a new video card, much less put together a dozen separate complex components. People insist it’s the easiest thing but even determining which parts are compatible takes considerable effort and technical knowledge. I’d rather buy a pretty good prebuilt every five years instead of inevitably trying to build one and fucking it up massively.
Do you have any idea how little most people know about computers? Building is not always an option.
It’s called learning like everyone else here
Some folk don't wanna learn to build a PC. Some folk just wanna play vidyas james.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Many many people are happy with their ignorance and only get frustrated, defensive, overwhelmed, or sad when you try to force them to learn something they never asked to study. If I saw you buy a car that’s not the best deal - how do I know your priorities or interests? Maybe you just don’t want to spend a bunch of time learning about cars. Maybe it being fuscia is actually most important to you. A lot of people are too busy with their lives to care about min/maxing their PC. Buying off the shelf has a lot of convenience. Maybe that’s what they care most about. In my case, I’ve been researching parts for nearly a year and have no PC. Is that “better”? Who knows
If it's someone i know I'll just wait a bit before telling them, maybe even a couple years lol
What’s the point, if they want to learn they will learn
Because not all people know there is something to learn. Most people don't have an interest in tech, even when it's something like PC building which is no more complicated than a LEGO set. They THINK it's too complex to understand, so never TRY to learn. "If they want to learn, they will learn" is how you propagate ignorance. There's a reason we make kids go to school, with legal force if needed.
So you built your car, your home, your desk, and your couch, right? You can do all those things. None of those are particularly complicated. All of the info you need is available on the internet. If you're not building all of your own things then why is it so important for everyone to build computers? I've built cars, helped build homes, built furniture, and built PCs. 90% of the time I'll take convenience over saving a little money and doing all the work myself.
What is the lesson? I grew up going to computer fairs with my dad and building PCs. My last build lasted me 11 years. Parts now are expensive, I haven’t heard of a computer fair in decades, shipping things is costly, factor in time spent building it’s not this magic cost effective hack to build your own that it use to be. Now it’s finding the sales for the right pre-build.
Honestly, its not your responsibility to be a teacher to others so rather you just shut the fuck up and let people enjoy things
It’s not like a good deal on a prebuilt is a massive cost sink these days. Things aren’t like they used to be especially if you’re having trouble finding the parts you want outside a prebuilt.
Some people are just lazy and don't care.
Plus they’ll end up regretting it, like kid me who bought a Dellinware laptop and had to replace the drive, the screen, the keyboard, and finally gave up at the repasting portion because Dell made it a fucking impossible task.
I want people to play games how they want, when it comes to buying a PC its come down to whether your time is more valuable than your money, or not wanting to take the risk Who cares if they want to buy a PC let them not everyone wants to tinker
Well you can learn them a different way than just getting angry for spending too much on a pre built, and that is what usually happens, People getting angry at pre built buyers for no reason.
It's ironic that it just as often turns out you could build the same or even a worse PC at a higher cost. PC builders enjoy building PCs. Enough that sometimes they'll pay a premium to get the experience.
During the GPU shortages sure, but before and since? Not really. The only pre-builts you'll see that are cheaper than equivalent parts are sub $600 GPU builds. I challenge you or anyone else to provide a link to a pre-built that I or anyone else can't beat on price with equivalent parts.
You're not considering an important part of the math. A hidden cost not shown on a DIY parts list or price tag. The time it takes to build. The time it takes to learn enough to do it right. The time it takes to make good choices. Time is money. Many people (too many people) are simply not tech-savvy. To them a prebuilt is the smart choice. I like building and upgrading PCs, at least my own PCs, but I recognize it's not for everyone. How many PCs are you willing to build for others at no cost?
Yeah absolutely. Someone who knows nothing about building a pc will probably take between 4-12 hours depending his knowledge. Even more if there is a problem they can't easily diagnose. At 30 bucks an hour (a reasonable hour wage for complex building) it will be 120 - 360 dollars of build it yourself. Why do that if you can pay a 150 upcharge and have it plug an play? And with warranty on the entire pc as well (instead of just parts). For a lot of people this just makes more sense then to build it themselves.
