Cost: Build vs Buy?

Farcear

By way of background, my current laptop will be 6 years old next month and I'm looking to get something new and good quality (budget ~€1,200) that will last me for another few years, be capable of running modern games, etc.

I was planning on just buying a new laptop but with no immediate need for portability -- this laptop still runs fine -- and having stumbled across this whole building & upgrading thing, I am toying with the idea of building a desktop.


Before I go any further, I just want to know, are there significant cost savings in building your own desktop from scratch (I would have to buy the keyboard, screen, everything.) vs. just buying a desktop/laptop?

Solitaire

Yep. Its not like the big OEM builders have to be pricey but even when they don't tack on ludicrous premiums they have a bad habit of deliberately mismatching components for a particular purpose so they can "oversell" a machine with much higher cost and spec than needed because they won't sell the critical component(s) in a cheaper, more balanced machine :mad:

I'm off to bed but I might set up a quick comparison tomorrow. Aside from better warranties and better spec for your budget I'll just say (ties in with the overselling above); A self-build can be tailor-made to suit the needs of the buyer. An OEM machine cannot. Yeah, I know Dell and a few others allow you to chop 'n' change some bits, but aside from very limited choice the alternatives somehow gain a huge premium compared to what they usually retail for...

Unregistered.

Farcear wrote: »

By way of background, my current laptop will be 6 years old next month and I'm looking to get something new and good quality (budget ~€1,200) that will last me for another few years, be capable of running modern games, etc.

I was planning on just buying a new laptop but with no immediate need for portability -- this laptop still runs fine -- and having stumbled across this whole building & upgrading thing, I am toying with the idea of building a desktop.


Before I go any further, I just want to know, are there significant cost savings in building your own desktop from scratch (I would have to buy the keyboard, screen, everything.) vs. just buying a desktop/laptop?

With 1200 to spend on a self build, you can either get a) a far superior machine for the same money, or b) the same spec machine for much less!!! I think the former is the primal option though

docmol

try either http://www.anandtech.com/guides/ or http://www.tomshardware.com/s/reviews/system-builders/ or http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/MHGSBG/article.php/3806051
to get an idea of what you can build (but remember graphics cards and ram have dropped in price:)) Then have a look around the net for bargains (I use dabs and komplett, but there are others)
I built a kick-ass gaming rig for a mate 2 weeks ago for €650 (5.9 vista experience). It had Phenom2x3, 4gb ram, radeon 4850, 1TB hdd, dvd burner, 550w PSU, card reader, nice chassis and a €100 iiyama 20" monitor. Radeon 4850 are now less than €100!!

Solitaire

Be very wary of anything Toms say, they're full of [CENSORED] (some of their consultants and lab techs are "sponsored" by Intel and nVidia. Ultimate Shudder Time )

Lookie here:




Under €1180 delivered, can be upgraded to CrossFire, and I didn't go cheap on the screen or peripherals! (had to get the keyboard elsewhere or it'd be in German!)

As for Dell? Well, I got up to €1050 for a very basic i7 rig with inferior everything, including an off-brand 19" monitor, 500GB HDD and just 3GB (unknown-spec) DDR3... then came a-cropper on the graphics card. That price included a HD4350. To go up to a HD4670 cost €180 :eek: And a HD4850 cost even more! Those are around €80 on HWVS! Hello, Earth to Dell, are you out of your tiny brains?!?!?!? :mad:

Farcear

Solitaire wrote: »

Under €1180 delivered, can be upgraded to CrossFire, and I didn't go cheap on the screen or peripherals! (had to get the keyboard elsewhere or it'd be in German!)

As for Dell? Well, I got up to €1050 for a very basic i7 rig with inferior everything, including an off-brand 19" monitor, 500GB HDD and just 3GB (unknown-spec) DDR3... then came a-cropper on the graphics card. That price included a HD4350. To go up to a HD4670 cost €180 :eek: And a HD4850 cost even more! Those are around €80 on HWVS! Hello, Earth to Dell, are you out of your tiny brains?!?!?!? :mad:

Ok, I believe that answers my first question. A self-build is definitely worth it in terms of savings.

Which leads me nicely into my next question...

docmol wrote: »

I built a kick-ass gaming rig for a mate 2 weeks ago for €650 (5.9 vista experience).

Unregistered. wrote: »

With 1200 to spend on a self build, you can either get [...] the same spec machine for much less!!! I think the former is the primal option though

...fighting that primal urge to blow everything I have on a computer, how much should I be looking to send on a 'decent' build?

