Why Build your own?
Dec 21st, 2007 by Admin
About us:
- We are a Houston-based company whose goal is to provide an alternative to impersonal, big box retailers with low-cost alternatives that involve you at every step of the process.
Our builders have over 15 years of experience between the two of them, and every computer undergoes rigorous quality checks before leaving the door.
We offer 24-hour customer support, staffed by Americans fully fluent in English - the person who answers your call may even be the person who built your computer.
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium-109.99
or… Ubuntu Linux 0.00$
total: $413.92 a Ubuntu comp is 21% cheaper than one with Vista, is more responsive and has Compiz-Fusion effects that make Aero look like a cheap knock-off
…and no Direct X support - so no games. As much as I’d like to use Linux, I do like my games.
I agree with you man. I’ve put linux on a lot of computers - and I really like it. But I was going for a fair comparison here, with identical components. If I was just building the computer, I’d probably recommend Ubuntu.
EDIT: Though chrono has a fair point - I wouldn’t recommend linux for most games, though cedega and so forth do a decent job at it. However, with an 8300GS, you probably aren’t really playing games anyway.
OpenGL > DirectX
But if the game is written in DirectX it doesn’t really matter which is technically superior
You added an extra cent to the sum of the costs of the parts for the home built machine. It’s actually $523.90.
And if you compare a homebuilt Ubuntu machine to a Dell Vista machine, you save 54% (That’s if you want to make the comparison as unfair as possible).
Haha, I’m glad you caught that- I’ll change the cent. However, as stated above, I’m trying to keep the stats as identical as possible- I’m gonna redo the page tonight to make it more readable, ad placement made it difficult to read
Yeah, this looks right on the surface.
However, there are certain corners you’re cutting for the cheap machine - the dirt-cheap RAM and power supply are not likely to last very long in the custom built case. These are things that you should spent the extra cash on for the warranties. Cheap RAM has failed on me countless times.
On the other hand, you’re right about it still being cheaper in general. I just don’t think the price margin is quite as huge as you make it seem. (Especially considering that you’re using Dell, one of the more expensive system builders, as a basis for comparison.)
Dell I’ve found to be the cheapest - but I’m willing to do the comparison with any other system builder. I only used products that got 4 star reviews or higher, usually a decent indication of parts quality/durability. Its not like dell is using la creme de la creme on their low end machines anyway. On the XPS line, maybe, but probably not on these.
For a mid to high range system? Sure.
The cheapest budget build is a Dell.
For $399 you get everything including a 19″ widescreen monitor.
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=brdwsbm&s=bsd
Upgrade to 2 gigs of memory for as low as $50-$60 through newegg rebates.
Add $250-75-ish for a nVidia 8800GT and you’ve got a gaming machine that will play almost any modern title at full resolution and max graphics.
And you have a nice budget, relatively high end gaming system.
And your comparison of systems is way off, as your linux box doesn’t include a price for a monitor, and your choice of the lousiest and cheapest components won’t be as nice as the OEM stuff in the Dell… but of course you know that. :p
I chose the cheapest stuff to go with the cheapest box - dells price didn’t include monitor either, and it runs vista not linux.
There is one thing more in favor of boulding your own. A Dell/HP… got very little room for expansion. I reasently opend a new more expensive HP machine, lets say you could have 3 harddisks and 2 PCI card and 1 PCIe card but that was it. On my home built machine I got room for 2 more disks and I alredy got 4. I got a total of 4 normal PCI and 2 PCIe16x and 2PCIe4x(I think) and this is 2 years older and still ALOT cheaper than the HP.
They take parts that got what they need nothing more.
Not to mention you don’t have to deal with the crapware if you build it yourself. My mother bought a laptop at Staples, and it literally took me over two hours just to delete Vongo. That program is nothing but a virus.
I probably spent much more money building my PC than it was worth, but that was because I made some stupid, amateur mistakes that cost me a lot of money (watercooler got clogged, and the motherboard burnt up), but now I have the experience to know next time around.
Nice write-up!
It seems like the savings increase as you go to higher end devices. I built a desktop with a Core 2 Quad, 8800GTS and plenty of extra crap, and it only came to about $1000 (with windows XP). All the other companies had those specs at near or over $2000. As far as I can tell, the point where it is pointless to build the computer yourself is at the $300 range, and what computer-building nerd would want that?
