PC gamer and build your own PC?

Percy1983

Yes

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

The machine I bought was £1300 with a liquid cooled i7 3930k (hex core hyperthreaded, SB-E), two 6950's when the 6970 was top of the range, 8GB ram, BD-rom, 1TB HDD, 875W power supply, OS and case. To put that into perspective, at the time the 3930K was around £500, the graphics cards were £300 each, the motherboard around £250 (the X79 platform was extremely expensive at release) so that's already over the cost of the machine while still needing a decent power supply for the Crossfire graphics and processor, a suitable case to put it all in, optical drive, ram and operating system. The case is well made and designed as access to all the components is very straight forward, there's a lot of capacity and the cooling is extensive. Plus unlike a custom machine this one has a next business day on site warranty which means any downtime is minimal. On one of the machines I'd built previously I had a dud motherboard which took a while to sort out with the retailer as I had to send it back, wait for it to be tested etc. whereas when the graphics card failed on the Nehalem machine I had a new one delivered next day and the old one taken away at the same time.

I spent a long time pricing up parts but could never get anywhere near as low a price for a full Nehalem/SB-E system mainly due to the large price premium on the platforms when they were new out. It can need a bit of patience but usually well worth it



Dell conservatively rate their power supplies, they can handle a lot more than they state. I had the Nehalem based machine packed with every drive bay (optical and hard drive), every ram slot (six of them), every pci-e slot all populated and a top end graphics card a lot of which I added myself and the machine never had any power issues despite spending most of its time at full capacity either rendering or gaming as it wasn't used for anything else.

I've filled up most of the slots on the SB-E system to up its storage (Dell storage prices are daft so I've put my own in instead) and optical drives (only one optical drive bay is empty at the moment) and its processor is running a decent overclock but the power supply has been fine. As well as my own machines I've supported a lot of Dell machines and very rarely have issues with their power supplies.



Dell have been allowing overclocking for years, not only do they allow it but they ship some machines pre-overclocked - the 3930K I bought came with a factory overclock of 4.2Ghz and the bios is unlocked to allow access to the overclocking settings a K-series processor allows for.

I'm not in any way saying everyone should buy prebuilt machines, just explaining why I bought mine given there's quite a lot of myths built up around prebuilt machines which are certainly not true for all machines.

John

Sounds quite interesting and certainly a monster when bought (and still is now). I really can't verify prices at the time so will take your word for it but I will say if that is the case its the first time I have seen a pre built cost less than the sum of its parts as the usual sum is:

cost of parts + labour + overlocking time (if oc model) + name badge = more

The only advantage I can see to prebuilt is if you don't have the knowledge or energy to spec/buy/build/overclock and they come with a warranty, but on the warranty my PC has many just different lengths of time for many different components.

When you say dell surely thats alienware?

Weird_Nev

With dell and the likes, they achieve vast economies of scale. There is certainly room for them to build computers and still offer it at below cost price to the consumer - but you have to know what you're shopping for!

Percy1983

Yes

Weird_Nev wrote: »

With dell and the likes, they achieve vast economies of scale. There is certainly room for them to build computers and still offer it at below cost price to the consumer - but you have to know what you're shopping for!

This is certainly true and I see this in lower spec PCs, usually due to how cheap they can get windows licenses.

I do believe the economies of scale falls away with gaming PCs as they don't make as many due to it being more of a niche market to which many self build if this poll is anything to go by.

I may pick a few models and see if I can beat them if I get time.

I will say I haven't really looked into prebuilt for a while so maybe the tables have turned since I last looked.

Johnmcl7

Percy1983 wrote: »

Sounds quite interesting and certainly a monster when bought (and still is now). I really can't verify prices at the time so will take your word for it but I will say if that is the case its the first time I have seen a pre built cost less than the sum of its parts as the usual sum is:

cost of parts + labour + overlocking time (if oc model) + name badge = more

The only advantage I can see to prebuilt is if you don't have the knowledge or energy to spec/buy/build/overclock and they come with a warranty, but on the warranty my PC has many just different lengths of time for many different components.

When you say dell surely thats alienware?

I've repeatedly bought prebuilt machines for less than the cost of their parts (I wouldn't buy them otherwise), large companies buying these components in huge numbers can give significant discounts particularly on premium parts. For the price of some of the i5 machines people have priced up here I've been able to get much more expensive enthusiast-class systems which to me is a huge advantage. The standard prebuilt prices are usually poor but with voucher codes and cashback you can the price right down, as I said with my current machine it would have been hundreds more just to buy the parts.

To claim all prebuilt machines must cost more than the parts is simply incorrect.

It's not just that prebuilts come with a warranty, it's that you can get on site next day warranties which there is no equivalent for when buying parts on your own. So rather than sending the parts back and waiting for new ones to be sent out, I can get any faulty parts replaced next day.

