Poll of the Day > What are the benefits of building your own PC?

(+) Yeah! (+)

What are the drawbacks?

It's cheaper, but the price kind of equalized when the GFX card prices went haywire. Now that they're back down, I'm sure it's cheaper again.
The downside is that if it's your first time, it could be nerve-wracking. Also, if you have carpet and forget to discharge your static electricity, you could fry the whole thing.

The thing about the price is, if you wait until Cyber Monday or something, you could get a pre-built for cheaper. Like when I got my old rig back in the day, I went from a midrange i5 to an i7-950(one of the best CPUs back in the day), GTX460 1GB to a GTX 460 2GB(only made like 2-3FPS difference in most games at the time, but still an upgrade), and some speakers for the same price. This was with me shopping around on Newegg, Tigerdirect, and one other website I forget the name of by buying it from ibuypower.com instead.

You feel comfortable opening up your computer to take a look around.

The downside is you will have a false sense of confidence and poke around where you shouldn't.

It's nice being familiar with all of the components. It's not incredibly difficult, so it's beneficial in the same way as understanding any technical device you might have, or mechanical device, like a car. You could (well, will) save yourself on repairs in the future basically, besides being able to generally build a PC for cheaper than a prebuild.

lihlih posted...

Also, if you have carpet and forget to discharge your static electricity, you could fry the whole thing.

yeah this isn't really true anymore

the computer itself generates more static energy when it turns on than you can with socks on carpet

hera posted...

yeah this isn't really true anymore

the computer itself generates more static energy when it turns on than you can with socks on carpet

It's rare, but I zapped a lighting system, an SSD, and a HDD a couple of years back. Still worth protecting yourself/your gear during repairs/installation.

https://youtu.be/xdzo-uAvz5Y

https://youtu.be/nXkgbmr3dRA

maybe you're going to fry chinese knockoffs and just shit from wish.com, but regular stuff?

nah.

hera posted...

yeah this isn't really true anymore

the computer itself generates more static energy when it turns on than you can with socks on carpet

Hey, hey my helly, that's not true at all.
You're not rubbing components together when you turn on your computer.

I can't shock myself with a computer when I turn it on in a dry day, I can shock myself by just shuffling around and touching a grounded wire.

Having that panic attack after you've meticulously pieced every part together, applied the thermal grease for your specific processor perfectly, used all the custom specs within range for power and timing all so a certain synergy can exist, and then finally pressed power on and nothing happens.

You freak put for half an hour rechecked everything and wondering what you could've missed by considering totally remote and ultra rare possibilities only to finally realize you attached one of the 4-pins to the wrong connector on the motherboard.

Then suddenly it all powers on and everything works just fine.

you can tell people that you built your PC, they wont care but you can still tell them

hera posted...

https://youtu.be/xdzo-uAvz5Y

https://youtu.be/nXkgbmr3dRA

maybe you're going to fry chinese knockoffs and just s*** from wish.com, but regular stuff?

nah.

helly, I am an electrical engineer who produces electrical equipment for a whole bunch of automanufacturers, I am in the the EE team to explicitly deals with ESD.

You can absolutely brick your computer with ESD.

Of course you can. I bricked one by dropping a sheet of aluminum foil into the case. Boom, power supply and video card gone. May of 2002. Whenever TCM was running the Once Upon A Time in The West with Charles Bronson movie. I watched it instead of playing EverQuest. I missed like 10 raids on my bard.

You can do whatever you want you feel comfortable with. Don't let multi-million subscriber youtube channels tell you what to do.

The benefits are you can select all your parts for performance and aesthetics and it's fun to put together. Even I was able to do it.

shadowsword87 posted...

helly, I am an electrical engineer who produces electrical equipment for a whole bunch of automanufacturers, I am in the the EE team to explicitly deals with ESD.

You can absolutely brick your computer with ESD.

they literally blast a running computer with an electro gun and it does

nothing

im not saying it isn't possible, just that the odds of it happening are pretty much non existent if you're using actual reputable branded components

like dont get a $5 power supply from wish

also don't drop a conductive material on them, like aluminum foil, that just makes a short circuit, straug

hera posted...

they literally blast a running computer with an electro gun and it does
nothing

They basically just hit some bad RAM with the ESD gun, I'm willing to bet I could brick a computer with that.

shadowsword87 posted...

