Shall I buy a PC, or build my own?

joeyowen

Can I be bothered building a PC? I haven't done it in years.

Is it actually much cheaper than getting a machine spec'd through PC Specialist (or similar)?

Probs in the park of i5, 16gb, 500gb ssd, gtx 1060

So help me chose.  Money, or laziness? 

Strangefan

Ooooooooooooooooh build it! No jumper settings these days so much easier 

TTony

If you want something very specific, then you'll likely have to build your own.

But if you want something that's a standard spec (or close to a standard spec), buying will be cheaper.  The builders can get much better deals on the components than you can, so the built price is probably cheaper than the self-build price.

Unless you want the fun of putting one together - but personally it's all pretty easy nowadays, so there's little fun in it, unless you're building an odd spec. 

MattBanshee

I built a very similar machine by buying an ex-workplace machine as a refurb from ebay. Got a 4th gen I5, 16gb RAM and brand new HDD and SSD for £279. Stuck a wifi card and a GTX1050ti in there, and it plays the latest games on high/ultra no problem. Total cost £430. If I bought the same machine from a shop, or built it from scratch with new parts, it'd have cost £600+.

joeyowen

Spec is standard enough, apart from dropping the HDD for a 500gb SSD

1060 is standard enough nowadays.

Are PC Specialist still the go to people?

RaymondLin

One thing pre-built always skim on is the PSU, if you ever plan to add drives or better graphic that needs more power, it’s best to build your own to future proof.  Which is the main point because pre-built ones seldom build for expanding anything, memory slots etc

joeyowen

RaymondLin said:

One thing pre-built always skim on is the PSU, if you ever plan to add drives or better graphic that needs more power, it’s best to build your own to future proof.  Which is the main point because pre-built ones seldom build for expanding anything, memory slots etc

Fair point

But I wasn't thinking off the shelf purchase

Something like eBuyer/PCSpecialist so I can chose which components etc..

Philtre

And pre-built come installed with crapware. At least you can install a "pure" version of Windows (assuming it's a Windows box).

joeyowen

Philtre said:

And pre-built come installed with crapware. At least you can install a "pure" version of Windows (assuming it's a Windows box).

I generally flatten any hd when getting. Full of bloat every time

Philtre

joeyowen said:

Philtre said:

And pre-built come installed with crapware. At least you can install a "pure" version of Windows (assuming it's a Windows box).

I generally flatten any hd when getting. Full of bloat every time

Also, some pre-builts have weird hardware requiring specific drivers that seem to go unsupported after a few years. More so  on laptops.

Danny1969

As someone who made a fortune building clone PC's in the nineties I would recommend these guys 

https://www.spire.co.uk/

I don't bother building em now for customers, just buy em from Spire, soak tested and  with warranty. You will 
 struggle to build as cheap as they can 

joeyowen

Cheers @Danny1969 ;

But they don't do 500 ssd or 16gb RAM

It might not be cost effective to swap in/outs

Danny1969

Yeah they do, I brought a Samsdung Evo 500 Gb on Thursday for £122 .... just a case of picking up the phone and talking. 

Heartfeltdawn

Build it yourself. I've always built my own. I'm anal about low noise. Currently running a i7-4770 in a Fractal Core 500 case, GTX960 graphics card, and two Samsung SSDs. Noctua fan, EVGA power supply... as near quiet as possible. 

As suppliers go, CCL are my favourite. Scan PC are good. 

joeyowen

Danny1969 said:

Yeah they do, I brought a Samsdung Evo 500 Gb on Thursday for £122 .... just a case of picking up the phone and talking. 

Cool, i'll give them a ring tomorrow, see if I can spec a build.  Thanks for the heads up.

joeyowen

Heartfeltdawn said:

Build it yourself. I've always built my own. I'm anal about low noise. Currently running a i7-4770 in a Fractal Core 500 case, GTX960 graphics card, and two Samsung SSDs. Noctua fan, EVGA power supply... as near quiet as possible. 

I'm leaning that way.  Although I'll see what Spire say.

Part of me would love to build a machine again, but i've dropped a bit of confidence as it has been a while.  Which is mental considering I work in computing and have done many before.  Perhaps It is because i know I can't afford to cock it up 

Heartfeltdawn

You won't cock it up. Have faith, bro!

Freebird

Build it.

Danny1969

One of my jobs on Friday in a PC shop was working out why a supposed well educated PC build it yourself guy had spent £545 om Amazon for a CPU, processor and ram upgrade and ended up with a box that did nothing when he switched it on other than some fan noise.

This guy had spent hours on forums researching the best bang for bucks CPU and MB combo. then he scored the ram and spent a whole day installing it and carefully routing the SATA cables and wiring up the electric blue fans.He could tell me with some authority how he knew exactly what he was doing and some of the brought components must be faulty !

What he failed to notice though was that he's old board had eight holes which lined up with 8 brass standoffs in the PC case ... his new board only had 6 holes meaning 2 brass standoffs under the new motherboard were cheerfully shorting out the PCI Express bus and the buck converter which supplies the CPU core voltage. 

Moral of the story is make sure you understand the whole procedure in building your own, a lot of people don't 

darthed1981

I keep thinking of rebuilding my PC, It's now basically 6 years old, but with upgrades along the way (most notably an SSD).

Then I realise that for my normal activities on the PC it's still absolutely fine, and save my money.

Won't last forever of course, but there is so much life in modern PC components because everything is so damn quick.

midlifecrisis

my main work pc is nearly 9 years old, running vista.  used mostly photoshop (CS2)  4gig ram ive hadded larger ad more hardrives but its rock stable, i should upgrade but then id have to upgrade all my software too.