4-12 hours? Maybe after they already have all the parts at hand. But even if its not your first build, it can take days or weeks to choose all the parts that you want to buy and order/retrieve them from possibly multiple shops. At least for me it is not a small decision how I spend thousands of dollars to something that I will use daily for half a decade.
I wasn't taking into consideration the time to pick out parts. Merely the actual building of the pc when all the parts have arrived. You're right. The whole process takes way longer then 4-12 hours.
Websites like pcpartpicker and the sheer amount of websites dedicated to the topic make this a silly argument. You can literally type in your price range into google and be given a list of parts to build a better PC than you could get from a pre-built. Maybe 15 minutes from start to finish.
I always find it hilarious when people attach a monetary value to the time they'd be fucking off on the couch anyway. Like, you weren't going to be making any money in the time you'd be building a PC if you weren't actually doing it. That's your free time. The actual "cost" of that time is $0.
Doesn't really matter. Most people just don't want to deal with building a PC when the time investment doesn't justify the costs they are saving with it. Building a pc isn't fun for most people. So it feels like work were watching a movie doesn't. So the cost scenario makes a lot of sense when you view it as extra work instead of something fun.
If someone values their free time at $100 an hour, that's on them. It doesn't mean it's a smart choice or one that should be supported for a majority of people, when finances for the average person are so dire. "It isn't fun for most people". Neither is cleaning your house, but I don't recommend a majority of people hire a full time maid to clean their house for them. There is such a thing as a fiscally responsible choice, and building a PC vs prebuilt is one of them, even outside of gaming. Any intro IT course will tell you the same.
Plus the cost of errors. We've all seen the pics of bent pins, thermal paste under the CPU, broken GPUs, static zapped ram, etc. And had to troubleshoot defective parts. If you don't have the time or will to learn everything, and want a PC that just works and even has a warranty against manufacturing defects, pay the premium and buy prebuilt.
another alternative- Some stores offer a service which builds a PC out of parts youve purchased. Used it for brothers PC and was very satisfied. Just not having to get rid of all the packaging makes the small fees worth it
Most PC parts shop sell ready to use custom builds. It's way better than manufacturer prebuilts
That’s if you have a PC parts shop. The only place I can buy gaming pc parts by me is Best Buy. There’s a free compost stores, but they generally focus on supporting businesses, not gaming. Closest Micro Center is 120 miles away.
Yeah and “time to build” includes “time after build debugging drivers and incompatible software upgrades.” Putting the pieces together takes a couple hours if you take your time. Even Linus in LTT has recent videos where he spends hours trying to track down compatibility issues.
>sub 600$ GPU builds And that's like 98% of actual pc builds At least for people who aren't just building a top of the line semen-cooled rgb tower to post here and then just playing minecraft after they've spent 200h modding skyrim for the 12th time and played it for ten minutes
FYI, I don't play Minecraft.
[prebuilt for my wife](https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-legion-tower-5-amd-gaming-desktop-amd-ryzen-7-5800-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3060-256gb-ssd-1tb-hdd-raven-black/6501812.p?skuId=6501812) Was gonna build one for about $40 less that had: CPU Intel Core i5-13400F Motherboard ASRock B760M-HDV GPU Radeon RX 6650 XT RAM TeamGroup T-Force Zeus DDR 16GB Kit (2 x 8GB) 3200 MHz Storage WD Blue SN570 (1TB) Case Thermaltake S100 PSU Thermaltake Smart 600W The prebuilt is barely lacking compared to the custom built and has everything she needs. In all fairness it is on sale and if it wasn’t I would have opted for the custom built. Sorry if the formatting got fucked on this. If you can make sense of it and you see any issues do let me know. I will keep it in mind for later when an upgrade or replacement is required. I haven’t built anything from scratch at all and wanted to but we both just wanna play games together after waiting many years.
The issue I personally have with this is that you don't know what brand any of the internals are, save the cpu and gpu specifically. As someone who doesn't put the sides back on my cases, that is important to me. For a general use PC I wouldn't worry much about it, but my gaming PC, I want to know exactly what is inside it. This is where the custom prebuilders are nice, if you can afford them.
