Price comparison with bottom of barrel Dell - still cheaper
Jan 19th, 2008 by Admin
On my why build your own page, a couple people mentioned that building your own computer was only cheaper if the computer was a high end machine, or had add ons. This simply isn’t true. In order to prove it, I did the same thing I did above with the cheapest machine available on dell.com, the Dell Inspiron 531 for $349.
Specs of the Dell inspiron
- 1 GB of ram
- 250 GB Hard Drive
- 48X CD-R DVD drive
- AMD Sempron 3600+
- Keyboard & Mouse
Price= $349
Building it yourself
- WINTEC AMPO 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory -19.99
- AMD Sempron 64 3600+ 2.0GHz Socket AM2 62W Processor -39.99
- BIOSTAR K8M800 Micro AM2 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard -43.99
- HITACHI Deskstar P7K500 250GB 3.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive -63.99
- Linkworld 313G-C26 Black/ Silver Computer Case -22.99
- Sony NEC Optiarc Combo Drive Black IDE Model CRX320EE/B2S W/O SW -22.99
- SpecResearch Black Keyboard -9.99
- Microsoft Windows Vista 32-Bit Home Premium for System Builders Single Pack DVD -109.99
Total=$333.92. Still about 10% cheaper - and most of the cost is the operating system, so you could save quite a bit by ditching it and going with ubuntu.
If you look at the HP s3300z computer, which is $399 and has comparable parts except the processor is slightly faster - the homebuilt is still cheaper
