Why there are no affordable gaming PC's in Ireland

smokiebeverage

Charts are pointless, they all use the same hardware now. Hence people build hackintosh machines!

Skerries

ah but its how you use that hardware is the key

deconduo

Skerries wrote: »

are there any comparison charts out there comparing a Mac and a similarly priced pc or laptop?
i know they used to do them years ago but haven't seen anything recently

a pc with the new Intel and a good gfx would blow Macs performance out of the water i'd say

http://static.frysforum.com/mi/74f3e5f0e6489842dfa2c854e4675c81-0-mac01.jpg

Somewhat biased, but still.

Solitaire

The only thing you really need to bridge the gap between a PC and a Mac (unless you've just been deprogrammed from their brainwashing and haven't re-learned how to use a real keyboard or mouse yet ) is a shiny Super/Hyper IPS monitor. Decent 24" models can be found for under €500 on a good day, and even that doesn't bring a mid- or upper-tier workstation PC to anywhere near the price of a Mac Pro

brownej

Solitaire wrote: »

The only thing you really need to bridge the gap between a PC and a Mac (unless you've just been deprogrammed from their brainwashing and haven't re-learned how to use a real keyboard or mouse yet ) is a shiny Super/Hyper IPS monitor. Decent 24" models can be found for under €500 on a good day, and even that doesn't bring a mid- or upper-tier workstation PC to anywhere near the price of a Mac Pro

Mac pros aren't actually that much more expensive than workstations from other manufacturers. Mac pros cost €2500 Inc vat entry level wth a 2.8ghz xenon processor.
http://store.apple.com/ie/configure/MC560B/A?mco=MTg2OTUwMjE
Dell workstations start at €1600 ex vat with 2.26ghz xenon processors. Once you spec it up the costs are pretty much the same.
http://ireland.dell.com/ie/en/business/Dell-Laptops/workstation-precision-t7500/pd.aspx?refid=workstation-precision-t7500&s=bsd&cs=iebsdt1

And I though unjustified brand bashing was banned around here.

Ps I don't use a Mac.

deconduo

brownej wrote: »

Mac pros aren't actually that much more expensive than workstations from other manufacturers. Mac pros cost €2500 Inc vat entry level wth a 2.8ghz xenon processor.
http://store.apple.com/ie/configure/MC560B/A?mco=MTg2OTUwMjE
Dell workstations start at €1600 ex vat with 2.26ghz xenon processors. Once you spec it up the costs are pretty much the same.
http://ireland.dell.com/ie/en/business/Dell-Laptops/workstation-precision-t7500/pd.aspx?refid=workstation-precision-t7500&s=bsd&cs=iebsdt1

And I though unjustified brand bashing was banned around here.

Ps I don't use a Mac.

Cos Dell is overpriced ****e too in general so its a bad comparison.

brownej

deconduo wrote: »

Cos Dell is overpriced ****e too in general so its a bad comparison.

Every main stream high volume Computer manufacturer is overpriced on the high end...

That wasn't my point.

My point is that I though specific manufacturer bashing for the sake of it was banned.

Ps HP is even more expensive than a mac pro.
http://www.hpshop.ie/products.asp?partno=KK543EA%23ABU

Jonny7

Irish_Elect_Eng wrote: »

There is a simple reason that there is no supplier of top notch gaming PCs for €20 Euro over component cost and that is economics. There is not enough demand to support such a business model.

Even given a profit of €50 over component cost per machine, such a business would have to build 600 per year to support a €30,000 p.a. salary for one person. That is without any overheads.

Lets add in a couple of very conservative basic costs:

€10 for courier delivery.
€5 for packaging.
€5 for assembly consumables
€10 for misc overheads, phone website, light, heat, biscuits, insurance

Now our builder needs to churn out 1500 PCs a year to pay his own wages.

Thats building and testing 6 full systems a day just to pay his own wage with no profits :-(

Any that is assuming that you actually have a real market.

Many of the people that want to buy a top-end PC for gaming, will build or upgrade their own. Or will want a different spec that you are offering, or will buy from abroad to save €10 euro.