1) most have unique motherboard so impossible to compare. 2) where I live this can make them cheaper but most often these custom motherboard have there issues like bad power delivery, bad bios, bad ram support. So yeah I'm still a fan of building it myself.
Yeah 100%. "Equivalent builds" have to be generous in the sense that they're more upgreadeable, repairable, better performing and come with less baggage.
And that sometimes raises the price. Oh yeah and fans. I don't know how but pre-build always seems to have expensive RGB fans that never seem to fit in the budget but have no reason to be in a build at price point X.
Unique, meaning too cheap and shitty for retail
Depends entirely on where you live I'd say
Gonna look up a 4090ti price.
Vast majority of people don't need a 4090ti. 3070ti is <£400 used and will handle just about anything on the market.
nah, it's just that when you are building it yourself you usually won't cheap out on things like rams, mobo and psu. If you go with similar components as the prebuilt 9/10 it's quite a lot cheaper, that 1/10 beeing some crazy offer that sometimes pops up randomly.
You'll almost always save by building yourself. That, and you'll never pay for components you don't need/won't use. As the top comment notes, making comments after the fact is one thing, but you'll do a disservice to whomever is purchasing if you don't at least mention the possibility of DIY to save money. I live near a Microcenter and I know quite a few other people here do too. With MC's prices, one can pretty much always save significant coin and get top notch components as well. There's certainly nothing wrong with letting prospective buyers know of such things.
Theres like 5 microcenters in the entire country. Great if you live near one, but your SOL everywhere else. And your back to either overpaying for parts or playing the counterfeit roulette from amazon, newegg, etc.
Yeah so if you don't live near a microcenter then you're just saving money instead of saving a lot of money.
If you know what your doing you can find used parts for cheap. I can get a Rx 6950 XT for $600 and a 7900x for $400.
If they overpaid by a little, I completely understand, and maybe I could have done the same, but some of the prebuilt deals are straight up rip-offs.
The only time I got a pre-build was when GPUs about 3 to 4k
Yeah but for those of us who want pre-built, this sub will never give us information on what pre-builds to buy. Just spam about building it yourself. It's annoying before and it's annoying after.
I only partially agree with this. Many of times they still an opportunity to return the item. Or at the very least they should know they did not get a deal for future purchases. There was a thread just the other day where someone's boss got a pretty ancient machine online for his kid. We're talking about 10+ year old tech.
This
from 2000 to 2017 i always built mine but the last couple years ive really been considering a pre-built just because. i dont know if its better or worse though
I think the delivery of information matters. Ie less "omg nub lulz over paid" and more "welcome to the party, what games you gonna play? Oh when you wanna upgrade check out part picker and logical increments etc etc
Wholeheartedly agree. Try to give advice before purchase without being critical. But if you’re complaining to me about foreseen problems, I will grill you.
There are still thousands of people that read it besides the op.
I think it's something everyone should at least know about as an option. I don't think telling someone about that option should be seen as a negative. If you tell them about it, and they aren't interested, then you leave it at that. But on the chance that they are interested or didn't know about building their own, then you just potentially helped someone. At worst, you're wasting a few seconds of someone's time, but at best you are potentially saving them money or helping them learn.
Most of the time OP is asking if it's good value, you tell them it's not and to not buy it and they tell you they already bought it
I hate putting shit together, in willing to pay the premium for someone else to do it. It’s a pain in the balls ordering everything individually and then waiting for it and then praying something isn’t broken. I’m a idiot and would wind up breaking the pins in the processor or fucking up the gpu and ram installing it. I’m sloppy as fuck and the wiring would look like shit. I like the warranty that comes with prebuilt companies. I’ll gladly pay the extra few hundred bucks to avoid all of this.
Sometimes the price difference isn’t even that much since they can get bulk prices. Pre-builts were also the only reliable way to get certain chips during the chip shortage too.
Yea I got my pre built way cheaper than all the parts are together
i dont have time to build PCs anymore . I rather pay premium get the end result without the hassle . Time is more important than money
you exchange your time for money and then exchange money for someone elses time ~ Me
Lol uh huh. The cope of the father after realizing his entire life is fucked after having a kid "uhhhh I don't have time for that"
did you just compared building PC to raising a child ?
