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What is the going rate for building a pc?

LeeMaher92

How much do you charge for building a pc? Is there even a professional service for things like this in Ireland? I’d imagine it could be a pretty lucrative side venture for anyone competent enough to do it!

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beauf

You could drop a screwdriver on the board or break something in the motherboard, break a pin, miss a screw which causes a short. Lots of things.

Cordell

It's not rocket surgery but definitely not idiot proof either - have a look at the video I posted. There are mistakes that can result in suboptimal performance and cooling on top of the ones that result in immediate damage.

ogsjw

You could split a pricey bit of wood making furniture or crack expensive stone doing a kitchen too. People still make stuff, yes there are risks but people gotta eat, some people do this by building PC's. If you don't want the risk as it's not your primary business (so no insurance availability) it's perfectly understandable; but I don't see the logic in that eventuality being worse if you took 50 of the person instead of doing it for free and still breaking a component...

smacl

ogsjw wrote: »

You could split a pricey bit of wood making furniture or crack expensive stone doing a kitchen too. People still make stuff, yes there are risks but people gotta eat, some people do this by building PC's. If you don't want the risk as it's not your primary business (so no insurance availability) it's perfectly understandable; but I don't see the logic in that eventuality being worse if you took 50 of the person instead of doing it for free and still breaking a component...

Big difference between doing a favour for a friend or family and trying to make money on something. The business model that seems to work well in the UK are companies building specialist PCs where they also supply the parts and have spares. Putting one of builds together for a stranger using there own parts, where they've possibly been scrimping on cost and using low quality components is a recipe for disaster. Very difficult to provide a decent service at low cost on that basis.

[Deleted User]

LeeMaher92 wrote: »

How much do you charge for building a pc? Is there even a professional service for things like this in Ireland? I’d imagine it could be a pretty lucrative side venture for anyone competent enough to do it!

Most people looking at building a PC will know what they are doing.
Others will be tech minded enough to look at reputable tutorials.

More still will investigate how and will end up here (TBH) where they will get all the advice that they need, with people offering to physically help them.

Others again would have mates who know how to do it.

Finally, putting the parts together is the easy bit. OS, settings, apps, etc? Hours

[Deleted User]

smacl wrote: »

Big difference between doing a favour for a friend or family and trying to make money on something. The business model that seems to work well in the UK are companies building specialist PCs where they also supply the parts and have spares. Putting one of builds together for a stranger using there own parts, where they've possibly been scrimping on cost and using low quality components is a recipe for disaster. Very difficult to provide a decent service at low cost on that basis.

Also economies of scale. UK has what x10 the population of Ireland?

smacl

Deleted User wrote: »

Also economies of scale. UK has what x10 the population of Ireland?

Agreed. One possible approach would be to target companies who were looking at a significant number of PCs and gain economies of scale on that basis. Over a certain size, most will already have suppliers to do this, but could be a runner for SMEs

beauf

I know and worked with companies building/supplying PC for offices/institutions large and small. They all stopped selling hardware. No money in it. They are all in software these days, and any hardware selling, is only to facilitate the software.

ogsjw

smacl wrote: »

Big difference between doing a favour for a friend or family and trying to make money on something.

Nah, you still bollixed up their component and now you're out of pocket. At least if you've been charging others a sly 50 you have the money to cover it :pac: The argument that it is different if you charged for the building holds no water.

TerrorFirmer

ogsjw wrote: »

Nah, you still bollixed up their component and now you're out of pocket. At least if you've been charging others a sly 50 you have the money to cover it :pac: The argument that it is different if you charged for the building holds no water.

It holds gallons of water.

Build once-off for a friend. Risk of breaking something: low.

Build regularly for random people at just €50 a go. Risk of breaking something: much higher.

The comparison to kitchens or furniture doesn't make sense because if you damaged the item, it would eat into your profits for that singular job, not wipe out six months profit.

There is a reason nobody offers a service like what we're talking about. It's way too risky for too little reward.

ogsjw

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

It holds gallons of water.

Nope. Here's why...

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Build once-off for a friend. Risk of breaking something: low.

Charge 50 for a build once; risk of breaking something? Low.

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Build regularly for random people at just €50 a go. Risk of breaking something: much higher.

Build frequently for friends for free, risk of breaking something, much higher.

Your argument makes no sense, and doesn't hold any water.

Payment isn't going to 'jinx' the build, folks... :pac:

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

The comparison to kitchens or furniture doesn't make sense

Course it does. Amount of profit means nothing.

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

There is a reason nobody offers a service like what we're talking about.

