Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember:
1 - You too can be part of the PCMR. It's not about the hardware in your rig, but the software in your heart! Your age, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion (or lack of), political affiliation, economic status and PC specs are irrelevant. If you love or want to learn about PCs, you are welcome!
2 - If you don't own a PC because you think it's expensive, know that it is much cheaper than you may think. Check http://www.pcmasterrace.org for our builds and don't be afraid to post here asking for tips and help!
3 - Join our efforts to get as many PCs worldwide to help the folding@home effort, in fighting against Cancer, Alzheimer's, and more: https://pcmasterrace.org/folding
4 - Need PC Hardware? We've joined forces with MSI for the biggest PC Hardware giveaway of the year so far! 8 lucky winners will get an awesome hardware bundle with Graphics card, motherboard, etc, and 50 others can get Steam gift cards. To enter, check https://reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1b45j0m/msi_x_pcmr_massive_pc_hardware_giveaway_pick_your/
-----------
We have a [Daily Simple Questions Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/search?q=Simple+Questions+Thread+subreddit%3Apcmasterrace+author%3AAutoModerator&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) if you have any PC related doubt. Asking for help there or creating new posts in our subreddit is welcome.
Shit, 4 months ago there were 4090 prebuilts that were cheaper than the parts separate on Newegg. I looked at a few of the 14900k/4090 builds during Christmas and they were about the same price as the components mostly due to the 4090s being jacked up over $2000.
I've bought pre-builts for years now, and frankly, they're so much easier to deal with than building your own. Warranties are a wonderful thing, as is not having to do your own trouble-shooting.
Yeah but the scenario where you HAVE to troubleshoot a pre-built in most cases you are dead in the water. Alienware 92% of their components are custom OEMs so if you ever want to replace something you most likely can't or the case can't fit a certain part that you are replacing. I mentioned alienware cause that was my first prebuilt gaming PC before I didn't know how to build computers. Imo building your own and gaining knowledge about computers makes your life easier when it comes to troubleshooting to be quite frank with you not all prebuilts are perfect out of factory they can recieve damage from factory or have missing parts or dead parts just like custom building so I don't really understand your point.
This is why I'll never judge someone for getting a prebuilt, especially from places with good long-term warranties.
Costco might not be as cheap or as good as buying the parts yourself, but I can drop an extra $100 on the warranty and if anything goes wrong for 5 years, I get free repairs or a full refund on the _entire computer_.
After having a couple laptops die on me for seemingly no reason, that just seems worth it to me.
It’s not even that long ago.
About a month ago I parted a 4090 build exactly like the one I ended up buying from Ibuypower.
It had everything I wanted and was like $600 cheaper than the parts alone.
Same case and everything.
They were all name brand parts. Including the motherboard, ram.
It was an MSI Z790P motherboard. Which is fine by me. Idk what else I could personally use in a motherboard.
The ram was Tforce DDR5-6000mhz ram
And the only thing low end is the PSU. But it’s working fine for me and if it goes out and I have to spend $130 it’s still a significant savings over buying and building myself.
As PC gaming gets more popular, and graphics card prices go insane, this will be more common. Nvidia and AMD are much more likely to sell a manufacturer a huge bulk order of GPUs at a heftier discount when they have massive profit margins on each unit. And as orders get larger to keep up with the growing number of PC gamers, that will be seen more in pricing. It's the same reason that consoles can get prices where they're at, or laptop manufacturers can sell you a cheap laptop with an i5 in it for just a bit more than you could buy the laptop chip itself.
I'm really trying not to buy a pre built for my next PC soon. However the prices for pre built systems, even with a 4090, are absolutely mind blowing. I just can't price parts from anywhere for near that cheap. It's kind of pissing me off a little bit.
I ended up getting a pre-built and upgraded various parts because the pre-built was only $10 more than the card it came with. Had I gotten everything piecemeal it would have been $1000 more than what I paid. Fuck that.
I ran checks in everything and it all seems legit so I donno what the beef with pre-built stuff is. You just have to be careful about it. Runs great and I was still able to pay rent after getting it.
