Build Your Own PC, Part I

One of the largest acts of chicanery in the technology world is the big-brand PC retail market, and you can quote me on that.  HP, Dell, Alienware, and all the rest are providing you with a service that takes only a few hours and minimal computer knowledge(relatively speaking), and the results are insane premiums drooped over your pricetag.  The average $1,500 PC can be bought unassembled from just about any online parts retailer (such as newegg) for under $1200.  Don’t believe me?  Lemme learn ya a thing or two.

In the first of a two-part series, I’ll talk about why it’s so beneficial to the consumer to build their own PC or have someone they know do it for them.  In my second article I’ll take a more in-depth look at the actual assembly of your own PC.  So lets get started.

Now this logic doesn’t pertain to all PCs.  Laptops and other proprietary oddball forms of computers aren’t gonna easily be replaced by your own custom built machine.  There are DIY laptop kits out there, but they are almost fully assembled and only require you to drop in a few select components of your choosing like a CPU, video card, hard drive, and memory.  You probably won’t save any money building your own laptop, so unless you’re in it just so you can tell your friends that you built it, stick with the offerings in the Best Buy ads.

We’re assuming you are on the market for a new Vista Premium(able to run the aero desktop) PC.  You have about a $1,000 budget, and you are buying online(brick’n'mortar retailers can’t compete with online prices, so why bother including them?).

So if I were to buy a brand new system, here’s what I’d include to hit my target price.

• AMD 64 X2 5200+
• 2GB DDR2 800 RAM
• 250GB HDD
• 7600GT 256MB video card
• DVD Burner
• 5.1 speaker system
• media card reader
• Vista Home Premium
• 19″ widescreen LCD

Items not included on this list(NIC, power supply, case, 5.1 sound, etc.) are pretty standard and will come with just about every PC you purchase these days, so we’ll just concentrate on the big stuff.

So we’re gonna price out this system 4 ways.  We’re gonna do Dell and HP first.  Then we’re gonna price it out at CyberPower(an online PC boutique), then we’re gonna price the parts out for a custom built machine using NewEgg.

Dell

We’re choosing to start with the basic Dell Dimension E521 PC.  Dells high-end XPS systems not included, this is one of the more powerful desktop PCs offered by Dell, and it’s base price is $859. First we’ve upgraded the CPU from the 5000+ to the 5200+ and added another gigabyte of memory, for a total of 2GB.  Even though DDR2 memory won’t show any significant performance impovements over regular DDR memory unless you jack it up to DDR2 800, Dell only offers DDR2 533 memory.  More on this later.  We want to stick with a 19″ monitor, as prices jump drastically for even a 20″ screen, but Dell doesn’t offer a widescreen 19″er.  This lameness is noted.   Dell also only offers bargain bin video cards (nvidia 7300 and ATI/AMD x1300) on their Dimension desktops.  Once again, this lameness is noted.  Also, Dells only 5.1 speaker system offering is a wireless set that comes with a hefty price tag.  Are you seeing the pattern of walls and limits here?  After upgrading to an optical mouse(are they serious?!? who uses ball mice anymore?!), I was bombarded with a plethora of stupid bundled offers to choose from.  Surge protectors, USB thumbdrives, blank CD-Rs, power backups, webcams, routers and even Microsofts Zune were all offered to me.  If I’m on dial-up, I’m not a happy customer waiting for these pointless pages to load.  They want another $30 for a firewire adapter.  I’ll pass, but that’s rediculous.  The last straw was when Dell wanted $30 to upgrade my system with a 3.5″ floppy drive.  These things cost $5, they take about 2 minutes to install, and they’re still a mandatory piece of legacy hardware in my opinion.  Yet Dell wants an additional $30 from me to install one.  What’s worse, is if I want a media card reader, I can’t have both.  It’s one or the other.  I’m sticking with the floppy.  It’s at this point that I realize that I have a working system minus a few key items, but I’m only about 1/3 of the way through Dells online configuration tool. What else could they possibly be trying to sell me?  Well lemme list it for you.