If a company like Dell, HP or Lenovo are not serving the market, the market is not economically viable.

dunno what any of this malarky is based on??

lets make it very simple

hardwareversand sell components for pc's
hardwareversand make even more money by offering to build a pc for 20 euros (the manual labour cost, no loss), thus encouraging people to buy _all_ their components at hws in one go (this is very important)

hardwareversand make a profit on each component sold

I think you kinda forgot the whole.. you know.. shop makes money on each part sold. Unless you thought I meant they sell them at cost price? ?)

If komplett did this they would steal a lot of business from the other sites, Irish, homegrown, no doubt

If they also offered a basic budget system (components plus labour) people would buy it because of many reasons, its not even necessary
1. Its in Ireland
2. Its actually cheap and affordable and will actually play games
3. Its not from Germany
4. They will buy a system that is recommended online
5. Its not some dodgy thing from ebay

If komplett offered 'higher' systems then _those_ purchasers tend to be the people who buy abroad, the more techie types, etc, etc, etc

Offering a build like hardwareversand.de works. You just need a company with a slight bit of organisation.

Coupled with that a budget build, that is actually good, works. Why.. show me one budget gaming system in Ireland right now?

High end builds would not neccesarily work because options higher, people want too much diversity, know more, etc, hence one or two budget only models

Check the number of "reads" on any post here for a PC, you have hundreds of nonrepliers getting sales advice here, we are all recommending hardwareversand, they are doing a huge amount of business just because of sites like this. Pity no Irish company is cashing in on this.

I am not saying its the most awesome profitmaking thing in the world, but I am saying there is a market niche there.



If komplett offered a build option they could benefit from this also

wrote all this in 2 mins not time to flesh out but u get the idea

Jonny7

Kinetic^ wrote: »

Gaming machine - DIY
Office PC - Dell/HP
Design PC - Apple (it's not a PC :S)

It's not feasible to build a machine for 20-30 euro, if you're suggesting this then you have no clue of how much costs business have.

Insurance
Rent
Rates
Wages
Light/Heat
Phone

That's just the surface costs. Throw in thermal paste, cable ties, cable extenders and a few other things you might not think of.

How do hardwareversand do it then? I work not far from there with a lot of Germans, we use a system taken from the Japanese, are we that highly crap and inefficient in Ireland that we can't do the same thing? I am not talking about setting up, I am talking about a current component company adopting it.

One component Komplett style outlet can add a 40 euro building service and make a huge loss, another can add a 20 euro building service and sell a huge volume of components. Its more mentality than market conditions now really isn't it. We're not exactly in Madagascar, although some people make it out to be.

People will pay more, a decent bit more to get something from Ireland rather than Germany, yet, as usual, this is where the cowboys step in and add in the rip-off factor
There is that middle ground.. the market niche.

Gaming machine - 75% of people have no clue and buy a lemon from ebay, something with no graphics from dell or hp, or get completely ripped off by some 'custom' pc site.. yes I've had 10 years experience of this. And yes, these are people from IT, people with comp sci degrees, huge nerds, and they still ask me if its "better than a geforce 3" and other such things. They want to buy Irish and keep it simple. Theres nothing I can recommend them here even though they want to spend the bit extra.

The other 25% who are in the know end up not buying in Ireland anyway because ... they'll get it wherever its cheapest.. and the Oirish cannot compete with that because of shipping/location/supply/market size/etc (+ excuses)

Office PC/design PC - i agree


anywaaayy.... until that happens, these people plus all the hundreds who read the posts are gonna keep sending their cash to UK and Germany

obviously I'd love to see it adopted in Ireland but the plastic ties and the biscuits you know.. too expensive loike

Irish_Elect_Eng

Jonny7 wrote: »

People will pay more, a decent bit more to get something from Ireland rather than Germany....

Unfortunately this is just not true.....

el dude

It's not just computer components where Irish companies aren't competing, it's pretty much anything and everything. I do quite a bit of online shopping and i think the only Irish company i buy from semi-regularly is justmedia.ie, because they are quick to deliver, and even then more often than not i'll use a German retailer.

and why are Komplett being used an example of a company that could offer cheap gaming PC's? Have you seen the prices they charge?

marco_polo

brownej wrote: »

Every main stream high volume Computer manufacturer is overpriced on the high end...

That wasn't my point.

My point is that I though specific manufacturer bashing for the sake of it was banned.