Also, prices are generally better at tigerdirect than newegg on the base items, and they have a 30-day guarantee that has saved me more than once.
I used to use tigerdirect, but many people complained about how bad the customer service was, so I switched to newegg.
Actually, you can use DX 8 and 9 using Wine with little to no problems. I play HL2, TF2, and many other games in DX 9c with no problems. Sound and graphics all work great, but you will need a beefy system to do it.
If you’re that worried about playing the latest and greatest games under Ubuntu, you can pay $5/month for a subscription to Cedega. Google it.
Most Dell systems include a flat panel monitor which I didn’t see mention here. Also, try building a system for less the $400 with a flat panel monitor with operating system on newegg.com and I guarantee you wont get very far. Dell upgrades are expensive, so your better looking for deals that come with the hardware your looking for.
In my own experience (700 - 800 builds/buys) Dell parts do not last longer than cheap off the shelf parts. I don’t buy fancy, but I don’t buy stupid either — and I have never had Ram or a power-supply fail on a system I have built. I have had power supplies, mother boards and disk drives fail on Dell machines. I would not buy a Dell machine at this point in my career if it was half the cost of another computer. And while it took me about a year to get up to speed on Linux, it was worth all the time invested, and if a program will only run over windows, then I can do without it.
This dell did not come with a flat panel monitor. Just like this one:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspndt_53x?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~tab=bundlestab
and this one:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspndt_53xs?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~tab=bundlestab
and this one:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsdt_420?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~tab=bundlestab
and so forth
as much as i hate to admit it Dells computers are quite reliable and sturdy (mine is anyway) but they do charge a butload for them and you cant really do too much other than buy a new computer if you need to upgrade something like a motherboard. A a selfmade one though, you may not have better parts but its cheaper and you can, for the most part, stick anything you want to in it.
Interesting article… However, if I had a choice between paying extra for a Dell, and being forced to use that crappy case and power supply, I’d pay the extra for the Dell. Power supplies are crucial and should not be skimped on. Same with RAM. But I suspect you could still beat Dell’s price without using that crappy case/PS and RAM. Great article though!
Another way to beat Dell’s price… buy XP instead of Vista. You could always get it on ebay if they don’t sell it anymore (do they?). And XP will have security upgrades until what… 2014?
I think its like 2011- but yeah, you’re right. I was just trying to get as close to the original specs as possible.
Don’t forget to tack on another $100 for shipping.
It was -~$30 for shipping - newegg is pretty reasonable
In all my years of computer repair, I have seen how the Dells and storebought computer makers make money. They use substandard power supplies,motherboards,ram. I can’t tell you how many times I have had a dell in here with motherboard failure, then two months later they bring it back in with a power supply failure which took out the motherboard again. When buying from companies like that you know you are not getting top quality, because if they made a computer that could run reliably for years they would not be making the money hand of fist like they are now. Dell imho are the absolute worst pc builders out there right along with E-machine.
Ok, two things - firstly you really can’t just say that Ununtu is good for the majority of stuff - it isn’t. It’s a toy for the anti-Micrsoft squad. It wll not run the majority of games, it won’t run the majority of programs and if you need help you’d better be happy spending all day reading through newsgroups on the off-chance someone chooses to help you. Your PC-World dealer isn’t an option.
Secondly, there seems to be a downer on DELL. I’m sitting here writing this on my Dell laptop (M1710) and I can’t speak highly enough of it - ok it could be lighter but its powerful and reliable. I’ve put countless systems together and come up with all sorts of memory problems unless I buy the best… if you LIKE building systems it’s great fun but if you want a computer to get the job done, you can’t beat a 3-year-onsite-warranty, ready-built, ready tested computer with XP Pro or Vista.
I’m writing this ubuntu right now, and I would like to point out a few things.
A. Most programs I have installed have worked immediately. Anything that didn’t, I found multiple fixes for easily with a quick google search, all provided by the excellent ubuntu community.
B. Ubuntu has TONS of programs. I have no idea why you think that it doesn’t run most. In fact, it even runs a large number of windows programs under wine or a virtual machine.
C. Windows has more programs, however I’d be willing to bet that ubuntu has more that are free, and in fact it probably has more open source apps than free windows apps.
D. It runs a lot of games, even just under wine. If it doesn’t work under wine for some reason, there’s plenty of (free) games for linux, or a virtual machine.