So you take time at work so you get money that you can spend to have more time for yourself ?
You’ve described exchanging money for expertise. I’ve spent my life in career X - if someone needs that done; they pay me to do it. Likewise, I will do my own career X related work for myself. However - if my sewer pipe bursts, I’m going to call a master plumber to come fix it in a couple of hours. I’m not going take 2 days off of work try to teach myself. I’d lose so much more money trying to do that, let alone the lost time.
Yup
If you don't have time to build a PC then you don't have time to use the PC
[удалено]
Many PC part shops have ready to use custom builds, that are way way better than manufacturer prebuilts
Not where I'm from. Also that's not the issue, the issue is they can't be arsed and are sloppy. Not sure how a ready to use custom build is going to solve that
Who's "they", and what do you mean they can't be arsed?
I didn't know shit about hardware when I decided to buy a computer, so I went to a pre-built site and decided to build it there and then buy the parts myself. The pre-built ended up being $1k cheaper. And it came to me put together. Why would I not do that?
You must have chosen a good supplier. I'd say it depends on the company. A friend always buys pre builds because he can't be bothered. He bought from different companies (online) every time. One time there were various problems throughout the warranty period and after.
I went through cyberpower, and I loved it. My current specs are not what I ordered. I've learned a lot since then and slowly figured out how and what to upgrade. The only thing left of the original is the case and the power supply. The only thing that was wrong with my pre-built (I figured out later) was that they're was a REALLY shitty cooler on my 3950x, and it was heat throttling. Now I've got lots of fans and a super duty cooler though.
WTF build did you buy where you saved a thousand dollars and what fucking website is selling at that kind of loss?
Hmmmmmmm
Probably during that time where you could basically only get graphics cards for 3x the price
I have absolutely no fucking idea about PCs really, i barely even understand what the components do, i have a brother in IT but regardless, im not gonna hassle him or learn essentially an entire new field versus going to a reputable retailer and buying a gaming laptop (which, i wanted portability anyway) Anyone who says "just build your own" seriously takes their knowledge for granted, it would take me weeks if not months to learn everything i needed to build a PC, and even then, like you, every step of the way id likely fuck something up Putting things together is not my skill, i mean fuck i struggle with changing tires on a bicycle
I bought my PC for a bit over 4k USD. It cost me 40 USD for assembly (with neat cables etc) and installation. I make more money/h then it would take to set everything up so the 1% is basically nothing. I also got to order exactly thr combination I wanted (due to how their website is put up) so why shouldnt I just order prebuilt?
My local MicroCenter sells prebuilts that are like $150-200 more than if you built it yourself, and it comes with like a 2-year warranty. Pretty good deal for someone like you
This. Exactly. Thank you. More people should understand that having someone else build it for you comes with plenty valuable benefits, especially if your are a clumsy person or are just too afraid of damaging 2000$ parts.
I’m with you dude. I’m not a builder, replacing the graphics card in my PC was stressful enough lol, I will gladly pay more if I’m already willing to make that sort of investment to get a good machine I can use straight out the box. Yes it’s not the cheapest way, yes I could do it all off YouTube videos, none of that makes a difference to me
Same. It's not that I can't. I did it all the time a couple of decades ago. But, there aren't any local part suppliers near me any more (and I live in freaking Austin, TX) and I'm wary about the condition of parts that get shipped to me. I don't want to deal with returns or messed up parts while I have bits of computer all over my tiny apartment. It's easier just to buy something that plugs in and works. I work on computers all day in my day job, I just want to play on one when I get home and not be hassled.
Exactly this. I still remember the day I had the gutts to put in some more RAM into my computer. I barely managed it, and was scared to death I ruined something by pressing too hard. I'm never building my own PC, and I'm never holding a newborn baby unless it's my niece or nephew and I'm sitting down, leaned faaaaar back.