Lots of people do. Many, many people build PC's and refurbish PC's to flip for a living. :pac::pac::pac::pac::pac::pac:

wotzgoingon

ogsjw wrote: »

Lots of people do. Many, many people build PC's and refurbish PC's to flip for a living. :pac::pac::pac::pac::pac::pac:

I don't know why you are contradicting everyone. If you think you can make money building PC's for a living go right a head. You will remember reading this thread and saying to yourself. Why didn't I listen to them.

wotzgoingon

Also I forgot to mention a few companies over the years done that(building PC's) I do not know if they are still going but they had atrocious after market help. That's the only way to make a living but word gets around and people stop going to you.

ogsjw

wotzgoingon wrote: »

I don't know why you are contradicting everyone.

You are supposed to contradict people who are objectively wrong. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world build PC's and refurbish PC's from parts for flipping, for both home machines and business machines. I've seen acres and acres of them in electronic markets around the world for a start, and plenty of people do it 100% online, on the likes of adverts/craigslist/ebay. Hundreds of thousands do this thing that supposedly no one does. :rolleyes:

beauf

That doesn't mean any of them make money at it it.

The cost in Ireland is High compared to other countries. So comparing it with anywhere else is entirely pointless.

Adverts is quite expensive for used gear. Often its more expensive than new. People are deluded about how much old PC gear is worth. You really have to trawl it to get anything reasonable or a bargain.

But no matter what people say I suspect you'll argue the opposite.

Joeface

Was the original question not , "What is the going rate for building a pc?."
I took that is not buying the parts , Just putting it together.

the second part is a "Is there even a professional service for things like this in Ireland?" Thats seperate again . If it was a professional service I would expect them to be handling all the warranty and build quality issues. So they would also be getting the parts.

Building PCs and upgrading PCs to Flip is different . In that case the enduser never sees the issues along the way. The end user (buyer) gets a working PC . I do it form time to time. Its not massively profitable . I do cause I like building PCs .

wotzgoingon

ogsjw wrote: »

You are supposed to contradict people who are objectively wrong. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world build PC's and refurbish PC's from parts for flipping, for both home machines and business machines. I've seen acres and acres of them in electronic markets around the world for a start, and plenty of people do it 100% online, on the likes of adverts/craigslist/ebay. Hundreds of thousands do this thing that supposedly no one does. :rolleyes:

Did you ever try to sell an item. People will be offering you far less than you paid for it even if it was brand new. So where are these profits from flipping a item.

ogsjw

beauf wrote: »

That doesn't mean any of them make money at it it.

The cost in Ireland is High compared to other countries. So comparing it with anywhere else is entirely pointless.

Adverts is quite expensive for used gear. Often its more expensive than new. People are deluded about how much old PC gear is worth. You really have to trawl it to get anything reasonable or a bargain.

But no matter what people say I suspect you'll argue the opposite.

wotzgoingon wrote: »

Did you ever try to sell an item. People will be offering you far less than you paid for it even if it was brand new. So where are these profits from flipping a item.

Literally irrelevant obfuscation that have absolutely nothing to do with the issue with the original claim.

The original claim was 'it's too risky to charge'.

Charging is not going to 'jinx' anything, and it is ridiculous to suggest it. Any other obfuscations, market size, country you live in, how many time you build, whether it be once or a hundred times, are irrelevant obfuscations introduced because some people here just have to be right. Which makes this very ironic...

beauf wrote: »

But no matter what people say I suspect you'll argue the opposite.

The original claim made no sense. Charging for your time and know-how is NOT a bad idea. Whether you want to do it is up to you, of course. Personally I've only ever built for myself and considering my cable management skills, do not see that changing.

The End.

beauf

ogsjw wrote: »

....The original claim made no sense. Charging for your time and know-how is NOT a bad idea. Whether you want to do it is up to you, of course. Personally I've only ever built for myself and considering my cable management skills, do not see that changing. ...

Hard to know which claim your refuting. In theory building PCs for someone seems to be perfectly logical, as does charging for your time. But the reality is margins are too tight for it to be viable. Charging for your time, (if thats the claim your are focused on) makes no difference as you can't charge enough to cover your time, or problems with the build. That's the difference between theory and reality. If you doing it for fun or a hobby thats fine. Beer money, pocket money. But it can end badly.

Low volume only makes sense if you are building for a specialised market that isn't tech savvy, but requires higher end performance. Very niche and very few of them around. There's a few on adverts building for gaming, but the prices are not competitive. Most don't do it for long, they usually give up quick enough. People flipping old OEM machines seems to be consistent but thats not building. A few were doing it for mining but that seems to have died now as well.

ogsjw

beauf wrote: »

Hard to know which claim your refuting.

Literally impossible when I explicitly detailed which claim I was talking about. The rest of what you had to say is just waffle, again, there are hundreds of thousands of people who charge succesfully for either fresh builds or refurbs from parts. No one suggested they're driving around in gold platted hummers. Just that it is possible, that people do it and yes, even live off it, and that it's not an objectively bad idea to charge for your work and know-how. Very simple, very easy to understand, and I've said it several times now.

JoyPad

The only problem with random people building their own PC is how to deal with possible problems.