E. If you were talking about driver/hardware problems, I haven’t had a single one on any of the 4 machines I’ve installed it in that wasn’t astoundingly easy to fix. In fact, I’ve had much more trouble with windows BSOD (hardware failure), and just crashes in general. I’ve literally never had ubuntu crash.
*on ubuntu
And just one more point, the only machine I had trouble with was a really old dell (outdated hardware), running an older version of ubuntu (newer versions have greatly increased hardware support), and it was fixed by adding a single parameter while booting from the CD.
Newman: you say it took you a year? I make 60k a year, so I’m going to spend that much of my free time on a self-imposed DIY knock-off? That’s why pre-fab systems are what they are, labor-savers, duh! And, when you specify the specs, they do the work or you send it back on their dime, okay?
haha, i have that case. got it 4 years ago with my athlon 1800+ xp. hahaha.
Look, all software is free to the extent that you are willing to steal it. Vista>Ubuntu because you can actually play games on it.
Thusly it is that I build my own, and have for many years, starting with a paper-tape PDP-4 from Heathkit. Now if they would only let me buy pieces the same way for laptops…
The article was not even about Vista vs Ubuntu it’s about the cost effectiveness of building your own machine vs buy an OEM one. It’s ridiculous to say that an OEM pc is cheaper even with the three year warranty, it just isn’t. If your worried about the ram and power source buy the more expensive set you’ll still save money!
And “I never worry about free” is right, if your not willing to pay for the cool windows software steal it.
If you start with the higher-end Inspiron 530 (one that includes a monitor) and remove the monitor in options, you save a big chunk of money vs. the lowest-end one. It’s mostly because the high-end one comes with a $150 instant savings discount. I have it priced at $709 - But rest assured, the Newegg system system is still 25% cheaper than even that.
If you want to go even cheaper, take the Inspiron 531 and remove the monitor from that. The 531 has an AMD processor, so it’s inherently cheaper. With an X2 Dual-Core 5000+ and specs that otherwise match the system you posted, it comes down to $659 at Dell and some $496.90 at Newegg. (Motherboard here, processor here)
I agree with the concept of saving money by self building. I (children included) have (and still do) own 6 Dell computers five are laptops,one is a dimension desktop with a P4 1.3 and Rambus! They ALL work flawlessly and always have with the only failures at all being hard drives. The desktop was purchased in 2000. Dell is high but I have NEVER had anything but satisfaction out of their products.I currently use an Acer Aspire laptop 5100 series with 1gb ram and vista home premium,and I must say it kicks ass and costs less than 600.00.
Ok, obviously people here have never thought about dual-booting.
I have 1 500GB HD and 1 80GB HD. Now, when you install support for ext2 filesystems in Windows, you can easily store all your games on the windows HD and then store music, files etc on the linux partion.
I have had this set up for a while now. And it serves me well. Also, it means that if I get bored playing games, i can boot up Ubuntu and do some kick-ass linux stuff. Like ripping a CD to file. Natively.
If you’re doing games, then Windows is the way to go. However… lots of people need a computer for other purposes - students, small businesses, folks who don’t have lots of spare cash but who need a stable, safe operating system.
I don’t know enough about Vista to say, but I’m wondering whether you’ve considered the cost of software for the computer - including antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewall software. If Vista needs these as badly as XP does, then you’ll need to get them as well. Some of these are free, so maybe that cost wouldn’t matter.
Most consumers aren’t aware of this, but Dell doesn’t even test their hardware before they ship a machine out. I’ve had several Machines from them arrive DOA.
I am with Scalforama, I have had a couple of duds arrive. I guess thats why you get it on the cheap. You really do pay for what you get…
A Dell machine arrives loaded with trial ware, nagware, that expires in 15, to 30 days. The total cost to activate all the Microsoft and third party proprietary software (to make the system equivalent in function to a Mac or Linux system actually costs ANOTHER $950, AFTER rebate coupons! -MacWorld November 2007).
I personally prefer the best of Ubuntu, combined with Debian, and the 20 thousand+ free programs, applications, games, that are in SimplyMepis 7.0!
Been building my own desktop and server systems since 1997. When I purchase the least expensive motherboard combos, separately purchase memory and PSUs, and buy my cases locally, or reuse some component parts from abandoned systems, I find the savings to be over 60%, not counting the savings by avoiding proprietary software rip-offs, and the Million Microsoft Virus/Malware/Worms/Trojans and exploits!
