What do you guys thing about buying versus building? Which is better? I have always built my own computers - that way you control what goes into them. But the last computer I built was an athlon XP and i am still running windows 98. I am not even sure what would a good board and CPU to get anymore. Dual core? Quad core? Intel? AMD? And is building still worth it?????
Building you own computer will always be better than buying a pre-made system, both in terms of price and quality. Not to mention that you can recycle old parts to cut costs even more. Building a modern computer is much easier than building a retro computer. Just make sure you get a CPU and RAM that fits on your new motherboard.
wrote:Building you own computer will always be better than buying a pre-made system, both in terms of price and quality. Not to mention that you can recycle old parts to cut costs even more.
That's a bold statement. If you have no idea what you're doing, you can very easily lose out in terms of both price and quality, and if you try to save money by recycling old parts, you'll likely get what you pay for.
If you buy a pre-built machine, you might not necessarily pay that much more in the end, especially if you want a legal Windows license and if you buy when it's on sale. Plus you get warranty service. Yes, I suppose you can go wrong and end up with something that has proprietary parts that are not easily replaced or exchanged, but I doubt that's as big of a problem as it used to be.
Building you own computer will always be better than buying a pre-made system, both in terms of price and quality. Not to mention that you can recycle old parts to cut costs even more. Building a modern computer is much easier than building a retro computer. Just make sure you get a CPU and RAM that fits on your new motherboard.
I agree with this statement up to the point that if you aren't skilled in computer hardware AND software, you should have a friend help you with it. Or, as a few of my friends have done, purchased the parts and spent a little extra money to have a professonal assemble it.
If you buy a pre-built machine, you might not necessarily pay that much more in the end, especially if you want a legal Windows license and if you buy when it's on sale. Plus you get warranty service. Yes, I suppose you can go wrong and end up with something that has proprietary parts that are not easily replaced or exchanged, but I doubt that's as big of a problem as it used to be.
ALWAYS get a legal copy of whatever OS you choose (yes, I know I'm stating the obvious here), and the warranty is a help sometimes. I have never seen a pre-built that could beat any of the custom builds that I've messed with (with a few exceptions of systems that the owner had no clue what he was doing), in terms of raw performance and quality. Though proprietary parts aren't as much of an issue as they used to be, they still exist in some major brands that I've tried recently.
I really like the topic though, it's a good question that should invoke some research before dishing out the cash.
Building you own computer will always be better than buying a pre-made system, both in terms of price and quality.
It is absolutely not always better. It is only sometimes better. Unless you have some specific need that isn't served by a stock system, these days a prebuilt will usually be a better deal. When I say "specific need," I mean things like a bleeding-edge gaming system, or as you mentioned, reusing certain parts you already have.
But putting aside the fairly small percentage of exceptions, most people don't need anything fancier than a common low-end or mid-range system, and in that area you really can't compete with the price of a big-name prebuilt. It's a simple economy of scale... if a company produces millions of machines in a few specific configurations, they're going to be able to do it for cheaper per unit than a guy buying individual parts and building a similar system in his living room.
And on the matter of quality, it's pretty much a non-issue. To put it simply, hardware has become so cheap that it's hardly worthwhile for a company to produce crap, and so there just isn't much crap on the market anymore. And amongst the low-quality parts that do exist, you're not likely to find them in prebuilt machines. Manufacturers tend to want their machines to last awhile, because warranty claims aren't profitable.
I don't understand why so many people seem to like trashing on the quality of prebuilts. I've never seen any evidence to back up that claim. The favorite example seems to be the capacitor failures in Dells a few years ago, but the people who spout that argument tend to completely ignore the fact that most aftermarket motherboards of the same time had the exact same problem. And from the other side, most of the infamously crappy hardware, like the PCChips fake cache boards, or grossly overrated fire-hazard power supplies, have only appeared on the aftermarket, never in big-name machines.