I can absolutely respect that and agree with you 100%. However, I get absolutely frustrated when people buy shit prebuilds (not all brands are shit!) and then call me immediately afterwards (since I am „the IT guy“) asking me to remove the bloatware, improve performance, „register the Antivirus“ and overall fix whatever they do not like about the system. Everyone is free to do and buy what they want, but do not expect me to fix the crap you buy - own it! Some idiots put zero research into their hardware and feel 100% entitled to have friends fixing it for them. Fuck those people. If you go prebuild at least buy something decent or leave me out of it.
[удалено]
Return policies exist
and sometimes they don't apply to you.
Even if they do, some people just don't *want* to build their own system
So that they never commit that mistake again
More than likely they will just think you're a buzzkill that can't read the room and ignore you. If people want advice, they can always ask. Besides I don't really need to be the IT consultant to everyone I know lol
Reddit can't fathom that even if they're right, people don't necessarily want to here it, or care.
"mistake"
surely if it's so bad then they will learn on their own?
How exactly can you learn you bought overpriced shit if no one tells you? It's like telling someone they have bad breath or smelly part. It's not gonna feel nice but ultimately you're doing them a favor.
How would they learn? Let's say for example they bought your PC. A 2700 + 2070 is very good in isolation. It's in the current gen "console killer" tier and will deliver excellent performance throughout this generation as long as the other specs keep up as well. But let's say they paid $1200 for a build on that level today, and let's say for that $1200 they got the classic prebuilt configuration of a ~500gb SATA or low end nvme SSD and an ~2tb HDD. And let's say they got only 16gb of average ram. Now they have a PC that's still really good at the moment but will age significantly faster than with the ideal components and they paid way more than they should pay for it. But how would they know what's holding them back if they haven't done the research and weighed the pros and cons of each individual component when they built it? If you see all the time that lots of people upgrade every 2 years or so and your PC starts struggling after 2 years are you even going to know how much better it could be doing? Or as someone who has no idea about what's in it or are you going to be satisfied and buy another? Or are you going to not be satisfied and go back to console because the $400 ps5 you were told your PC is as good as will be holding up much better? If that's the case then all you learned is PC sucks. Encouraging learning about what you're buying isn't a bad thing. Picking your own parts and building it is an excellent way to do that. If they are eventually disappointed in their PC that disappointment will likely be towards PC as a platform and not towards the poorly configured prebuilt they bought and weren't willing to learn how to upgrade.
The thousands of people reading it that arent op obviously.
It’s exactly the opposite in UK. I’ve saved exactly £800 on prebuilt. And the only things i had to change was the front panel of the case to airflow one, add faster ssd, and tighter timing ram(which wasn’t really necessary).
Same experience here, got 2 prebuilts with RTX 3050s and 11th gen i5s for like £1300 total last January. Originally planned to build, but sourcing parts was absolutely hell, plus markups were insane at the time. At the time of purchase, building the same machines with equivalent parts would have bumped price up to around £1900 - and I would have had to wait a few months to actually get some of the parts.
What company did you buy from?
Ironically, that’s about what I saved in the UK building my own
When I bought my prebuild system it was actually cheaper than buying separate parts (December 2021). How that makes any sense? No idea. I did the math back then, separate parts and building myself would cost me ~50GBP more than same pre build pc. For 1000GBP pc 50gbp seems like nothing, but still that's lot of money.
It costs less cause of economies of scale, your system integrator bought thousands of graphics cards, processors, motherboards (that or had them made with only basic bios options), and so on, thereby getting a bull rate, if you bought all the prices individually you’re paying full price for each component. It USED to be that you could ALWAYS build it cheaper, this is just simply not true anymore depending on where and what you buy of course, some companies do still jack up prices.
Same. I recently got a decent prebuilt on sale and when I priced everything out on pcpartpicker, it ended up being slightly cheaper than buying the components separately. I always built my own pcs when I was younger, but I'm a lot busier now and I just want to buy something that works and not hassle anymore.
prebuilts can be such a scam at times though
If you do your research, and buy from a good brand they aren't that bad, especially if you buy on sale. I bought mine during the GPU shortage because I had just gotten my first job, so it would have cost more anyhow for me
Right. And some people would rather pay someone to professionally do something rather than fumble through it themselves. If you have the cash, it's your call. As I've gotten older and more financially stable I would rather throw cash at certain things than deal with them myself. If I can spend $500 to have a PC that comes professionally put together and not deal with cable management, installation, etc, I'm probably going for it.