They basically just hit some bad RAM with the ESD gun, I'm willing to bet I could brick a computer with that.

ESD gun can kill most shit if you don't set it up properly.

You get the components that you want, you can pick higher quality components, and everything is standard so there are no surprises later on when you need to upgrade or repair. It will generally cost less for high end components.

Down side is no real warranty, you can totally wreck expensive parts if you don't know what you're doing, there's no guarantee all the parts will work together property, and it's time consuming to do the assembly. A big manufacturer may have access to cheaper low end components than you.

It can be intimidating the first time

Like your mom

Many benefits to building your own rig. Doesn't have to be a super computer either, make it fit your budget/style and you can always go back and upgrade/modify to bigger and better parts later. Especially if you know anyone who regularly gets the latest and greatest because they generally offload the older hardware at a decent discount and it will still be relevant.

Drawbacks? I find it hard to consider anything a drawback per se. Learn as you go, the more you do it the more efficient you will become just like anything else in life. You may find that you actually enjoy building rigs and installing operating systems.

Good luck!

Building computers is way easier then it was 10-20 years ago. Nowadays you don't even need a screwdriver. My dad built his current computer and all I helped him with was picking parts that worked well together and "checking his work" after. And that was someone who knows next to nothing about electronics. If he can do it, anyone can.

Downside is you are responsible for diagnosing any problems with it, but pretty much everything can be googled easily. It is very rare you are going to have a problem that is so out there you can't figure it out. Plus for some people, that is part of the fun. As much as the "My computer has a memory leak and I don't know why" problem I had a few years back was annoying, I also loved trying out different things to fix it (FYI, it was corrupted network drivers I had to manually reinstall from a bad Windows update).

pros:
it's fun
you get exactly what you want
it can be cheaper
you know your computer better
educational
it's fun

cons:
stressful
tricky; putting on a heat sink properly is not necessarily so easy, nor is fitting everything in the case
mistakes can be expensive; things can be missed; things can be miscalculated

You're generally going to save money over buying a comparable prebuilt (this is less true for lower-end machines, but anything "gaming-quality" is probably going to be cheaper to build than buy), you can tailor what you build to your own needs to avoid overspending on things that won't benefit you, you'll have dramatically less bloatware to deal with, and it's generally easier to upgrade a custom build than a prebuilt (which are often crammed into their cases as tightly as possible, leaving little room for different-sized components or components that will need more airflow).

The downside is that you're going to have to make all the decisions and handle all of the support yourself. That's generally not that bad because there are a ton of resources available to help you as needed, but you still won't be able to rely on service warranties or anything like that yo fix thigns that go wrong.

It's really cheaper to build a computer? I assumed it would be more expensive but better quality

Muscles posted...

It's really cheaper to build a computer? I assumed it would be more expensive but better quality

part of what you pay for for a pre-made computer is the labor and expertise of the person putting it together

Muscles posted...

It's really cheaper to build a computer? I assumed it would be more expensive but better quality

The comparison got a lot less favourable for a while when GPU and other component prices were through the roof (I would guess because prebuilt companies were getting first dibs on component orders and not having to pay the premium that those of us scrabbling for the leftovers did, but I can't confirm that), but generally speaking, you can look at the specs of a prebuilt computer being advertised as a "gaming computer" and order all of the same parts they list yourself (plus better versions of the ones that are harder to market and don't get mentioned, like the PSU) for less than what they charge. That's especially true if you keep an eye out for sales as you gather up your parts.

Of course, the caveat of that is that you'll be looking at 2-4 hours of your time to actually put the thing together and get it running, and prebuilts usually come with some kind of service warranty. Depending on how much you value your time and how confident you are that you'll be able to solve any issues that come up, paying the premium to have it made for you may be worthwhile.

When it doesn't work you get to have loads of fun trying to determine the defective part so that you can RMA it. Always a blast.