First time computer builder

[InlawBiker]

I have built a lot of PC's over the years but I gave up and bought a Dell XPS machine. It's lasted me 3 years now and still running very strong, no need to upgrade at all yet. The power supply died and I replaced it with a quality, much quieter one and it runs near silent.

What I would suggest is something in-between. You can go to Newegg and buy a pre-assembled "Do It Yourself" machine that's better than an HP or Dell. Most of them are aimed at gaming but you can avoid those and save money if you're not into that.

Just random samples, these are much faster than the one I paid $1000 for 3 years ago.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1353666
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1594919

 

[HaViet]

I've been building PCs for a very, very long time. I usually build around 2-3 PCs a year for family and friends. Sometimes, I picked up a few used Dell PCs from their outlet store, with coupon.

Two school of thoughts here:

(1) If someone was looking for a $300 PC for every day usage such as internet browsing or video streaming, I would suggest an off the shelf unit from Dell outlet. I've had great luck with many Dell PCs and laptops. You couldn't really saved much by building your own in this price range.

(2) Once you look into the mid tier and higher end PCs for graphic/video and gaming, this is where you get much more bang for your bucks. Besides cost saving, you also have the opporunity to pick your own parts. And mostly, you get great parts at great prices. But you have to be patient and wait for the good sales.

Here is my build from last month, for just under $500.

Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSD
Fractal Design R4 ATX Case
Evga 430W Gold Plus PSU
Intel i5-4430 Quad Core Processor
Gigabyte Z87 Intel Mobo
Patriot Viper 8GB DDR3 1600
MSI Radeon HD 7770
LG 32x DVD ROM

As you can see, most of the parts listed are highly rated and some of them are the best in their category/price range.

I just love the Fractal Design case. The best I've ever seen for under $100. And the Samsung EVO SSD drive is simply the highest rated SSD in the market to date.

 

[jziegler]

Just a note, both of these do not include a Windows license. Add at least $100 for a proper license. ou can buy an OEM/system builders license, but Microsoft will not provide any support should you ever need it. A full version that has support will cost more. The big companies reportedly pay much less than this, which is wh there can be a cost advantage to buing an assembled system.

As I said before, I used to build all of my own systems, and also for my family. I've been cutting back on that a lot in recent years, and I'm not sure that I'll build any more PCs at all.

I have built a lot of PC's over the years but I gave up and bought a Dell XPS machine. It's lasted me 3 years now and still running very strong, no need to upgrade at all yet. The power supply died and I replaced it with a quality, much quieter one and it runs near silent.

What I would suggest is something in-between. You can go to Newegg and buy a pre-assembled "Do It Yourself" machine that's better than an HP or Dell. Most of them are aimed at gaming but you can avoid those and save money if you're not into that.

Just random samples, these are much faster than the one I paid $1000 for 3 years ago.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1353666
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1594919

I've been building PCs for a very, very long time. I usually build around 2-3 PCs a year for family and friends. Sometimes, I picked up a few used Dell PCs from their outlet store, with coupon.

Two school of thoughts here:

(1) If someone was looking for a $300 PC for every day usage such as internet browsing or video streaming, I would suggest an off the shelf unit from Dell outlet. I've had great luck with many Dell PCs and laptops. You couldn't really saved much by building your own in this price range.

(2) Once you look into the mid tier and higher end PCs for graphic/video and gaming, this is where you get much more bang for your bucks. Besides cost saving, you also have the opporunity to pick your own parts. And mostly, you get great parts at great prices. But you have to be patient and wait for the good sales.

Here is my build from last month, for just under $500.

Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSD
Fractal Design R4 ATX Case
Evga 430W Gold Plus PSU
Intel i5-4430 Quad Core Processor
Gigabyte Z87 Intel Mobo
Patriot Viper 8GB DDR3 1600
MSI Radeon HD 7770
LG 32x DVD ROM

As you can see, most of the parts listed are highly rated and some of them are the best in their category/price range.

I just love the Fractal Design case. The best I've ever seen for under $100. And the Samsung EVO SSD drive is simply the highest rated SSD in the market to date.

 

[PeeBee]

I've just been through the home / self build debate too. For me, the fact that I could salvage a few parts from the old PC (PSU, optical drive and Windows retail license) helped swing the decision.

TBH, I've never been a big fan of cheap oem units. They are built to cost and come loaded with trial and bloatware. Whilst the cost savings of a home build are not really applicable any more, you tend to get better quality components, more upgrade potential and a system tailored better to your requirements if you build. You also get that 'buzz' when you're just about to switch on for the first time :smile:

 

[OzRay]

TBH, I've never been a big fan of cheap oem units. They are built to cost and come loaded with trial and bloatware. Whilst the cost savings of a home build are not really applicable any more, you tend to get better quality components, more upgrade potential and a system tailored better to your requirements if you build. You also get that 'buzz' when you're just about to switch on for the first time :smile:

I can't say that my Dell Studio XPS came with cheap components, nor was it loaded with any bloatware.

Be careful that the 'buzz' with the home built PC isn't the noise you hear just before it goes up in flames.

 

[PeeBee]

Be careful that the 'buzz' with the home built PC isn't the noise you hear just before it goes up in flames.

Hehe, I was expecting a reply like that

I wasn't thinking along the lines of Dell XPS when I said cheap oem machine, but I've worked on many Lonovos, Acers, Packard Bells etc over the years and at their price point, you tend to get a better machine if you self build. Whilst the manufacturer will get components at a lower cost, they still have to recover build time, warranty and support costs, and make a profit.

 

[Promit]

I can't say that my Dell Studio XPS came with cheap components, nor was it loaded with any bloatware.

Be careful that the 'buzz' with the home built PC isn't the noise you hear just before it goes up in flames.

Dell has a messy history of shipping machines, including high end XPS workstations and laptops, with components they knew were going to fail early. I think they settled a class action lawsuit over it. When I was in school everyone had Dells and most of them died. But most of them were fixed! Nowadays, I've found that many, many, many laptops have problems of all sorts. At this point I'm favorable to Dell and Apple because their support is the best in the business. Most other manufacturers ask you to ship your laptop back to them, then jerk you around and fix it or not. I had Acer botch a repair job twice. Sony just refused us a repair. If Dell still sends someone TO YOU, then I'm going to buy from them next. (Which is soon, because Sony screwed us.)

 

[OzRay]

Our federal government buys a lot of Dell computers and they seem to perform fairly reliably. When I added extra HHDs into mine and changed the main HDD to an SSD, I noticed that the components were good quality, brand names. When I thought that my dual monitor video card was starting to fail, I went checking prices of replacement video cards and that made my jaw drop (thankfully it was the Viewsonic monitor and not the card that was failing). The best laptops I've ever owned have been Fujitsu and, surprisingly, Medion (Aldi brand name). I've never had a Fujitsu fail so far (just get old and slow) and the Medion my wife uses/used, has been running solidly for over seven years, but is now experiencing an intermitted glitch that is causing it to freeze. I've cleaned it and everything, but I can't find the problem.

I just remembered that Medion laptops are apparently made by Lenovo and from what I've heard, Lenovo make pretty good gear.

 

[barry]

We used Dell exclusively at work for about 15 years, most of ours were pretty reliable until the gx240, gx260, gx270, gx645 models, most of which had massive power supply failure rates. This should have been after the Tawain capacitor problems.

The gx745 and 755 may be more reliable, but we didn't have as many of them.

For home, I always self-build, and have found reliability and value to be good to excellent with the better component brands.

I stopped using the cheapest components many years ago after a couple dead power supplies.

The only components that are still hit and miss are storage devices... Always backup!

Barry


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