Each revision of GNU/Linux actually runs my older hardware faster!
True multi-tasking, multi-process GNU/Linux in comparison to Microsoft is like replacing the single security screening gate at a major airport with 4,000 parallel portals!
That the public accepts marginal, almost non-functional, products like Microsoft and the cartel of robber barons also known as “Trusted Partners”, only certifies the low intelligence of the consuming populace.
The 8400GS!? It’s what $5 more for an 8500GT 64 bit GDDR2 model that isnt crippling your comp with the turbocache trash on the cheap cards like the 8400 and possibly the 8300, dunno I’ve never seen anyone talk about the 8300.
As for the comments about games on Linux, lets see, I can play Regnum Online http://www.regnumonline.com.ar/ Penumbra: Overture http://www.penumbra-overture.com/ Nexuiz http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/ Tremulous http://tremulous.net/ Flightgear http://www.flightgear.org/ Alien Arena http://alienarena.org/ Sauerbraten http://sauerbraten.org/ Warsow http://www.warsow.net/ and lets not forget the awesome titles by ID like Doom 3, Quake 4, Unreal Tournament 3, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory all run natively on pretty much every OS out there. You can also pick up a few here http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/ things like Postal 2 or Majesty.
Other games and apps can be forced to run via Wine http://www.winehq.org/ Crossover http://www.codeweavers.com/ or Cedega http://www.transgaming.com/ pretty trivial to get WoW and a few others to run with them, hell, games like Spore and Eve Online took the half @$$ way of supporting Linux and OS X by releasing their windows version with cedega as their Linux and Mac clients. I dont like this personally as there is often a preformance hit, but I’ve seen anecdotal reports of some ppl getting games like WoW to play better on Linux then on windows.
That’s parts, Hmmmm!
What about labor?
and training
and looking at catalogs
and figuring out where to get the tools to make a computer out of a pile of gravel!!!!!
This is a very geeky article.
*Try 2, with edits*
The 8400GS!? It’s what $5 more for an 8500GT 64-bit GDDR2 model that isn’t crippling your comp with the turbocache/hypermemory trash on the cheap cards like the 8400 and possibly the 8300, dunno I’ve never seen anyone talk about the 8300. The 8500GT GDDR3 128-bit version is even faster, but at the price of that you can probably get the 8600GT GDDR3 128-Bit.
The Article also leaves out overclocking, its pretty trivial to get a good after market cooling setup and a decent mobo to take any Conroe based Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs to 3Ghz, even if they where only running at 1.6Ghz as the stock speed. The only reason to spend more is to get a CPU with more L2 cache. Same goes for AMD CPUs as well, but the CPU chosen in the article was the C2D.
I slapped this list together in under 10 minutes http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=8371048
You get a faster CPU with 2x the cache, higher speed and tighter timed ram, a factory overclocked graphics card with after market rear exausting cooler preattached, much better then the reference cooler that only move the air over the card, leaving it to warm other parts instead of getting it out of the case. the HDD is 500Gb with 32Mb of cache to help reduce how often you have to hit the disk itself to grab recent data, a DVD burner that is future proofed by being SATA, it also offers the lightscribe feature. The case itself is a very good cooling case, it has a 120mm rear exhaust and an 80mm front intake as well as having the entire front of the case a metal screen mesh to allow unhindered airflow. The power supply is a no joking around model unlike the one in the dell or the one that came with that case the author selected, its 500 watts, active PFC, 4 +12v rails, 85% efficient at 50% load, modular cabling and has a nice large 120mm cooling fan. An optional part I added is a 120mm “down” pushing CPU cooler to further cool the machine, the “downward” airflow helps cool the MOSFETs and the coils around the CPU which can easily get burning hot, you can add your own cooling to those if you like. My only recommendation is to get some Arctic Silver 5 and maybe some Arctic Silver Adhesive, to at least reseat the North and South bridge heatsinks on the mobo, you can try the graphics card as well but I think the cooler attaches to the ram as well with thermal tape, so thats a tossup. You can replace the North and South bridge heatsinks, Thermalright makes some good chipset coolers and while you can buy MOSFET coolers you really have to do some measuring to make sure they don’t get in the way of your CPU cooler. The backside coolers from Thermalright don’t cool enough to be really worth it unless you’re trying to get you’re comp as cool as possible as you can on air, for most people though they cost too much to be worth the cost and hassle of pulling out your mobo to attach the backside CPU cooler and the GPU cooler only fits so many models of graphics card. As before though, you don’t need the after market cooler, the CPU comes with the stock Intel cooler with thermal grease preapplied to it, just pop it on and go.
