Desktops forum: build it yourself?

Buy one built. Building is for the tinkerer, and I've built four. By the time I finish, I could have bought one already built, comparably equipped, cheaper. I built mine for fun. Companies can buy the components cheaper than you or I. Buy a good one and customize it.

but you'll wind up with a pc that has exactly what you want and has better expandibility. that $500 walmart pc probably doesn't have a graphics slot or has a dinky power supply that couldn't handle a decent graphics card. the ram is probably slow and split between 2 slots so you'll probably be better off just tossing it if you add more memory.

your car analogy is bang on. just be aware that you can't build a pc that's cheaper than the $500 special. but you can build one that's faster/better than the $1000 system for about the same price.

I always build my own PCs and ones for my family and friends. The PC at Walmart or Sam's won't have all the bells and whistles. Furthermore, A lot of OEM pc's have onboard video which is ok for office, but not watching dvd's or gaming. Most of the cheaper end computers can have very cheap motherboards, power supplies can be lacking, as can memory, video cards, hard drives and sound cards. Best way to tell is go to Circuit City or Best Buy and look at that computer for $1500-1900 - you could probably build it for 1/3 the cost. When you build your own, you ensure you get ALL quality components, rather than the cheapest motherboard the manufacturer's could find. Remember, you get what you pay for. The last system I built was am AMD dual core with 2 gig of Corsair ram, Gigabyte motherboard, pci express video card with 512 mg ram, ATX case, 300 gb SATA hard drive, 550 watt power supply, 22" Samsung lcd dvi monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse, and Samsung dvd drives - the complete system cost me about $1200. Sounds like a lot, but it puts those in the store to shame...this thing smokes and easily upgradeable for the future (who would want to one asks eh?) The friend I built it for is very happy and he saved about $400.00 over the closest store bought system (and I used ALL name brand quality components). Remember, if you build it yourself, YOU can customize it anyway you want.

Build it yourself.

I've found Newegg.com to be *by far* the best prices and selection. TigerDirect.com isn't bad either, but harder to search...happy shopping!

I wouldn't buy a PC as it's bound to come with Windows unless you buy a Dell with Ubuntu from an American or US outlet as they are not available anywhere else. I'd rather pay more and get exactly what I want with the OS I want as most PC's are limited as to type of ram, amount of ram, no choice in motherboards or bios. If I were you, I'd buy a premium motherboard, 650 watt power supply, 4 gbs of ram, a good graphics board able to handle whatever you intend to throw at it, then buy the next higher model for good measure. I'd make sure you get a good box to set it in, then buy the drives you want, at the price and size you can live with. Being stupid will cost you more so don't buy into any of those rebate offers as most are scammers and the rest you could live without. Shop for the lowest price without any rebates as you won't likely see any anyway. All your related hardware, shop for each a piece at a time until you get what you want at the lowest price but don't buy junk as it will cost you more in the end and you won't be happy. Personally, I'd start with Asus, Enermax, Kingston, Nvidia, LG DVD drives, Zalman, Maxtor diamondmax hard drives, Logitech gaming high end mouse and a good solid keyboard like Logitech but unless you have a real need, stay with the wired hardware as wireless cost more, require batteries and may not stay the distance for as long as wired. If you press me for a wireless mouse, then I'd have to say go with Logitech's VX mouse as it takes a single AA battery and lasts for quite a few weeks and feels and works like no other mouse I've owned. Good for both laptops or desktops like mine. Make shopping for each item a task upon itself, don't shop too fast or for more than one item at a time as you will lose your focus and cave in to buy it at a higher price.

>>>I am looking into upgrading my pc looking for a dual core system and be able to run todays games well it doesnt have to be cutting edge but still needs to look good and not be really expensive.

When you say todays games what did you have in mind? Most games today are Direct X 9. These play just fine on most lower cost graphic cards. SOME games and more Future games are going to be Direct X 10. The only way to play these games is on Vista OS and have a Dirext X 10 Graphic Card.

Now most of the future games well probably be both Direct X 9 and 10 (for about a year). It really depends on the developer. This is why you need to know what kind of games you are going to be playing.

>>>I am all for building stuff its pretty fun but is it worth it? I see dual core pc's at walmart for around 500bux would it be more cost effective to buy one of these and add a pretty good video card to it and some more RAM, rather than buying everything and putting it together.

Is it worth it? That really depends on a lot of little things. Probably most is time. Do you have time to build a computer yourself? Do you have time to trouble shoot it your self (sense you are building it, there really isnt any Tech support to call when things go wrong, unless its a certain part).
But you have to realize the computers you find in the store are made to be cheap. They are trying to cut corners where ever they can to bring the cost down. Like others said, the computer in walmart well probably have 512 of Ram, but what Speed of Ram, How many PCI slots does it have? Does it have a PCI Express x16 or just x4 and x1? This is one of the reason I like to build a computer is because I have complete Control over what goes into it. I pick the parts, and then when I need to upgrade I know what my computer can do because I built it that way.

>>>>I relate it to cars yes i could spend 125 grand on a porsche turbo if i had the money or I could buy a new 30grand mustang and throw some nitrous and a supercharger on it that costs 5grand roughly you may give up some looks or some cornering ability but have roughly the same performance for alot less money.

Yes you could, but the different really comes down to the quality of the parts. Yes your mustang well run, and probably good enough for what you need. But what if in a year you come to realize that your Mustang had a cheaper batter, or a older model spark plugs(sorry Im more into computers then cars).

The point is you get what you pay for. When you buy a Dell at Walmart you are going to get some good parts, but you are also going to get some lower quality parts.

I have offered some suggestions to another user a couple of months back about building a computer (copy and paste)
http://my.cnet.com/5208-6142_102-0.html?forumID=68&threadID=246227&messageID=2481542&tag=mcnt#2481542

To me it really comes down to Time. Do you have the time to build what you want and troubleshoot it if things go wrong. If you buy a dell you just call up dell and they walk you through the process(which still takes time).

Two stories.
My brother kind of out of the blue bought some e-marchine computer for School work. With windows XP and only 256 of RAM at the time it wasnt to bad for just typing up a word document. But it didnt take long that my brother was wondering why this takes so long to load, or why cant I play this game. I had to tell him his computer wasnt build for that. It was build to be a cheap computer.
After just over 3 years the computer died (not sure if it was power supply or Motherboard). So I ended up building him a computer for around $500 that could do video editing. I probably should have had him spend a little bit more but now they have a computer build for what they plan to use it for.

Second story.
I plan on building a computer in a month for myself. Comparing the same parts with a dell computer I probably well save close to a $1000 building it myself. And I get to buy a cool computer case (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article741-page1.html)


I good place to find deals on Computer parts is

www.newegg.com

www.tigerdirect.com

www.frys.com

http://techdeals.net/

I just ordered The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for PC before I realized that my PC may not be up for the job. I looked at the computer requirements for Oblivion on their web site http://www.elderscrolls.com/games/oblivion_faq.htm then went to http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest and sure enough my computer does not have the RAM (I have 447.4 MB) or Video Card (I have NVIDIA GeForce4 MX Integrated GPU) it recommends. It said the CPU (AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3200+) was O.K. but I feel like I need to get the latest and greatest (the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 6000+ looks nice). I also read somewhere that I cant upgrade my Compaq because some issue with the built in PSU. RAM isnt really the issue for me, its the video card...there are so many and the only thing I know what to look for is one that has AGP. So my question is: Should I get rid of my good 'ol Compaq for a custom computer or should I and could I upgrade it?