The only real caveat with prebuilts is in the optional upgrades. Those are usually a cash cow for big-box companies, kinda like how retailers like to upsell overpriced cables when you buy a TV. If you find an otherwise good prebuilt machine, but you want a better graphics card, it's almost always cheaper to buy the card separately and add it yourself. Same with RAM. But even then, it's often still a better deal to do some minor upgrades to a prebuilt than it is to build the whole system yourself.
wrote:What do you guys thing about buying versus building? Which is better? I have always built my own computers - that way you control what goes into them. But the last computer I built was an athlon XP and i am still running windows 98. I am not even sure what would a good board and CPU to get anymore. Dual core? Quad core? Intel? AMD? And is building still worth it?????
Personally I prefer to always build my own rigs. Imo it doesn't really matter much if you go AMD or Intel, just go buy what you want and for what price.
I wouldn't build anything less then a quadcore these days...unless it's a retro rig or a spare lan-rig 😉
If building a rig containing new hardware technology (like the new coolers, they are much different from the Socket A ones) do your homework. If you can you can practice on a dead board beforehand or watch a couple youtube vids! 😉
When buying parts, try to do a lil research for every part. Not only about it's statistics (like, whats the maximum speed of RAM it can use? What PCIe or other ports I want, and how many?
For me, I wanted an AMD quadcore with a floppy controller, IDE, PCI and a full-ATX motherboard. On board video didn't matter to me and on board sound is kinda standard these days.
I saved some money by using an old IDE DVD drive (not even a burner as I hardly ever use one anymore and if I need to burn something I'll use my offline database for that, it has a burner and all my ISO's).
So first: Think about what you want, which features you're looking for etc. Then select the components around it.
Personally, if you may want to upgrade your board later (maybe even 5 years down the road or whatever) then go AMD AM3+. Intel has a habit of sockethopping a lot (changing sockets every year or 2 while AMD preserves great compatibility).
Last but not least: Consider what your budget will be!!!
Hope this helps! 😉
wrote:It is absolutely not always better. It is only sometimes better. Unless you have some specific need that isn't served by a stock […]
Building you own computer will always be better than buying a pre-made system, both in terms of price and quality.
It is absolutely not always better. It is only sometimes better. Unless you have some specific need that isn't served by a stock system, these days a prebuilt will usually be a better deal. When I say "specific need," I mean things like a bleeding-edge gaming system, or as you mentioned, reusing certain parts you already have.
But putting aside the fairly small percentage of exceptions, most people don't need anything fancier than a common low-end or mid-range system, and in that area you really can't compete with the price of a big-name prebuilt. It's a simple economy of scale... if a company produces millions of machines in a few specific configurations, they're going to be able to do it for cheaper per unit than a guy buying individual parts and building a similar system in his living room.
And on the matter of quality, it's pretty much a non-issue. To put it simply, hardware has become so cheap that it's hardly worthwhile for a company to produce crap, and so there just isn't much crap on the market anymore. And amongst the low-quality parts that do exist, you're not likely to find them in prebuilt machines. Manufacturers tend to want their machines to last awhile, because warranty claims aren't profitable.
I don't understand why so many people seem to like trashing on the quality of prebuilts. I've never seen any evidence to back up that claim. The favorite example seems to be the capacitor failures in Dells a few years ago, but the people who spout that argument tend to completely ignore the fact that most aftermarket motherboards of the same time had the exact same problem. And from the other side, most of the infamously crappy hardware, like the PCChips fake cache boards, or grossly overrated fire-hazard power supplies, have only appeared on the aftermarket, never in big-name machines.
The only real caveat with prebuilts is in the optional upgrades. Those are usually a cash cow for big-box companies, kinda like how retailers like to upsell overpriced cables when you buy a TV. If you find an otherwise good prebuilt machine, but you want a better graphics card, it's almost always cheaper to buy the card separately and add it yourself. Same with RAM. But even then, it's often still a better deal to do some minor upgrades to a prebuilt than it is to build the whole system yourself.
I agree for the most part with your post 😉
I just wanted to add that often OEM systems are somewhat cheaper then homebuild ones. They usually have pretty solid PSU's (I use those OEM PSU's all the time actually 😉 ), but sometimes use proprietary cases (so you can't reuse it without going through much trouble) and sometimes don't even come with a Windows CD! They might have nothing but a backup partition on your harddrive and if your harddrive fails, you'll need to get hold of some ISO's for your system. You usually can not activate Windows using youir particular royalty OEM Windows key!! You need their special disk! Also those royalty OEM Windows often come with extra unwanted crap or with some stuff disabled (like my friend's Acer laptop had some things in configuration manager disabled (sorry, don't know the English name)).
