How much will i save building my own

[nickfrp]

How much would i roughly save in building my own PC.

i was checking out a Dell Pc for £670


1 Q, i want to have a legit copy of Vista. how much will that set me back?

2 Q, if your board. can you build me a PC i need a monitor as well. ive been out of the computer world for a few years.. the last processor i bough was a top of the range 800Mhz intel lol

[ThePassenger]

To be honest, I'm not sure you will save anything. Personally, there is no way I could build and sell a PC + Monitor for the prices Dell advertise their cheapest machines at, however I can probably beat the prices they charge for a generic midrange/high end system though. For the most part though, savings are possible (the real price of RAM is not what Dell charge for 'upgrades' to their base unit for example) however all the running around finding the best place (reputation) with the best price will take time.... how much is your time worth?

Vista... it is possible to get Vista quite cheap. You'll need to check over the requirements to get an OEM version and then buy the necessary parts to meet these requirements from a single supplier who also sells Vista OEM editions. Vista Pro OEM seems to have an RRP of £80ish at Scan.co.uk.

[smiler.]

Sarah is right. The big boys like Dell buy components for peanuts based on volume. The only reason to build your own would be to get the exact spec you want (and if like me, knowing exactly what goes inside). It's not a quick job though.

And 'scan.co.uk' can supply most of the kiy you'll need. If you want to but OEM software from them, you have to buy a HDD at the same time.

Good luck.

[nickfrp]

doh... hmm its eith Mesh or Dell now then

[nickfrp]

doh... hmm its eith Mesh or Dell now then

[ThePassenger]

nickfrp said:

doh... hmm its eith Mesh or Dell now then

Generic box shifter or Generic box shifter I've seen Dell's and Mesh machines that will not die... I've also seen both companies product "Friday afternooners" as it were. Best advice is to go with which ever company provides the case you like the look of and tack on a nice warranty package.

[road2ruin]

I would have to disagree slighlty. Whilst Dell et all can knock a PC out for 3 shilling happeny the quality is often appalling and they always smuggle a few crap items in while blinding you with good ones. £600.00 for a Intel Core2 Duo for example with 1GB ram and oh yeah we've given you a radeon x1300 graphics card coz its great. The cases are often poor quality and the room for upgradeabilty is low. Also you dont normally get a DVD with the O/s on it just a partitioned hard drive so it can cause problems. Computers are not hard to build and there are plenty of sites offering advice and you could save a small sum. Better still though you will get a better quality piece of kit and exactly what you want/can afford. The big downside however is that with all the parts put together what do you do when it doesnt work! Lots of trawling around looking for the part thats not working properly can cost you your sanity.

[smiler.]

road2ruin said:

I would have to disagree slighlty. Whilst Dell et all can knock a PC out for 3 shilling happeny the quality is often appalling and they always smuggle a few crap items in while blinding you with good ones. £600.00 for a Intel Core2 Duo for example with 1GB ram and oh yeah we've given you a radeon x1300 graphics card coz its great. The cases are often poor quality and the room for upgradeabilty is low. Also you dont normally get a DVD with the O/s on it just a partitioned hard drive so it can cause problems. Computers are not hard to build and there are plenty of sites offering advice and you could save a small sum. Better still though you will get a better quality piece of kit and exactly what you want/can afford. The big downside however is that with all the parts put together what do you do when it doesnt work! Lots of trawling around looking for the part thats not working properly can cost you your sanity.

Absolutely. I would never buy a volume built PC again, I'll make my own but could never match the cost of a Dell. But then I tend build to a high performance spec to suit the applications I run. Scan offer a bespoke build service but I have not used this to date. My last PC was built just under a year ago & I don't really need to improve upon its performance. And I had some major problems with the RAID drivers vs applications, which adds to my desire to leave well alone.

[tigger1]

Depends how much you were planning on paying for the system!

For a mid-range system, as stated, you can save a little -but once you factor in £20 an hour for your time, and the "warranty issues" with DIY...

Personally I build my own, for the fun as much as anything else, but if you're not that way inclined...
If nothing else, have a look at buying "sets" from places like mesh - so that they'll have looked at compatability.

[ThePassenger]

road2ruin said:

I would have to disagree slighlty. Whilst Dell et all can knock a PC out for 3 shilling happeny the quality is often appalling and they always smuggle a few crap items in while blinding you with good ones. £600.00 for a Intel Core2 Duo for example with 1GB ram and oh yeah we've given you a radeon x1300 graphics card coz its great. The cases are often poor quality and the room for upgradeabilty is low. Also you dont normally get a DVD with the O/s on it just a partitioned hard drive so it can cause problems. Computers are not hard to build and there are plenty of sites offering advice and you could save a small sum. Better still though you will get a better quality piece of kit and exactly what you want/can afford. The big downside however is that with all the parts put together what do you do when it doesnt work! Lots of trawling around looking for the part thats not working properly can cost you your sanity.

Having said that though r2r, someone buying a basic base unit isn't going to be too fussed with an x1300. It's a 3D accelerator, it's Vista compatible, it'll play some fairly common games that aren't all that demanding (Sims2, Civ4, SimCity 4, etc) in terms of GPU requirement. Future upgrades are something of a issue regardless, I've a AMD64 3400 mobo + chip kicking around, problem is Socket 745 and has zero upgrade path. I suspect, all those who brought AGP 8x mobo's just as PCI-E appeared are kicking themselves.

A lot of Dell's chassis for the desktops come from Antec's parent company, their motherboards are Asus & Gigabyte and the modern ones seem to have Crucial branded memory (ATi and Nvidia graphics, Maxtor and Seagate HDD's)... of course it's usually bottom of the range no frills stuff, but on pure brand names they aren't that bad. They just punt so many boxes out the door that statistically some of them have to go wrong.

However, one OEM (or rebadger) does seem OKish, Novatech, they're local to me and I've dealt with a few of their laptops (Mitac's) several 'upgrade bundles' and a few of their ready to roll systems. The cheap stuff is all Foxconn parts (at least it's not bloody PC Chips!) but they haven't missed a beat, seem reasonable on price too.