What I'm really looking for is:
- Great general OS performance (boots up quickly, loads apps quickly, etc.). I'll probably be using the Windows Seven Home Premium 64-bit if that matters.
- A WiFi Card and Bluetooth capability. On a related note, do any of you use wireless keyboards/mice?
- HDD capacity/speed isn't an immediate priority. I quite like the idea of something like the 80GB X-25M SSD from Intel and I can see myself upgrading to that down the line.
- Quiet if possible.


Solitaire, thanks for that sample build. However, in addition to removing the monitor and peripherals as I have some existing stuff I can easily cannibalise, would cutting the budget to, say, €750 significantly worsen the build? Also, is there anything you could "cut" now that I could add-on or upgrade to later on? The Core i7 seem pretty similar to the Core2Quad but far more expensive.

Solitaire wrote: »

Be very wary of anything Toms say, they're full of [CENSORED] (some of their consultants and lab techs are "sponsored" by Intel and nVidia. Ultimate Shudder Time

I think the general advice is that you take everything you read on the internet with a pinch of salt; however, that site does seem to pop-up in a lot of the searches I've run, so thanks for the heads-up on that.


As another possible upgrade project, I also have an older desktop and laptop that I'm looking at improving. I believe they have both 512mb RAM and throwing RAM at stuff seems to be the common suggestion when people ask for easy upgrades.
- How can I check if they will take 1GB of RAM?
- Should it noticeably improve performance?
- How much would this cost?


Reading a few other threads, I was surprised learn about the possibility of water-cooled systems (and amused at the idea of oil cooled systems which, as one site noted: "Many projects used vegetable oil, which would go rancid after a short time.") Anyway, my final, final query for the night is this: does water cooling improve overall performance? If not, why bother with it at all?

Thanks for your help as always!

Solitaire

Farcear wrote:

Solitaire, thanks for that sample build. However, in addition to removing the monitor and peripherals as I have some existing stuff I can easily cannibalise, would cutting the budget to, say, €750 significantly worsen the build? Also, is there anything you could "cut" now that I could add-on or upgrade to later on? The Core i7 seem pretty similar to the Core2Quad but far more expensive.

Cutting out the peripherals takes a heap of the pressure off the budget anyway. €750 is just a little low for an i7 build though

The big advantages of i7 is its insane overclockability and incredible computational power in massively-multithreaded apps, which it can process twice as fast as an equivalent C2Q thanks to HyperThreading (effectively turning four physical cores into eight logical ones). The downside is its hunger and its effect on your power supply requirement, cooling efficiency and 'lecky bill, plus the oh-so-high platform cost. If you don't envisage an enterprise-grade processing requirement then its far more logical to drop down to Core2 or Phenom2 (both fighting tooth-and-nail for mid-range dominance) and (if gaming) maintain the emphasis on graphics while slashing the budget yet not the performance

Reading a few other threads, I was surprised learn about the possibility of water-cooled systems (and amused at the idea of oil cooled systems which, as one site noted: "Many projects used vegetable oil, which would go rancid after a short time.") Anyway, my final, final query for the night is this: does water cooling improve overall performance? If not, why bother with it at all?

Basic air cooling is neccessary for survival; even low-power systems need a gentle breeze from somewhere passing over their cooling fins As the equipment gets faster and more powerful it dissipates yet more heat thus the more the need for stronger air cooling. Eventually you hit a point where you can't get enough air flowing over all those cooling fins to keep things below temperatures that makes something cry "Uncle!!" The solution? Find a way to shift all that heat further away faster so the traditional air cooling has a better chance to shift it. Many CPU and GPU coolers use heatpipes to move heat away quickly to a larger stack of bigger cooling fins. If even that can't shift it - usually a situation where an end-user has pushed the system's speed far beyond anything the manufacturer intended - liquid is used to pump the heat away very rapidly to a radiator where it can be dispersed more quickly than a heatpipe tower.

leninbenjamin

if it's gaming is the most intensive thing you'll be doing then as Solitare says the i7 is a complete waste really. I have one myself, and the CPU really remains completely underutilised, even for GTAIV which is supposedly optimised for multi-core. Heck it even remains under-clocked for the likes of L4D.

The Turbo mode is great though if you're compiling software, or anything intensive like statistical/math packages or that (that have been optimised for multicore), but it's just wasted for domestic PC usage.

guess a Q9xxx would be a good option? Multi-core so relatively future proof, without none of the high priced LGA1366 components.