So there are pretty solid arguments for either. In the end I build my own because I want to choose what I want in my rig, it's fun and it's educating to me 😀
Aren't there perfectly legal ways to download Windows 7 (and Vista) ISOs that can be activated with an OEM key?
Edit...wrong topic! 😅
Edit2:
wrote:Aren't there perfectly legal ways to download Windows 7 (and Vista) ISOs that can be activated with an OEM key?
The thing is, your royalty OEM key will not activate using non-royalty Windows. At least that's afaik. This was the case with XP at least.
I have a notebook with Win7 Home Premium OEM. When trying to get the key to activate with the MSDN ISOs, I found that Windows Loader did the trick. It does it with the untouched method so doesn't install a thing.
Aren't there perfectly legal ways to download Windows 7 (and Vista) ISOs that can be activated with an OEM key?
Well... here's how it works:
Microsoft themselves have the ISOs available for download from their own 'Digital River' site, and the links are pretty easy to find through a Google search. I think technically those ISOs are intended for some sort of student deal rather than public consumption, so downloading them for some other purpose might be a bit of a legal grey-area. On the other hand, it is a legit MS ISO, freely available from a legit MS site (in other words, you can download them without having to login to anything or accept any sort of EULA), and you'd be using a legit key. So... yeah.
The thing is, your royalty OEM key will not activate using non-royalty Windows.
That was true of XP, but not Vista/7. Now it's just the key that determines whether it's an OEM/retail/whatever install... the install media itself is the same. There are, however, different installer versions for the different tiers... like, say, you can use any Home Premium key with any Home Premium install disc, but AFAIK you can't mix-and-match and use an Ultimate key with a Home Premium disc or anything like that.
wrote:That was true of XP, but not Vista/7. Now it's just the key that determines whether it's an OEM/retail/whatever install... the install media itself is the same. There are, however, different installer versions for the different tiers... like, say, you can use any Home Premium key with any Home Premium install disc, but AFAIK you can't mix-and-match and use an Ultimate key with a Home Premium disc or anything like that.
That was my understanding. However, the only difference between the install media is a single plaintext file that is easily modified prior to burning the media. You still can't use a Home Premium key to install Ultimate or vice-versa, but with the slight modfication, you can use the same media to install either version with the proper key.
But we're getting off-topic now, I guess.
Yep. I was talking strictly about stock installers, but you're absolutely correct: one little config file is the only difference between the installer versions. I actually have a modified install disc I made, that lets you choose the version from a menu at boot time... makes it a lot easier to work on a bunch of different machines without having to keep up with a bunch of different discs.
Unless you want to run 4 video cards in quad SLi, there's not a huge advantage in building when it comes to a basic system. Back when you had OEM's putting crap onboard video and no expansion slots for video other than PCI, or that had only one or two RAM slots ensuring you never had enough memory then you could make a better case for building systems but now a lot of OEM machines come with a lot better expansion capability than they did in the past. It's rare to find an OEM machine without at least one PCIe x16 slot or without the ability to expand to 8gb of RAM and most motherboard CPU sockets are capable of supporting single, dual, or quad core CPU's so upgrading your processing power even leaves you with a lot of options you didn't have before. There isn't even a huge price advantage to building your own, either, because OEM's buy such large volumes of parts that they get prices that you can't so they can sell you a complete system with specs identical or close to what you want for the same or less than you can build it yourself. I remember when I built my Phenom II x4 system about 6 months later Dell released a Phenom II x6 system for about the same price as I paid for all the parts for mine, so I probably would have been better off to wait for the Dell and bought that instead.
Nowadays it's only really wort to. Uild your own if you want very specific parts that don't come prebuilt. For example if you absolutely want that special Asus board with black dye and the Creative SoundBlasterSpecial F1 Vettel edition that emits the sound of a F1 car on starting up (obviously just joking 😉) you will need build it on your own.