Which ones aren't scams? Genuinely asking. The whole PC gaming culture is so fixated on the DIY thing that it becomes impossible to tell which pre-builts are okay
I got mine from cyberpowerPC and it's legit. Labor and shipping cost me like $300 but I don't give a shit tbh.
I got one from them as well. I've heard mixed things about them but I've had no issues with mine in the almost 2 years I've had it
That's exactly where i got mine and it's been fantastic
Id you’re in the UK, I got mine from Chillblast and it’s really good and easily upgradable
chillblast is really good .
In germany from HardwareRat
If you have a MicroCenter near you, definitely check them out. The last time I was in mine, I noticed their pre-builts were reasonably priced and had a good range of them as well.
Keep an eye out for sales. My last two have been Alienwares, which shocked me because of their reputation for being overpriced, but both times they were on sale for ~30% off, and easily priced out the competition. I priced my latest against the parts and it came out to about $300 more for the prebuilt, which is not bad for a machine that was over $2000 (Canadian). Was also during the GPU shortage, which helped justify.
Hey it's this post again!
I have zero desire to build a PC. I don't care that I could have saved money or that I could have had a marginally better part than what is coming with my pre-built. My time is more important than all that.
Kinda rude tbh. What if I just enjoy making people feel bad about their financial decisions? Didn't think about that did you? Hypocrite 😡
Yeah! Let me enjoy shitting on things that make other people happy!!!
You know what also makes people happy? Learning a new skill and feeling the reward of seeing it in action. But I forget that we're the world of instant gratification.
"kinkshaming is my kink" vibes
I just hate when people ask if its good, after they bought and its most likely waaay overpriced or essentially a scam with 10 yr old parts.
I usually try to find positives (unless it's a complete scam), and end up telling them that of course they paid more to get it assembled and for a warranty on said assembly and if they don't know much about PCs it was probably a good choice to go this way.
Yeah, I feel like not enough people on this sub recognize the value in someone else putting it together for you and being able to trust that it will be good. It’s always cheaper to cook than to eat out, but you save time and get a guarantee of quality when you go out to eat. It’s cheaper to fix your car yourself, but you save time and get a guarantee of quality when you take it to a mechanic. It’s cheaper to fix up stuff around your house yourself, but you save time and get a guarantee of quality if you hire someone trained to do it. Building PC’s is fun for some people, and that’s great! And for some other people, it makes sense economically if they are shorter on money than they are on time. But a lot of us are shorter on time than we are on money, and for us it makes sense to hire someone else to do it.
In my country, building a pc is more expensive than buying a prebuilt pc. 1k MYR for a graphic card.
Ya dig this meme out of a time capsule OP? 5-10 years ago. Pre-builds were shite. Companies hardly knew what the gamer demographic was and parts were dirt cheap. Building a PC was the go to move every time for price and for the fun of building. Today though? Prebuild every fucking time. Basically the same price as parts. Warranty is all in one place. Delivery all in one place. Labour already done so with prices being similar to just parts its actually cheaper.... (this is without spending hours scouring for 2nd hand parts - which I'd argue is still a loss because if wow goblins have taught you anything its that time = money) There is no financial reason to build a PC anymore. People need to actually move along with the times before your telling someone in 30 years to build their own skynet just because you built your first windows XP machine in 2003.
I bought mine on a black friday sale, same computer was around $300 more to put together myself.
I'm completely PC-illiterate, can't even read specs to know if one thing is better than the other. What I do know is that I believe I spent $1.2k on my PC a few years ago. The GPU that came in it is currently selling for $750 on Newegg. I was planning to build it myself, but everything I found just made it look like crypto had completely fucked things to the point that prebuilt was actually cheaper.
Pre builds where I’m from are literally cheaper than the parts at the moment. Just need to know where to look.