No, I don't mean Alienware - these machines are now just Dells with Alienware styling/badging. Initially Dell ran Alienware separately alongside their own equivalent XPS brand but they've since abandoned the XPS brand and put the Alienware brand on their own machines. I would have preferred Dell branding but the X79 platform isn't available on the standard machines and it's extremely pricey to get the Xeon branded version (the hex core SB-E processors are the processors that were meant to be octo-core Xeons but did not have all cores functioning) so had to have the Alienware branding. As it was cheap, the parts are standard and the Alienware brand has been pretty much hosed I'm not too bothered now.

John

Johnmcl7

Percy1983 wrote: »

This is certainly true and I see this in lower spec PCs, usually due to how cheap they can get windows licenses.

I do believe the economies of scale falls away with gaming PCs as they don't make as many due to it being more of a niche market to which many self build if this poll is anything to go by.

I may pick a few models and see if I can beat them if I get time.

I will say I haven't really looked into prebuilt for a while so maybe the tables have turned since I last looked.

It's been the same with prebuilts for years, the standard prices are high but there are always bargains to be had with a bit of hunting and patience (took a few months to get the SB-E machine but was worth it in the end, the Nehalem machine it was replacing was not exactly slow in the meantime). The other issue is I've usually needed to customise the machines afterwards as either the parts aren't available or they're a stupid cost. Storage and ram tend to be particularly bad despite being very easy parts to swap. As I've mentioned my last couple of machines were hundreds less than the parts on their own but the standard prices were much higher.

So yes, you will be able to beat many prices but there are machines you wouldn't be able to get anywhere close to on price.

John

Weird_Nev

I wish you hadn't mentioned the dell factory outlet.
I'm moments away from pulling the trigger on an Alienware laptop now!
Alienware M14x Laptop
Intel® Core™ i7-3630QM Processor
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM
1TB 5400RPM Hard Drive
Windows 8, English (64bit)
Blu-ray BD-ROM / DVD +/-RW Combo Drive
2 GB GDDR5 NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R)GT 650M using NVIDIA Optimus(TM) technology
32GB mSATA MiniCard
14.0" (35.56 cm) WLED HD+ (900p) display (1600X900)

That's a pretty beastly spec for $1000 (£560!)

For those of us limited to laptop gaming, at least.

Sparhawke

Yes

Board: Z77A-G45 (MS-7752) 1.0
2.90 gigahertz Intel Core i5-2310
8GB Ram
2TB HDD
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 v2

It does most of what I want it to do

jaydeeuk1

Yes

All my computers are built from cast offs from work and bits I've aquired from the datacenter, backup up with the company card.

Just built myself an AMD phenom x6 and motherboard (about 10 hours running time, was used to test some database backups) 120gb samsung EVO SSD (brand new, its for work, honest Mr. Taxman), 750gb HD unopened, left on a server rack (ta muchly), some fancy looking case liang lee or something that has never been opened, radeon 5770 that was from my work PC but has never played a game or done anything remotely stressful in 2 years, a bequiet 530w PSU opened but I don't think ever used, some decent wireless logitech mouse and keyboard I got from amazon. Grabbed 3 homeplug adapters 200mbit for internet.

Total cost me to: £30

Got my eye on this though.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-msi-radeon-hd-7950-overclocked-28nm-5000mhz-gddr5-gpu-830mhz-1792-cores-dl-dvi-i-hdmi-2x-mini-dp

Now where's that company card?

Percy1983

Yes

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

All my computers are built from cast offs from work and bits I've aquired from the datacenter, backup up with the company card.

Just built myself an AMD phenom x6 and motherboard (about 10 hours running time, was used to test some database backups) 120gb samsung EVO SSD (brand new, its for work, honest Mr. Taxman), 750gb HD unopened, left on a server rack (ta muchly), some fancy looking case liang lee or something that has never been opened, radeon 5770 that was from my work PC but has never played a game or done anything remotely stressful in 2 years, a bequiet 530w PSU opened but I don't think ever used, some decent wireless logitech mouse and keyboard I got from amazon. Grabbed 3 homeplug adapters 200mbit for internet.

Total cost me to: £30

Got my eye on this though.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-msi-radeon-hd-7950-overclocked-28nm-5000mhz-gddr5-gpu-830mhz-1792-cores-dl-dvi-i-hdmi-2x-mini-dp

Now where's that company card?

Sounds like I need to pay your company a visit.

I know a machine here running a 680 graphics card just to do multi monitor.

If I could be left alone with it I could swap that card out for something much lessor and they would never notice.

jaydeeuk1

Yes

Percy1983 wrote: »

If I could be left alone with it I could swap that card out for something much lessor and they would never notice.

Thats exactly what I did

Ordered 5770 for work PC for dual monitors, swapped it for my 4670!

I also bought one of those Pico projectors a few months ago just for presentations (once a month or so) that sales staff use, that goes missing most Fridays before magically reappearing in the cupboard on Monday