I enjoyedtinkering with my old setup, including the choice of boards and so on, but these days, couldn't care less 😉
That's a bold statement. If you have no idea what you're doing, you can very easily lose out in terms of both price and quality, and if you try to save money by recycling old parts, you'll likely get what you pay for.
Well, I wouldn't recommend my 70 year old aunt, who couldn't care less about the workings of a computer, to build a custom gaming rig herself for her e-mailing and digital scrapbooking needs. But Ncmark seemes to have the motivation to learn about the noble art of computer building.
When I said "recycle old parts", I mostly meant parts like the case, DVD-unit, keyboard, speakers, screen, mouse and other peripherals that has a much longer shelf life than graphics cards and the like. I have several old workhorses in and around my modern computer that has been around since the 90:es and still perform as well as what you could buy new today.
Then again, a person who knows nothing about computers would likely end up with a real crappy pre-built one anyway. Those I see in stores are ridiculously overpriced, ridiculously overpowered in areas that yield high numbers and inflates the price (like the amount of RAM or the GHz of the processor) but underpowered in areas that really matters, with weak graphics cards (with huge amounts of video RAM to appear powerful) that bottlenecks all the good components. Sure, auntie 70 years old wouldn't need a good graphics card, but she wouldn't need 8 GB of RAM either.
Here is an example of a computer sold where I live. I suppose the specifications don't need to be translated to be understood: http://www.elgiganten.se/product/datorer-till … stationar-dator
That is what most average Joes who believe that "more expensive is better" would end up with. The price is about 1400 dollars...
And on the matter of quality, it's pretty much a non-issue. To put it simply, hardware has become so cheap that it's hardly worthwhile for a company to produce crap, and so there just isn't much crap on the market anymore. And amongst the low-quality parts that do exist, you're not likely to find them in prebuilt machines. Manufacturers tend to want their machines to last awhile, because warranty claims aren't profitable.
I was mostly speaking from my experiences with my dad's 6 years old Compaq Presario, which happens to be the worst computer I've ever seen. The specifications are all right for it's time, but they cut corners in every way imaginable. The cooling fans (Delta) sound like vacuum cleaners and suck dust inte the computer like vacuum cleaners, the CPU cooler is a block of aluminum that overheats from the strain of just opening the web browser and makes the cooling fan spin at 100%. The over heated CPU cooler also made all the capacitors in it's vicinity age prematurely from the heat it radiates. I'd like to replace the cooler, but I can't since it's glued to the processor.
Then I had to drill new holes in the case when I wanted to fit a new PSU, because the case wasn't ATX compliant. Just about every other component is OEM with proprietary drivers that makes it hard to fit them in another system and lowers their second-hand value if I were to sell them after an upgrade. Then my dad paid extra for features he has never ever used, like both a normal DVD-unit and a DVD-writer, a SD-card reader, a modem. And then there were all the bloatware that took me hours to identify and uninstall...
I could go on, but I think you get my point.
To build your own computer from scratch might require an initial investment of learning, but once it is finished you will have a computer that does what you want it to do and that can be easily upgraded whenever your needs changes or technology advances. And if you recycle some old parts and buy some parts from Ebay it will be much cheaper than to get every component brand new in a pre-built system.
wrote:I agree for the most part with your post ;) I just wanted to add that often OEM systems are somewhat cheaper then homebuild ones […]
wrote:It is absolutely not always better. It is only sometimes better. Unless you have some specific need that isn't served by a stock […]
Building you own computer will always be better than buying a pre-made system, both in terms of price and quality.
It is absolutely not always better. It is only sometimes better. Unless you have some specific need that isn't served by a stock system, these days a prebuilt will usually be a better deal. When I say "specific need," I mean things like a bleeding-edge gaming system, or as you mentioned, reusing certain parts you already have.
But putting aside the fairly small percentage of exceptions, most people don't need anything fancier than a common low-end or mid-range system, and in that area you really can't compete with the price of a big-name prebuilt. It's a simple economy of scale... if a company produces millions of machines in a few specific configurations, they're going to be able to do it for cheaper per unit than a guy buying individual parts and building a similar system in his living room.