Case in point: my son's PC stopped working. He would push the button and it would not POST.
After carefully checking everything, I managed to identify that the problem was the GPU. The PC would post without it, but not with it, regardless of socket. Then I tried the GPU inside my PC, and my GPU in his PC, and thus confirmed that his GPU was the culprit. Ended up having it replaced under warranty, but I don't know if this kind of diagnostics would have been easy for the OP here. I was lucky to have a working PC and a replacement GPU to help with the diagnostics, which might not be the case for someone building a PC for the first time.

beauf

LeeMaher92 wrote: »

...I’d imagine it could be a pretty lucrative side venture for anyone competent enough to do it!...

Gold Plated Hummers apparently.

Lot of people do it for free, for fun, or a pittance. Good luck competing with that.

beauf

JoyPad wrote: »

The only problem with random people building their own PC is how to deal with possible problems.....

The problem is not problems. Its the time taken to find problems.

There are people on these forums who will spend weeks to find a problem, when they could have dropped the PC in a skip and bought a better one with no problems for €60.

TerrorFirmer

Literally impossible when I explicitly detailed which claim I was talking about. The rest of what you had to say is just waffle, again, there are hundreds of thousands of people who charge succesfully for either fresh builds or refurbs from parts. No one suggested they're driving around in gold platted hummers. Just that it is possible, that people do it and yes, even live off it, and that it's not an objectively bad idea to charge for your work and know-how. Very simple, very easy to understand, and I've said it several times now.

The original conversation was about the viability of charging a small fee to assemble a PC for customers from parts supplied.

That's not viable from a commerical/profit making POV, largely due to risk, hence pretty much no-one in Ireland does it.

Now you've shifted the goalposts to a completely different topic altogether - sellers who offer full PC's.

They are not the same thing at all. At this point you're basically arguing in circles with yourself.

The original claim was 'it's too risky to charge'.

Charging is not going to 'jinx' anything, and it is ridiculous to suggest it.

Honestly, assuming you're not trolling, you're talking utter scutter now.

The 'claim' is that it's too risky a venture to bank on making money due to the high risk of breaking something versus the low reward.

One mistake could wipe out half a years profit. Hence why your example of fitting a kitchen was daft.

In order for it to be valid, you'd have to more likely compare it to a worker somehow destroying a 10K kitchen and the company having to replace it.

Once again - why pretty much no-one offers this PC building service. It's not viable.

ogsjw

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Honestly, assuming you're not trolling

Ah, the person who made the silly claim in the first place appears. His ears must've been burning. :pac:

It absolutely is viable, hundreds of thousands literally live off the fact that it is viable. I've seen it. All over the world. Both on selling platforms and people building rigs in their little stores in electronics markets. Hell, half the tech youtubers I watch comment on the fact that they do it themselves. The Tech Yes guy, the Science Studio guy frequently talk about building and flipping rigs. There are even component selling sites that do pre-builts, who aren't OEM's like Dell. You are 100% wrong.

Charging for building a rig is not a bad idea. Lots of people pay lots of others to do it. It really is that simple. Y'all can try and re-frame that all you want. You're still wrong.

TerrorFirmer

Someone who charges someone a small fee to assemble their supplied components (extremely uncommon because it's not viable), and someone who supplies fully assembled PCs to an end consumer (extremely common), are completely different things.

Not sure how you can't seem to grasp this.

killanena

Yes people do make profit from PC building but for instance there is a shop in my town called Tech Depot. The owner builds his own custom rigs with parts he sells anyways and has them on display and you can go in and play games to try them out. He makes a tidy profit off doing so as the market for gaming PC's is growing, especially with teenagers. I was in there last week window shopping for a new display because of thee fact you can test it and found a nice 24" 144hz 1ms 1920x1080 AOC Monitor for 220 euro. After searching on amazon its only marginally cheaper. Maybe 20 odd quid. I am going to pick it up next week.

ogsjw

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Someone who charges someone a small fee to assemble their supplied components (extremely uncommon because it's not viable), and someone who supplies fully assembled PCs to an end consumer (extremely common), are completely different things.

Not sure how you can't seem to grasp this.

Oh I grasp the entirety of this quite well, it's you that is having issues.

Imagine people insisting on dying on the hill arguing that fifty quid changes the dynamic if you kill a 200-700 euro part on someone. It absolutely does not. Can't believe we're still talking about such a foolish concept :pac:

tuxy

killanena wrote: »

Yes people do make profit from PC building but for instance there is a shop in my town called Tech Depot.

That's very different, he runs his own PC shop and as part of that business he sometimes builds PCs.
The OP was under the impress that building PC for people who buy the parts themselves would be a "lucrative side venture". I see no evidence for that being true.

beauf

Oh they pop up all the time can't make enough money from computers alone and do about 10 other things at the same usually web design, fixing phones, phone covers, laptop repairs and try break into small business support, network etc. Most only last a few years.

I've lost count how many have opened and closed in Dublin over the years. A handful have kept going. Many are web sites only these days.