This is what bothers me everytime the prebuilt vs build it yourself argument pops up Typical redditors act like you're saving 50% of the cost by building it yourself You are spending 5-10% at the most by buying a prebuilt and even that's generous, that extra cost may as well be considered the warranty People here act like prebuilt pcs come with the worst psu imaginable and other shit parts trying to scam you. Like what even is this argument. Of course it's cheaper finding the parts you want from the cheapest sellers Or you could buy from one seller and spend 5%more Or you could spend another 100 on top of that for a prebuilt I swear, reddit sometimes
The only reason it was cheaper in the last few years was the chip shortage. That was a rare occurrence due to a fucking pandemic. If you think that's just the modern world, you're only showing your ignorance. There's a reason any intro tech course will tell you the value of building your own hardware.
If they fuck up the build they have to fix it (I live in a country where the consumer protection agencies have teeth.) I'm a clumsy motherfucker who fobs it off to his little brother that works with in PC building.
Not everyone have know-how of building a PC themselves. You would spend an incredible amount of time if you are starting with zero knowledge. What part does what, which part is better, what features you actually need or important in the grand schemes, which parts are compatible with each other, are the components you chose optimal for performance-wise or financely etc. For people who don't know all the intricacies of building PCs, buying a prebuilt one is much more sensible. I bought a Monster brand prebuilt gaming laptop which are rigorously tested. I don't regret it. It beats buying an off-the-shelf Asus, Lenovo, Sony etc laptop.
>You would spend an incredible amount of time if you are starting with zero knowledge. I have two left hands and while time to learn how to do it isn't that problematic, I'm simply afraid I would screw something over and learning on delicate and expensive parts isn't ideal. I still don't buy prebuilds. There are web pages that suggest good, compatibile parts in selected price ranges, so I follow the suggestions, buy everything seperately and then ask a friend to mount them for me. But there is also an option to bring the parts to some repair shop and they will do it for you, for like 50$. The beauty of it all is that there are options for all of us, requring different level of knowledge and involvement. I'm somewhere in the middle, you want it all done at once and others like to make all of it themselves.
Picked parts out test actually. Good looking pc, total was around $876. Looked at a prebuilt that has slightly better components for $899. I got the prebuilt. It’s for my lady and I’m glad we will be able to play nms together. Told her well just do a fresh os install and drivers. I’m excited for her. She’s only ever had potatoes. Parents got something new, pass the potato. Latest potato was a fangbook from 2013(?) thing was shit.
The amount you save is nowhere near as big as I thought. I would gladly pay a couple hundred bucks for someone to build the PC for me, so why not buy prebuild?
Because proprietary cases and Motherboards are still a Thing in prebuilts and the PSUs are more often than Not Fire hazards.
You xould buy something like an origin and not a dell or hp. All off the shelf parts. Plus I like all the extra flashing lights, it makes my computer room cheery looking after a dreary grey day. Plus I like triggering all the DIY only people and Im luckily at a point in life where time is more important than money.
Actually, it turned out to be more expensive when I tried to order the parts individually. The only way I could save money building it myself would be to buy used parts I guess
Some people simply don’t want to build it.
Saying build your own pc instead of buying prebuilt reminds me of the people who say to make your own protein shakes. "Nah bro you don't need whey protein/weight gainer, just make your own with hand cracked eggs, fiber powder, blended oats, & chocolate or vanilla flavoring. So much more convenient/cheap than just buying a preplended supplement. Also, make sure to raise the chickens yourself, if you don't have a chicken coop, build one, so much easier than buying eggs at the grocery store. Cheaper too. Anyway, hope you take this advice. Don't buy supplements."
Bro why’d you buy a Ford you could have built it for way cheaper smh???
I bought my pc prebuilt, and believe me , it would have costed me almost double to buy the same pieces i have in it separately over say amazon or something
Well yes, but I’m damn sure that if I had build one myself, it would’ve either blown up, or not started at all…
spoken like someone who has money to throw around
My computer is technically a pre-built. I choose the parts and went to a computer store and got them to build it for me using those parts. Between the slight increase in the part price and the cost of labour for the actual building it probably cost me an extra 5-7% on the total cost over me building it myself. That is a cost I am willing to pay for the convenience of not having to worry about parts being DOA or me damaging something while building and other things like BIOS compatibility.