And on the matter of quality, it's pretty much a non-issue. To put it simply, hardware has become so cheap that it's hardly worthwhile for a company to produce crap, and so there just isn't much crap on the market anymore. And amongst the low-quality parts that do exist, you're not likely to find them in prebuilt machines. Manufacturers tend to want their machines to last awhile, because warranty claims aren't profitable.
I don't understand why so many people seem to like trashing on the quality of prebuilts. I've never seen any evidence to back up that claim. The favorite example seems to be the capacitor failures in Dells a few years ago, but the people who spout that argument tend to completely ignore the fact that most aftermarket motherboards of the same time had the exact same problem. And from the other side, most of the infamously crappy hardware, like the PCChips fake cache boards, or grossly overrated fire-hazard power supplies, have only appeared on the aftermarket, never in big-name machines.
The only real caveat with prebuilts is in the optional upgrades. Those are usually a cash cow for big-box companies, kinda like how retailers like to upsell overpriced cables when you buy a TV. If you find an otherwise good prebuilt machine, but you want a better graphics card, it's almost always cheaper to buy the card separately and add it yourself. Same with RAM. But even then, it's often still a better deal to do some minor upgrades to a prebuilt than it is to build the whole system yourself.
I agree for the most part with your post 😉
I just wanted to add that often OEM systems are somewhat cheaper then homebuild ones. They usually have pretty solid PSU's (I use those OEM PSU's all the time actually 😉 ), but sometimes use proprietary cases (so you can't reuse it without going through much trouble) and sometimes don't even come with a Windows CD! They might have nothing but a backup partition on your harddrive and if your harddrive fails, you'll need to get hold of some ISO's for your system. You usually can not activate Windows using youir particular royalty OEM Windows key!! You need their special disk! Also those royalty OEM Windows often come with extra unwanted crap or with some stuff disabled (like my friend's Acer laptop had some things in configuration manager disabled (sorry, don't know the English name)).So there are pretty solid arguments for either. In the end I build my own because I want to choose what I want in my rig, it's fun and it's educating to me 😀
99% of brand new systems allow you to create recovery discs... they recommend you to do so immediately after turning the system on (of course no where in the box or manuals says you need to buy DVDs to burn them, making you having to make that 2nd trip to the store 😒 )
HP allows you to call them within 3 months of purchase to get the recovery discs free. They don't tell you you can do this because they don't want spend money sending you the discs.
wrote:Edit...wrong topic! :sweatdrop: […]
Edit...wrong topic! 😅
Edit2:
wrote:Aren't there perfectly legal ways to download Windows 7 (and Vista) ISOs that can be activated with an OEM key?
The thing is, your royalty OEM key will not activate using non-royalty Windows. At least that's afaik. This was the case with XP at least.
that's not true... you CAN activate using the OEM COA sticker on the side of the computer case, but it must be phone activation
if the OEM COA keys could not be used to activate, then by that logic they are invalid licenses... and that's not true at all!
what's true is, the OEM COA keys cannot be used on systems that is not that model/brand name... they are tied to that brand/model!
you can also activate the same way OEMs do in the factory... SLP or SLIC method, but I'm not allowed to discuss those methods here
wrote:Well... here's how it works: […]
Aren't there perfectly legal ways to download Windows 7 (and Vista) ISOs that can be activated with an OEM key?
Well... here's how it works:
Microsoft themselves have the ISOs available for download from their own 'Digital River' site, and the links are pretty easy to find through a Google search. I think technically those ISOs are intended for some sort of student deal rather than public consumption, so downloading them for some other purpose might be a bit of a legal grey-area. On the other hand, it is a legit MS ISO, freely available from a legit MS site (in other words, you can download them without having to login to anything or accept any sort of EULA), and you'd be using a legit key. So... yeah.
The thing is, your royalty OEM key will not activate using non-royalty Windows.
