I owned a PC and Server shop till 2002 when the whole 9/11 and dot com crash killed me. I used to be able to make $50 to $100 on a PC build and $500 to $10,000 on a server build profit. Nobody in the area could match my price because I could buy in bulk, mind you it was limited, but the credit account I had with my supplier was good enough to qualify. If I wanted to build the same now, I wouldn't make that....why? Because HP, Dell and Gateway are selling below cost. They make money off of the installed applications...they make kickbacks on the quantity of AMD or Intel they sell.
There is no way you can build a home machine for less than the cost of a prebuilt box.
Now, I do build my own, but the Core i7, 12GB ram, 3TB in OS drives (not the storage drives for games, music and vids), ATI 6970 and everything else I demand for my personal machine is quite exceptional compared to a HP box, but look at this:
CyberpowerPC Gamer Xtreme GX6105 Gaming PC - Intel Core i7-960 3.2GHz, 12GB DDR3, 1TB HDD, DVDRW, AMD Radeon HD 6870, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Core i7 $290
12GB $100
HD $60
DVD $30
Vid $200
keyboard $20
Mouse $10
Case $70
Motherboard (x58 with sata iii, usb 3.0) $230
800W PSU $60
Win7 Home Premium $100 (with hardware purchase)
Comes to $1170, so is your time worth $29 to build? Well, don't forget the $60 to $100 for shipping all of those parts...and you are paying way more than the cost of that PC from CyberPower, which is more costly than even a similar HP/Compaq that is $900 + $230 for the video card, or Lenovo which is $1100 at CDW....and the shipping is lower and much faster on one PC than a bunch of parts.
Those come with excellent warranties also, where if something in your home built rig breaks you have to diagnose and fix it...wait for Asus or XFX or Crucial or Seagate or who knows to get you an RMA number and deal with 2-3 weeks of shipping back and fourth.
Honestly, unless you plan on builing something in the $1500+ price range for parts you absolutely will not save money in the long run. It is only then that CyberPower, Alienware and other boutique computers are more expensive than building your own.
So, do what you want, I tend to build mine because shelling out $3-4K for a light up case from Alienware isn't my thing, but when it comes to the PC I buy my mom or family, I just tell them to go to Best Buy or Walmart and pick one out that features everything they want, read the reviews on your phone or a web browser on the PC itself, and save us both some time and money.
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