WingedKagouti on 20/9/2021 at 22:01
Quote Posted by Starker
The point is that the time you spend on looking up parts you can just as well spend on looking up components for building it yourself, not that "it takes a long time".
I grabbed a pre-built the last 3 times I did a full system upgrade. I did get them all from a local store with their own pre-build setup, which lets you check each and every component. Heck, I even compared the cost of the system I got with what I'd have to pay for individual parts (using price checkers with other stores) and each pre-built always came out at roughly the same cost (5% difference at most) when including shipping.
The price difference has just not been worth it, even more so when considering I would have had to wait for 3 or more different stores each sending a package that may be delayed or "lost" in transit.
Starker on 20/9/2021 at 23:10
Why would you buy from 3 or more different stores? I would bet you can find the cheapest or at least the nearly cheapest option in a single store or at most 2 stores. And at least around here stores have free domestic shipping when the price is above a certain point.
As for packages getting "lost" in transit, I'm sorry to hear that you live in a place like that, but that's certainly not true for every country. An alternative might be physically going to the store and picking the items up. For example, in a lot of places, nationwide store chains have the option of getting your online order delivered to a local shop near you where you can pick it up at your convenience.
WingedKagouti on 20/9/2021 at 23:43
Quote Posted by Starker
Why would you buy from 3 or more different stores? I would bet you can find the cheapest or at least the nearly cheapest option in a single store or at most 2 stores. And at least around here stores have free domestic shipping when the price is above a certain point.
I would have had to buy from multiple stores if I wanted to lower the cost below the completed system's price. And while volume sales can get you free shipping, it's not always at a price point where I'd get it from the cheapest store (when including shipping costs), which means that the free shipping is essentially overtaken by the increase in cost for the parts.
As far as items going missing in transit, it's only happened two or three times, but it's something I don't want to risk having to deal with for a single vital component.
And for the most recent system, there's also the scarcity of GPUs to consider. RTX 3060 & 70 have been readily available via prebuilts for the last half year or so locally (with 3080's being sometimes reasonably available), but getting just a card has not been easy without going on a long waiting list.
Starker on 21/9/2021 at 07:18
2-3 times!? I've had hundreds of packets delivered to my doorstep or an automatic parcel terminal or the local post office and not once have I had a packet become "lost" nor have I heard that happen to anyone I know. No wonder you can't trust your postal service.
Anyway, I've followed the PC building community for about 10 years now and dabbled in it myself occasionally and in the vast majority of cases, prebuilts don't really come close to the quality and price of a custom PC. And there are very good reasons for that -- aside from the poor component selection and bad component matching mentioned earlier, only the biggest systems integrators can match the price of big retailers, since they simply can't buy the parts in big enough volume to qualify for volume discount. This means you either got incredibly lucky and your local store is for some weird reason selling prebuilt PCs at an incredibly low margin or you are very unlucky and all the stores around you are price gouging on the components. Because even if you count shipping into the equation, around here it's only about 3-4 euros domestically, so something like a 12-16 euro price difference even if you buy from 4 separate stores.
Also, if you look around on Youtube tech channels, now that GPU scarcity has forced people to start reviewing prebuilt computers as an alternative, they commonly have a lot of warnings attached to them and there are a myriad of flaws and poor decisions that have been exposed.
WingedKagouti on 21/9/2021 at 10:15
Quote Posted by Starker
2-3 times!? I've had hundreds of packets delivered to my doorstep or an automatic parcel terminal or the local post office and not once have I had a packet become "lost" nor have I heard that happen to anyone I know. No wonder you can't trust your postal service.
Do keep in mind that this is since the mid-90s, so it's not that common an occurence. While I can't recall it happening since every shop and delivery service adopted some form of Track & Trace, it's still lingering in the back of my mind.
Quote:
This means you either got incredibly lucky and your local store is for some weird reason selling prebuilt PCs at an incredibly low margin or you are very unlucky and all the stores around you are price gouging on the components..
There are obviously price differences between stores, but the lowest prices match what I see elsewhere (when accounting for difference in VAT).
The store I use have both static pre-built and a custom parts "pre-built" which uses their normal prices for the individual components with no charge for putting the system together. As far as I know, this is part of their strategy to get new/repeat customers.
Starker on 21/9/2021 at 10:57
Yes, it's very common to offer some selection of parts -- change the SSD for a larger one, add more RAM, change the graphics card, etc. But the selection is still fairly limited even in some of the best cases and depends on what the store has in stock (or what they want to get rid of in some of the worst cases). And that selection is not always offered with the best interests of the customer in mind.
Custom building offers far more range in that you can select the most bang for your buck components and make additional cost-saving decisions. A well chosen PSU can actually save you some money on your electric bill compared to the cheapest option that prebuilt PCs often come with. There are some relatively cheap PC cases with really good airflow that I have yet to see any prebuilt PC use. You can select RAM based on what has actually been tested to work well with the CPU above the JEDEC standards. And of course you can build the whole thing with upgrading in mind, which is much easier if you, say, make sure you have enough room in the case for a larger GPU / more drives or that the motherboard actually has 4 DIMM slots and enough SATA ports / M.2 slots to allow for future upgrades.
WingedKagouti on 21/9/2021 at 12:16
Quote Posted by Starker
Yes, it's very common to offer some selection of parts -- change the SSD for a larger one, add more RAM, change the graphics card, etc. But the selection is still fairly limited even in some of the best cases and depends on what the store has in stock (or what they want to get rid of in some of the worst cases). And that selection is not always offered with the best interests of the customer in mind.
Their "pre-built" custom builds allow you to pick from every part that fits (ie. you won't be offered a MB for AMD CPUs if you're building a system with an Intel CPU) in their catalogue, not just random stuff they need to get rid of. The differences between using that and building a PC yourself are that a) you buy all components from that store and b) you don't have to put it together yourself.
faetal on 21/9/2021 at 14:42
Is it maybe time for the mods to split this into a different thread?
Aja on 21/9/2021 at 17:28
Watching henke's snippets of Deathloop on Twitter makes me convinced that I should hold out for either the PS5 version (if I ever get a PS5) or a wait for a better GPU. It looks so much nicer and more playable at 60FPS than the (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJShMujIeOE) PC version on a Geforce 1060.
heywood on 22/9/2021 at 14:37
That looks more playable than I expected, still pretty smooth even on medium settings. I'm looking to run at 3840x1600 though.