As for labor, you can get that info from any tech form in under 20 minutes, actual build time of the computer is about 1 hour, most of that is trying to free the parts from those dam hardshell plastic cases without eviscerating yourself, putting all the guts in the box takes only a few minutes to ensure you have the standoffs placed where they should be in the case before you bolt in the mobo, attaching the CPU, CPU cooler, ram, graphics card, power supply, hard drive and DVD burner is very straight forward, just tab A into Slot A kinda stuff, it only fits one way. The only time you should even need to look at a manual is to attach the power, reset and HDD notification lights to the headers on the mobo, but even this can be done blindfolded with some cases today. At that point just power it up and run Memtest86+ and ensure your parts are at least running at their rated speeds in the bios, you may not need to, do so, but you may have to update the bios to get everything right, but most mobos these days will boot a flash stick to load new bios revisions. Last thing to do is install your OS of choice, Ill assume mine of Ubuntu Studio 7.10, so 20 minutes to install then maybe an hour to install all the apps, drivers and updates from the Ubuntu repositories, most of that is waiting on my slow connection.
As for the comments about games on Linux, lets see, I can play Regnum Online http://www.regnumonline.com.ar/ Penumbra: Overture http://www.penumbra-overture.com/ Nexuiz http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/ Tremulous http://tremulous.net/ Flightgear http://www.flightgear.org/ Alien Arena http://alienarena.org/ Sauerbraten http://sauerbraten.org/ Warsow http://www.warsow.net/ and lets not forget the awesome titles by ID like Doom 3, Quake 4, Unreal Tournament 3, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory all run natively on pretty much every OS out there. You can also pick up a few here http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/ things like Postal 2 or Majesty.
Other games and apps can be forced to run via Wine http://www.winehq.org/ Crossover http://www.codeweavers.com/ or Cedega http://www.transgaming.com/ pretty trivial to get WoW and a few others to run with them, hell, games like Spore and Eve Online took the half *ss way of supporting Linux and OS X by releasing their windows version with Cedega as their Linux and Mac clients. I don’t like this personally as there is often a performance hit, but I’ve seen anecdotal reports of some people getting games like WoW to play better on Linux then on windows.
Its not that hard to build your own computer - it takes me about 30 minutes now to build a computer. I threw this article together in less than half an hour as well. If you don’t want to choose your own parts, you can click “build-a-Day” and choose one of the preconfigured ones on the left hand side
What are some good sites that’ll help me decide on component selection and overclocking.
Bseides this one.
I love this article! Very well done! It’s interesting to me that people are so knit-picky about the OEM parts you chose to compare to the Dell. Obviously you wouldn’t get that graphics card! for that matter, no sane person buy a $25 PSU case combo! The point is that as bad as these parts are, the ones in the dell are much worse! even if you were to by better parts for the OEM build it would still be cheaper than the dell and with the OS you chose it would be mainstream enough for most(what someone looking at a Dell would expect to get).
And to all of you defending your Dells… Justify your decision any way you must, but please… do not try to compare the quality/reliability/value of a Dell to a custom build… it’s just ludicrous! Building a computer is a rewarding and educational DIY project that anyone (within reason) can accomplish with one minor caveate… you must be able to operate a screwdriver (eeeek!). Sure it takes a little research… but not that much! Besides, all of the information you absorb will be invaluable down the road.
I liked the comparison a lot. that said, i think it would also be helpful to show a high-end build compared to a good XPS system. I just priced one out on newegg (https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/WishList/TemporaryWishList.asp) and it’s almost exactly 25% cheaper. I did splurge a bit on some of the components as well as a little extra to make it a good overclocker. One thing is for sure though, the quality of the parts in the build are top notch and futureproof… as far as a computer can be anyway! Custom build was $1,548 after mail in rebates while the XPS was $2,039. Regardless of your budget it seems clear to me that you get higher quality parts and more of them with a custom machine. It’s always worth it! (If you want some funny comparisons try pricing out a system to compete with the Mac Pro desktop… the savings are literally in the thousands of dollars!)