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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/25/09
I'm building an i7 machine soon which will probably be $2400-2600 less. Admittedly it'll probably use a skimpier Graphics card but the margin you pay on construction for these machines is silly.
11/24/09
11/24/09
11/24/09
11/24/09
11/24/09
Last year I figured out that I would save $290 over Newegg if I got it from them rather than slapping it together myself (first PC since my Dell P75 I haven’t put together). I wasn't keen on the idea as these computers aren't built to ship like Dell, HP, Apple, etc, but for close to $300 I threw caution to the wind. Long story short I picked out everything I wanted and had the computer in just over a week.
Back in the day I worked for a reseller shipping clones around the US and learned the hard way that when you receive a clone you need to check it before firing it up (if you don’t and something is loose you’re going to have to RMA it) because stuff does come loose.
I popped open the case and sure enough the HSF had come partially off. I reapplied some grease, put the HSF back on, and it was good to go. They put a ton of packing in the box, which I’m sure saved it from even further damage.
It was well under $2000 (keep in mind this was last year) for a Bloomfield, 6gb tri-channel corsair, 2 500gb drives, Asus P6T, GF 260, blue ray, dvd burner, Vista Ultimate, razor keyboard, Logi 2.1 sound, and more stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting.
Oh and it's been running just under 4ghz on air for almost a year now.
11/24/09
11/24/09
Build your own custom rig and take a really nice vacation with the savings... you'll be happier.
11/24/09
11/24/09
And people who earn 250k+ don't consider everything they do based on time/hourly pay. They still shop at Target, go to the mall, visit relatives, and engage in hobbies.
I would be willing to bet that a gamer who desired those specs would have the skills to build their own computer.
I do pretty well, I guess, and I build my own computers for work and entertainment (I just built a 6GB i7 computer for around $1k last summer). Paying over $3K, even for a computer that I use for work (unless my employer foots the bill) seems silly.
11/24/09
I've been waiting for someone to say this. I stopped building my own PCs when I was 17, because that's approximately when my time became too valuable to spend researching, building, supporting and upgrading my own machine. Don't forget when you 'roll your own' you don't get a support / maintenance contract either. This may seem trivial but what home builders tend to forget is the value of quality assurance. Sure, you can slap together a bunch of components from newegg, but how do you know that they will work well together for an extended period of time. A reputable vendor will spend at least a month qualifying a new platform before shipping it. This allows them to guarantee that it will work and offer reasonable support if it doesn't.
Yes, you can always buy off the shelf parts and build your own PC for less than you can buy a complete one, but what you're really doing is setting yourself up for an endless failure-debug-repair cycle. Some people enjoy that sort of thing (we call them Test Engineers), but if you want a PC that works most of the time and can call someone to fix it if it doesn't, you're better off buying from a good OEM (not Psystar!).
11/24/09
11/24/09
What better quality assurance is there when you select, handle, and assemble every part in your own computer?
I love how people say that their time is too valuable. I suppose you pay someone to shop for you because its not cost effective for you to go anymore.
11/24/09
Rich people see their time more "valuable" than others andnot that they don't have time to build a PC, they would rather overspend for a built PC and have their more valuable time for family, friends, etc... (unless of course they enjoy building PCs)
11/24/09
#speakup
11/25/09
To say everyone who makes a lot of money thinks the same way is just wrong. A majority of them may be that way, but not all of them.
11/25/09
11/24/09
A quick search of Newegg found the following:
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz - $198
ASUS Crosshair III Formula AM3 Motherboard- $200
4GB Corsair DDR3 1600 SDRAM- $94
Rosewill BRONZE series RBR1000-M 1000W Power Supply- $196
Two SAPPHIRE 100269HDMI Radeon HD 4890 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 Video cards - $390
AZZA Solano 1000 Black 3-Fan case- $109
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB HDD- $200
LITE-ON CD/DVD Burner- $29
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - $104
Total cost- $1504 for a computer that will run any game today at absolute max settings. Add a few bucks for cables and tools if you need them, and you're still far below the $4k overkill above.
If you don't know how to put these components together on your own, Lifehacker has an excellent beginner's guide.
[lifehacker.com]
11/24/09
11/24/09
11/24/09
11/24/09
@grimdeath9740: Yeah, their case is pretty. But from what I can tell based on the Falcon website photos, the airflow in the AZZA case I listed is way better. Maybe their system is liquid-cooled, but the one in the photo above isn't.
11/24/09
11/24/09
11/24/09
11/24/09
#tips
11/24/09
11/24/09
11/24/09
It's the same laptop you'd get at Sager, etc.
Desktops? That's another story.
11/24/09
#tips
11/24/09
iBuyPower is the McDonald's of the custom computing world.
11/24/09
11/24/09
11/24/09
#tips
11/24/09
11/19/09
14" 720p display, 250GB, 2GB, intel wireless n, T4300 proc, 9 cell battery:
$534
looks like it comes with vista (WTF?) but i'd just throw TinyXP on anyways.
bottom line: you can totally score a much better laptop with not too much more heft for not too much more money, and i'm sure you could pick up something with an AMD for even cheaper.
11/19/09
11/19/09
Bottom line: It does not take much processor to run office, facebook and the other crap most people do. And instead of a huge notebook I can carry a much lighter and smaller unit with tremendous battery life.
And every week best buy and every other retailer has a deal for a $399 Notebook.
[www.bestbuy.com]
11/19/09
when my 5 year old inspiron with a palty 512mb of ram and a 1.6ghz pentium m can run fullscreen HD video at 1920 x 1280, i tend to believe that a dual core @ 2.1ghz can handle output at 720 just fine, even if it is with integrated graphics.
the other part is, my laptop is my primary computer - i dont own a desktop, so whatever i eventually upgrade to needs all teh bells and whistles.
11/19/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
lol
But... I bought a netbook for $380 that's a good netbook, it doesn't suck. It doesn't... Can Steve Jobs... be wrong?
Oh my lord...
#speakup
11/19/09
"I mean, I'm not arguing this is probably the most promising netbook of all time."
Kanye approves.
11/19/09
They're there, but they're not stock. You can still get a C2Duo as a BTO option. But don't let the Pentium name scare you - they've got half the L2 cache, but they're Core2 parts and a wicked good value.