That was true of XP, but not Vista/7. Now it's just the key that determines whether it's an OEM/retail/whatever install... the install media itself is the same. There are, however, different installer versions for the different tiers... like, say, you can use any Home Premium key with any Home Premium install disc, but AFAIK you can't mix-and-match and use an Ultimate key with a Home Premium disc or anything like that.
what was true with XP is the same with Vista/7 as far as product keys goes... I'm not talking about installation media, I'm talking about the OEM COA stickers... you cannot activate the windows online, it must be by phone
the digital river downloads are retail versions, but not that it really matters... you can modify the installation to do SLIC activation, just like you can modify any XP install disc to do SLP activation... with SLP/SLIC, you don't need to do any activation... it does the check between a certificate file and the system's BIOS... by doing this, you can easily imitate/replicate the OEM's install disc that they won't give to you
wrote:Well, I wouldn't recommend my 70 year old aunt, who couldn't care less about the workings of a computer, to build a custom gamin […]
That's a bold statement. If you have no idea what you're doing, you can very easily lose out in terms of both price and quality, and if you try to save money by recycling old parts, you'll likely get what you pay for.
Well, I wouldn't recommend my 70 year old aunt, who couldn't care less about the workings of a computer, to build a custom gaming rig herself for her e-mailing and digital scrapbooking needs. But Ncmark seemes to have the motivation to learn about the noble art of computer building.
When I said "recycle old parts", I mostly meant parts like the case, DVD-unit, keyboard, speakers, screen, mouse and other peripherals that has a much longer shelf life than graphics cards and the like. I have several old workhorses in and around my modern computer that has been around since the 90:es and still perform as well as what you could buy new today.Then again, a person who knows nothing about computers would likely end up with a real crappy pre-built one anyway. Those I see in stores are ridiculously overpriced, ridiculously overpowered in areas that yield high numbers and inflates the price (like the amount of RAM or the GHz of the processor) but underpowered in areas that really matters, with weak graphics cards (with huge amounts of video RAM to appear powerful) that bottlenecks all the good components. Sure, auntie 70 years old wouldn't need a good graphics card, but she wouldn't need 8 GB of RAM either.
Here is an example of a computer sold where I live. I suppose the specifications don't need to be translated to be understood: http://www.elgiganten.se/product/datorer-till … stationar-dator
That is what most average Joes who believe that "more expensive is better" would end up with. The price is about 1400 dollars...
And on the matter of quality, it's pretty much a non-issue. To put it simply, hardware has become so cheap that it's hardly worthwhile for a company to produce crap, and so there just isn't much crap on the market anymore. And amongst the low-quality parts that do exist, you're not likely to find them in prebuilt machines. Manufacturers tend to want their machines to last awhile, because warranty claims aren't profitable.
I was mostly speaking from my experiences with my dad's 6 years old Compaq Presario, which happens to be the worst computer I've ever seen. The specifications are all right for it's time, but they cut corners in every way imaginable. The cooling fans (Delta) sound like vacuum cleaners and suck dust inte the computer like vacuum cleaners, the CPU cooler is a block of aluminum that overheats from the strain of just opening the web browser and makes the cooling fan spin at 100%. The over heated CPU cooler also made all the capacitors in it's vicinity age prematurely from the heat it radiates. I'd like to replace the cooler, but I can't since it's glued to the processor.
Then I had to drill new holes in the case when I wanted to fit a new PSU, because the case wasn't ATX compliant. Just about every other component is OEM with proprietary drivers that makes it hard to fit them in another system and lowers their second-hand value if I were to sell them after an upgrade. Then my dad paid extra for features he has never ever used, like both a normal DVD-unit and a DVD-writer, a SD-card reader, a modem. And then there were all the bloatware that took me hours to identify and uninstall...
I could go on, but I think you get my point.To build your own computer from scratch might require an initial investment of learning, but once it is finished you will have a computer that does what you want it to do and that can be easily upgraded whenever your needs changes or technology advances. And if you recycle some old parts and buy some parts from Ebay it will be much cheaper than to get every component brand new in a pre-built system.
the only brand name systems worth anything are typically their business grade models... they "suck" as far as performance goes, but that's because they use conservative settings and components in order to increase reliability... they still have poor upgradeability of course
are they worth the money? it depends on your skills, needs, and TIME of course
