building high-spec PC vs. buying off the shelf?

chateau9

Hi,

I'm looking to get a couple of new PCs of fairly high-spec (Dual-core, Nvidia 8800s, 4 gig RAM etc). I'm comfortable building PCs from scratch, but I wondered whether these days it's cheaper to buy an off-the-shelf (e.g Dell) model rather than buying components individually.

Does anyone have experience of this?

Aliktren

I've never quite figured this out either.

Last time I went half way house and used Savastore, who allowed me to pick most of the major components from a modest list so you at least can get approximately your exact requirments, the cost at the time was comparable to Dell but with better spec, and cheaper than a custom ground up jobby, however, times have moved on (that was at least 18 months ago )

Last time I looked in December I was looking at about £800 quid for a self built tripped out dual core intel with a top of the line mobo, expensive memory and fast disks.

The "problem" with people like Dell (and I dont have anything against themuse them at home as well as work and they are very good in my experience) is that a lot of the fittings like cases and mobos are custom, so 12 months down the line when you want to change something you have issues, if you build it yourself you just rip out the bit you dont want and buy an off the shelf replacement, my last Dell PC had Rimm memory, which pretty much put me off buying a standard PC for life.