Hi there, great new forum. I'm honored to be the first. :)
My question is about buying a PC vs. building a PC. Besides a little money, is there any real benefit to building one?
The time now is January 8, 2009 12:56:27 PM
Hi there, great new forum. I'm honored to be the first. :)
My question is about buying a PC vs. building a PC. Besides a little money, is there any real benefit to building one?
I am next :) I think, the cost of building a computer is slightly more costlier than purchasing a Branded PC. Also if any components within one PC get damaged then getting in touch with the manufacturer is a bit problem. Compatibility within each components from different manufacturerers is another major problem, so lets go for branded PC.
The component incompatibility issue is not really an issue. One advantage of building your own PC is that you can select your own components. It's like walking into a car dealership and ordering a car with the exact features you want, as opposed to buying a car as-is, with whatever options it already has. In my experience, I can buy components cheaper than I can if I buy a branded computer. Mind you, your experience may vary. Branded PCs are using whatever components they get. They're all using the same stuff now. It's more likely with a branded PC you'll have a harder time replacing the components yourself. That's where you'll have most of your imcompatibility issues. If something goes wrong with my PC I built now, I can take the hard drive back to where I bought it because it's under warranty. Plus, you learn something. Chances are if you build your own computer you'll learn how to fix it. And you don't have to call some 1-800 number and sit on hold and talk to somebody who has no idea what you're talking about and save yourself a lot of frustration.
Again, your experience may vary, but I say build it.
Whether to build or buy a computer is a very difficult question to answer. While buying a prebuilt computer is much easier, building one yourself can be very rewarding on both the personal and financial levels. If you are worried about compatibility then consider buying a barebones kit or an unassembled kit of components that the vendor knows will work together. You can save tons of money this way, especially if you buy from reputable retailers such as TigerDirect.com. The risk you run if you pick and choose your own components is that of device conflicts. For example, on one high end machine I assembled everything worked great, but at least once a day I would get the blue screen of death. Eventually I tracked it down to a 56k modem (yes, this was a while ago) conflicting with other devices on the system when I was online. If you build, buy the components from a company with a good return policy and keep the receipts until you are sure everything works well together!
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