• MS Office
• McAfee Security Center
• Photo + Music Entertainment Pack
• Tax software
• PC to PC Migration software
• PC games
• “top sellers” software titles (including redudant products)
• Discovery Channels COSMEO online learning resource (WTF?!?!)
• Advanced warranty
• Protection against accidents
• 24/7 tech support
• home installation
• dial-up internet via earthlink or AOL! hahaha!
• Some crappy online course to learn how to use your PC
• recycle my old PC(that’s nice, and it’s free)
• plant a tree (I’m not even kidding)

So FINALLY I get to my system summary page where I can double check that everything is corrent.  Granted, I could of skipped over half of the stuff I just went through, but I didn’t know that until I did it.  How would I know that Dell hadn’t already checked the box next to photoshop CS2 in one of the software bundles and charged me an additional $620 for something I already own?  Man alive.  Even at the system summary page, where I should be done, at the bottom they have something called “essential add-ons” where they’re trying to sell me USB thumbdrives, printers, power strips and routers!  My god.  Let it go already!  All I wanted was a PC!

So my final price from Dell was $1,394, but because of some limited time offer, $170 is knocked off the price and I’m set at $1,224.  Shipping is probably gonna run about $40, so we’re looking at $1,264.00.  That’s a bit over my budget, but it’s close enough for the purpose of this article.

Next up…

HP

I start off with the HP Pavilion d4790y series.  It starts off at $899 after rebate, and try as I might, I can’t find any info on the page telling me what kind of rebate it is, or what I have to do to get it.  Lame. Right off the bat I’m faced with a sticky situation.  Dell only offered AMD CPUs for my selection.  HP only offers Intel.  To save time and energy, I’m just going to pick the closest performing CPU to match what the other retailers are offering.  With Dell I went with the AMD 64 X2 5200+, and after referencing some benchmarks from tomshardware.com, I’ve selected the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 for my CPU here.  They each have their strengths and weaknesses, but overall they’re pretty darn similar.  Just like Dell, HP doesn’t offer DDR2 800 memory.  Onll DDR2 667.  Weak. HP includes a DVD burner and media card reader in their initial price, but they still want $20 to upgrade to a floppy drive.  Wow.  Oh well, at least I have the option of having both a floppy drive and a media card reader, unlike Dell.  Other things to consider about my experience buying from HP…

• There’s the hassle of a rebate on my 19″ LCD, which isn’t widescreen
• The best video card option I have is the nVidia 7500LE
• HP recommends I spend $80 to ugrade my soundcard when there’s already 7.1 sound included on the motherboard.
• They want another $20 to upgrade to an optica mouse.
• They tie you into using Nortons Internet Security subscription based service for at least 15 months.  Its free, but most people won’t continue to pay after their free trial expires, and then you’re gonna have a big fat bloated piece of annoying software reminding you that you need to pay or else your children will be cut up by a virus.
• They hit me up with all the same annoying bundle offers as Dell, but at least they were all on one page, and nothing was pre-selected for me
• They try to hit me up with a warranty and a 45-minute HP tech support calling card(novel idea, but annoying and not necessary)
• They try to sell me 2.1 speaker systems even though I selected a 5.1 system earlier on in the configuration

After one last page of printer offerings, I get to my system review page.  My grand total is $1,729.99, however I’m afford a $320.00 instant savings(no idea why), which brings my system total to $1,449.99 after shipping.  It’s $500 over budget, but I’m gonna say screw the budget.

Next up…

CyberPower

CyberPower falls into a slightly different category than Dell and HP.  They’re a smaller company that tailors more towards gamers and those who want ultimate performance and a sweet looking case.  You could consider them in the same ballpark as VoodooPC, Alienware, and Falcon Northwest, however those companies are the cream of the crop and we’re not their target customer.  CyberPower should offer a middle ground between the discount mammoths and the small expensive boutique vendors.

Right from the get-go, I can tell this is going to be a different experience than Dell or HP.  I’ve clicked three links and already I’m at a configuration page ready to pick from a giant selection of parts. Dell and HP definitely have a thing or two to learn from CyberPower.  Not only do I have the option of what case I want to hold my system, or whether or not I wanna spend $10 for a neon light inside, I’m offer 2 free semi-recent games(Age of Empires III and Rise of Nations) and a CyberPower t-shirt.  All for free!!  They even give me a selection of 12 different motherboards that’ll work with the CPU I selected.  I’ll stick with the default.  It’s a whopping $270 upgrade to go from 512MB of ram to 2GB!!!  At least it’s DDR2 800.  After selecting the nVidia 7600GT video card, I’m offered another free game.  Totally awesome, even if the game sucks.    I finish off the main configuration of parts on the first page(even having the option of selecting a rainbow of colors for my monitor and optical drives) and move to page two where I’ll select peripherals and other accessories.  Finally!  A company offering optical mice as standard on their systems!!  Cyberpower includes a media card reader by default, but not a floppy drive.  Oh well, they only want $10 to include one. 