Ps HP is even more expensive than a mac pro.
http://www.hpshop.ie/products.asp?partno=KK543EA%23ABU

Yes because the love for high end Dell products etx like XPS, Alienware etc is so strong on this forum :rolleyes:

Apple, dell and others get (rightly) bashed for doing stuff like charging 225 euro extra for a 3Gb memory upgrade which is probably actually worth an extra 40 tops (even allowing for it being ECC memory), or 150 euro to upgrade from a 1Tb to a 2TB, when the price difference between the two is probably 30 quid etc etc.

By pointing this out as outrageous profiteering, how is that that maunfacturer bashing 'for the sake of it'?

Kinetic^

Solitaire wrote: »

:P

Wasn't having a go at you Just noticed your post seems to echo the common feeling that PCs are rubbish for design, based on nothing more than the fact that Macs come with a fancier screen :rolleyes::p The attitude has become really prevalent in third-level education where in most affected courses lecturers pretty much tell any student unable to afford a top-level MacBook Pro to basically "GTFO PEASANT SCUM!!!". AFAIK there are only two people on my sister's media course in DIT that have parents who earn less than ~€100k+ - and she of course is one of them So its an issue that's really close to my heart - its basically elitist social programming conducted by Jobs for fun and profit :eek::mad::mad:

I don't think they're rubbish for design at all but if you're going to be a part of that industry then you're more likely to be using mac than windows. Where's my hug?

Solitaire

Why do all the businesses in that sector use Macs? Because Apple give bosses nice big Caribbean holidays worth €10,000 (Jobs or his partners in crime probably owning the cruise ship and resorts in question!) if they blew their IT budgets on ridiculosly overpriced Macs? I somehow suspect it might be something along those lines; it often is when it comes to purchasing decisions :rolleyes: Not because they're better, or cheaper, or more efficient. Because of corruption and kickbacks. And just as Apple intended this kicks off a chain-reaction that helpfully denies a lot of less priveliged students from working in the sector by killing their training/education. While also ramming an increasingly powerful and dangerous monopoly down society's collective throat.

Microsoft and Intel scare me, especially when the latter in particular is acting the epic douche. Apple is unable to stop themselves acting the douche, and the power they've gained utterly terrifies me. These are not nice people we're dealing with - their company has its own internal secret police and security forces FFS :eek:

t0mm13b

Solitaire wrote: »

Microsoft and Intel scare me, especially when the latter in particular is acting the epic douche. Apple is unable to stop themselves acting the douche, and the power they've gained utterly terrifies me. These are not nice people we're dealing with - their company has its own internal secret police and security forces FFS :eek:

Where did you get that information from for the underlined? :P

TBQH, Apple's policy towards devs is crap, hence would refuse to buy an Apple Mac - why get one, if you can buy perhaps 3 machines (good spec) for the price of one Apple... meh.... those fanbois are brainwashed into a Apple cult....

Solitaire

Its actually well-known in tech circles. Google "Worldwide Loyalty Team" for a start

The whole point is that the firm operates in a total moral vacuum. No brainwashing, industrial sabotage or punitive measure against rivals or even their own is too underhanded or too overkill. And they expect an almost religious level of zealotry from their own employees or they're caughty out by the WLT and are sued on-the-spot for breach of contract and industrial sabotage, often resulting in lawsuits totalling millions being launched against individuals on an almost-everyday basis; its not even newsworthy anymore. Suicides are common, and a few got into the media and famously cast a cloud over the iPad launch.

Nehaxak

Just to note in regards profiteering by custom pc builders of one sort or another - that they get their kit at trade prices, much cheaper than your average or even discounted online prices. Prices for components go down further according to volume.
So, done right, there's still profit to be made.
Also, knew a trader myself operating out near Killiney some years back who traded with bigger traders in the UK in order to buy intel CPU's at even more discounts than he could himself from their HQ in Ireland, he would buy a thousand a time, the guys in the UK would buy tens of thousands. He also paid less overall at the time due to lower VAT rates and at one time also UK traders not charging Irish traders any VAT.
Anyway, he sold top of the range CPU's to trade here at prices that were fantastically cheap, and still made a profit himself.

Apart from all that, if you were building and selling on for profit and assuming you have a bit of charm about ye, there's nothing stopping you going directly to the component manufacturer yourself to get discounted trade price agreements. Not many would refuse potential business these days.