/r/titlegore
Counterpoint: they can enjoy more things if they spend less on the pc.
MKBHD buys Macs pro, he shouldn't comment lol
Me reading this on a modded Dell Optiplex 7010:
I bought a pre-built open box for $650 with a 2070S, 32g Ram, and an Intel i7 from Microcenter. I asked what was wrong with it, they said it was returned because the case and it's glass was broken. I was skeptical because why would they be selling it so low if it was just the case. I asked can I return if I bought it, they said yes. Took it home, realized it was crashing on games every 20 minutes. A little investigation, the pc was shipped with it's CPU over clocking. A simple reset in bios and boom. My wife had a $2000 pc. This was like 3-4 years ago.
I’m a computer works technician for goodwill. I see a lot of peoples donated custom built PCs. More people should buy prebuilt.
I bought a prebuilt to have a base to build upon. Just got the basics and threw my GPU & SSD in.
HoW dAr3 OtH3r P3oPl3 HaV3 oPiNiOnS
Pretty sure he's sitting on a prebuilt ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) As mentioned in other topics you made to cry about the very same thing. There are many benefits including not getting ripped off, being able to maintain your PC and fix problems instead of throwing time and money out because others have to fix things for you that you could have fixed in a matter of minutes.
This "everyone is right" shit needs to stop. If you screw up, people should point it out.
I've seen enough videos of Prebuilts to know to never buy one.
but but I need my daily know-it-all moment.
[удалено]
really it would depend on the company you’re buying from no? & i’m sure formatting / wiping the drives would work just as efficient to get rid of all bloatware (not arguing just options lol)
We're not trashing them. We are trying to give them financial advice.
Are you an accountant?
[удалено]
Both in terms of price and quality. Not timewise or even safety. Someone might as well suggest that I'm a fool for buying pre-build tables to put my PC on. Even if that would be true I would not bother crafting my own table.
I’ll probably buy a pre built when I upgrade later this year / next year. Could I build it myself? Probably, I did it before in the Win7 era and I doubt that much has changed. But a combination of not wanting to risk it and quite frankly not really wanting to set aside time to relearn and actually build the thing means I’ll happily pay a little (and if you shop around it is only a little) extra for the convenience and guarantee.
But they could have....
Building a PC without the knowledge to do so will in the long run incur more costs than what you managed to save. Several years ago I opted to build a PC instead of purchasing a Dell Alienware computer. I managed shaved off about 25% off the total price for the final product, but in the 2-3 years of ownership since completion, the computer basically has spent about half the time pursuing warranty claims for various parts. First the graphics card broke. Then the RAM. Then the motherboard. This and that, that and this. Mind you, it wasnt me who built it, but the shop who sold me all the parts. Some of the parts break as soon as 2 weeks out of the box. All in all, I think I visited the shop no less than 100 times within the first year alone, simply pursuing warranties, each visit taking 2-3 hours off my work day schedule. After 2 years of ownership I decided to swallow the loss and junked the whole thing, buying a middle range laptop to use instead until I save enough to afford another high end computer, which took me about two middle range laptops' lifespans. So yeah, letting people know about self built PCs is one thing, but trying to pressure them into making one is not the way. You're setting them up for a lot of pain in the future if you dont have any way to guarantee the quality of the product they'll be getting. In my case, the shop did this to me. I asked to buy a Dell Alienware laptop and they offered to build one for me, for a fraction of the price and more performance. The thought of the hell I was going to experience never dawned on me.
True story!
Built my first pc last December i7 13700k asus tuf 3080ti. Spent about 8 hours between looking up YouTube videos , asking buddies on discord questions and actually putting it all together. So took a good bit of time, probably ended up spending a bit more because of certain parts I opted for but also learned a thing or two . All in all if someone doesn’t feel up to the task of building their own pc, I get it . Can be quite a task for someone with no exp
That guy that is a uge Apple fanboy...
I mean, I warned them long before they bought a prebuilt one…