After a few software offerings, I’m shown that a 3-year warranty is included in the price and I’m ready to check out.  There are no fake rebates/sales to make me feel like I need to buy the PC TODAY or I’ll have to pay more later.  There’s just one price.  $1,475. If a company like CyberPower can offer such customized PCs for about the same price as Dell and HP, I have to wonder why Dell and HP are the big boys?  Are people really that lazy/stupid?  Yes.  Yes they are.

Custom Built

Finally!  Lets assemble our own PC parts.  If I can follow along on CyberPowers configuration tool, I can probably select my own parts from a parts retailer like NewEgg.  It actually takes about the same amount of time to browse NewEggs gigantic selection of parts and select the ones I want as it does to go through Dells online configuration steps.  Before I show you how much it cost me to build this PC, let me first say one gigantic thing about PCs from Dell and HP and the like.  They use crap proprietary parts.  This means that in a few years, when your Dell is in need of some upgrading, chances are you’ll be screwed because of physical or feature limitations.  For example.  My mother needed a new hard drive to store all her mp3s.  Instead of being able to buy a an internal hard drive and slap it in for her(or better yet use an old one I have lying around), I had to go online and spend $80 on an external drive.  External drives are fine if that’s what you need, but that’s not what she needed.  Her Dell is so small that its not possible to add a  second hard drive.  In comparison, I have 4 hard drives in my custom built PC.  Not only are your upgrade options limited, but so are the features you just bought.  Remember the memory thing?  Yeah.  Most motherboards come with 4 memory slots.  Usually you’re gonna use two of ‘em right away, leaving the 2nd two available for a memory upgrade down the road.  Good luck adding additional memory to a Dell or HP.  Yeah, by and far, it’s a bad idea to buy these things unless you’re getting such a great deal(refurbed or clearance items maybe) that it’s worth the limitations.  It’s a safe bet though that Dell and HP are using bargain-bin parts, so in order to compete, I’m going to use NEAR bargain-bin parts. 

So I’ve pieced together my PC with all the specific parts that I want.  That I wanted.  I’ve got a system that was exactly what I wanted and it’s not lopsided.  What I mean by lopsided is that a PC with a $1000 CPU and a $20 video card isn’t gonna provide solid perfomance for everything you wanna do.  There will be bottlenecks and shortfalls.  I know my PC is going to do a great job no matter what I use it for.  It’ll be balanced.  My final price was $1,069.  After $40 for shipping, I’m looking at $1,109.  So lets recap shall we?

• Dell - $1,264.00 (+$155) (crappy video card, slow memory, no card reader,  no widescreen monitor)
• HP - $1,449.99 (+340) (mediocre video card, slow memory, no widescreen monitor)
• CyberPower - $1,475 (+$366) (great PC with all the features, just alot more expensive)
• Custom Built - $1,109

So the bottom line is this.  If you go with a big-time PC reseller like Dell or HP, you’re gonna get hosed.  You’re gonna pay more for less and have no flexibility or selection throughout the process.  Furthermore, you’re gonna be bombarded with bundles and software packages and rebates and tons of other BS that you shouldn’t have to deal with.  CyberPower does a great job of offering their customers a fast and hassle-free PC buying experience, but they’re just a bit more expensive(only $26 more than HP however).  If you are turned off by PC resellers but aren’t confident to try out your PC assembly skills, I’d recommend finding a friend to assemble a system for you and paying them $100.  You’ll still come out on top and since you’re working with a friend, he or she will probably do their best to make sure you’re getting the best bang for your buck.  A friend isn’t gonna rip you when they have nothing to gain from it and everything to lose.  It’s a no-brainer if you ask me.

One final note.  PCs purchased from the bigboy companies are usually gonna come with a lot of pre-install software.  This sounds good to alot of people, but when you think about it, it’s worse.  Much worse.  Alot of these software titles aren’t necessary or wanted, are demo versions, or are bloated and use up valuable system resources.  Dell isn’t offering you McAfee Security Center because you need it or because it’s a good software title.  They’re offering it to you because McAfee has alot to gain by getting their software installed on Dells, and therefore makes it worth Dells while to include ‘em.  For lack of a better term, they’re in cahoots.¼/p>