Solitaire

Which brings us back to the original issue: Gaming and many other specific requirements (poker, heavy workstations and HTPCs in particular) are simply too niche to avail of those bulk discounts. The main issue with Dell, HP et al is that they intentionally mismatch components to force you to overbuy in order to get the performance you need.

Maj Malfunction

Ah you got to love the Mac v PC argument. If you wear black polo-necks and round glasses you go and buy a Mac and join the I wanna be with the cool guys folk.

If you want to get work done at a reasonable cost for heavy engineering you'll drop about €1200 on a decent enough PC, steering well clear of the overpriced workstations from the likes of Lenovo, Dell & HP which they are keen to peddle.

When the students grow up and join the working world they'll realise soon enough that image is not important, however getting the job done on time and on budget is! If you still need to look cool, I'm sure your boss won't care if you spend your salary on Macbook Pro's but I'm sure the company will probably be using PC's because the are cheaper!

AirsoftAndy

i know that alot of irish websites rip u off but if u looked up some videos on youtube on how to build them urself and that skill comes in handy when the pc breaks when warrentys over and spend 50 instead of 200 euro in fixing it a good budget pc is here i just posted it http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056189753
and on this website there are prebuilt kits which are really gud value and shipping doesnt go over 20 pound on a build

the_syco

Solitaire wrote: »

I will not tolerate any of that "peasants aren't allowed to do Art/Media/Design/Sound Engineering because they're poor and smelly and Our Lord Steve Jobs said so" in this forum. Ever.

http://apple.com/steve-jobs-denies-peasants-macs

=-=

Any upgrade I do on the PC is usually above the €800 mark.

Solitaire

>_>

<_<



There's something wrong with that link syco

:pac:

TheDoc

Just for some information.

I looked at this as a serious business venture with a rather succesful entraupeneur.

I had worked for him previously and he ran a very succesful business( and still does) and was a very succesful IT consultant.

When we looked into it, and the the margins we would want to be making to make it worthwhile, end market price was alot higher then what you can get from places like Germany etc.

The problem is there is no Irish wholesaler who deals in decent specifications/branded gaming brands at reasonable prices.

Ollie89

Hi Johnny
I have no tech knowledge; just surf and play poker ,other games etc. Had settled on buying a Toshiba Satellite P850-321 for €600 but then saw your post and now don't know what to do.

ScumLord

Ireland can't compete with an international company in Germany. Ireland has a population of 4 million people, Germany has over 80 million, this means German companies have greater buying power allowing them to buy more, get greater discounts meaning they can offer the hardware out cheaper, they probably make the same percentage as other companies that charge more. An Irish company can't make the same investment in product because they won't have enough people to sell them too. It's simples.

uncle_sam_ie

Ollie89 wrote: »

Hi Johnny
I have no tech knowledge; just surf and play poker ,other games etc. Had settled on buying a Toshiba Satellite P850-321 for €600 but then saw your post and now don't know what to do.

What other games? Unless it's BF3, you will be fine with that laptop.

Dublinpato

hi kinda new to this but i am looking to buy/build a gaming PC but to be honest i have not got a clue what i am doing i would much rather build one because i am not made of money so i could buy the part's whenever i have it can anyone help out

Shiminay

If you have no idea what you're doing but still want to build one, I'd suggest trawling through YouTube for videos of people building PCs so you can see what it is you'd be doing. After that, come back here with a budget and a list of things you'll be needing the machine for and we'll be able to help.

Building a machine isn't too difficult, picking all the right parts (and under budget) is the hard bit. However, if you're a novice, having a guarantee from a manufacturer/shop if something goes sideways is a big comfort.

Gbear

Dublinpato wrote: »

hi kinda new to this but i am looking to buy/build a gaming PC but to be honest i have not got a clue what i am doing i would much rather build one because i am not made of money so i could buy the part's whenever i have it can anyone help out

For how to literally assemble the components I thought this video was quite helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_56kyib-Ls

It's the same as building anything to a large degree. Measure twice, cut once, get organised, have a clear space for assembly, take breaks if you're getting flustered.

Use this link if you want to start a thread about a specific build:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=74542374
It saves a lot of time by setting out exactly what you want from a PC.

Ollie89

Thanks for all the replies