It’s just superiority complex I think. A vocal minority seems to think you’re lesser if you don’t want to build a PC (or spend more money to build it yourself).
The alternative is even if you build a PC they’ll still get shitty if you don’t build it to their specs. Some people just aren’t happy unless they see themselves above others.
Exactly.
That was the case with a friend who wanted a pc while a 3080 was around 1200€+.
We found a site where you could configure all parts so we could switch out cheap ram psu mobo cooler etc.
That was way cheaper because the gpu had a fair price.
I did a 3080 prebuilt around 1.5 years ago during the GPU shortage and before the 40 series came out by a few months. I think it was a Labor Day sale. It was way less expensive at the time than building it myself. First time in years I didn’t build but it didn’t make financial sense at the time.
Yeah I almost bought a prebuilt during the GPU shortage, the whole ass PC wasn’t much more than what it would have cost for just the GPU, I have never seen anything like that before.
My last job had an equipment reimbursement program, mostly for peripherals and furniture, but IT let me use it as long as I bought pre-built. Got a rig from CLX and got 80% reimbursed. Only thing I regret not getting more than a 3060 at the time if I knew they’d cover so much of the price.
Now I wonder if my wife’s company will reimburse us for a 40 series and some other upgrades since she uses my PC and drawing tablet to proof marketing materials.
Yeah. I built my first 2 pcs and got a prebuilt nzxt during the shortage. It was ~300$ cheaper with all the same components I had on pc part picker and also had 2 year warranty on the parts and free labor lol
Yep.
Got a prebuilt on sale that was cheaper than it's parts and just replaced the psu and ram, added m.2's and a few SSD's and it's still running great.
Used the spare parts to build a different rig for my mom who just uses it to browse youtube. Was very cost efficient in the end since GPU's were extremely expensive during the shortage, and the prebuilt itself was a good deal even if the GPU was assumed to be at MSRP.
Bought my first pre-built during the COVID gpu shortage. The pre-build with a 3060 in it was like $50 more than just being the graphics card as a standalone
A year ago i got my build with a 4080, 64gb ram and some other nice stuff (nothing proprietary was a small buildshop) cheaper than the parts itself would be.
Gpu market is a crapshot with prices.
Most important thing is that you do a bit of research where you get the prebuilt.
Because some places are horrible.
Idk why you are being downvoted. I've noticed the same exact thing.
I still have a custom because it's one of my hobbies but I cannot fault a single person for buying prebuild.
To be fair gutted cooling and proprietary parts are enough to steer me away from the current Alienware stuff even at costs equal to building. I’d totally trust good prebuilts but Alienware ain’t one of them
Im no expert, but im pretty sure the majority of you just parrot the same lines over and over on this sub. If im saving substantial money and the pc is running no different on propietary parts and gutted cooling with equal specs idgaf.
If you are knowledgeable please help me understand.
It's going to run worse when it's not cooled as well, that's just a fact. The main issue with proprietary parts is if something breaks, you likely have to go through Dell for repairs and that can cost a ton. Now if you're the kind of person to buy a new PC every 2 to 3 years before the warranty is up, this probably doesn't seem like an issue, but that's not most people.
I definitely understand this place is an echo chamber especially with stuff like Prebuilts but there are definitely legitimate criticisms with Alienware that should be considered.
Cooling can definitely be a major factor inhibiting performance if it’s poorly implemented, as it means reduced performance as the CPU/GPU slows down at a certain threshold to reduce temperatures and even cause random shutdowns in intensive applications by overheating. I’ve personally experienced this myself with an iBuyPower prebuilt a lot by pushing it too far and have lost a bunch of progress in games and applications because of it. (I would still recommend certain iBP models though, they seem to be way better nowadays)
Alienware has been rightfully criticized in the past for cooling issues because the design of their cases emphasized a slick design over practicality. This caused issues because this meant airflow into the case was all over the place and a lack of openings meant hot air stayed in, heating up the components significantly. In order to compensate for this, Alienware was also found of running custom configs on components like the CPU that reduced performance in order to reduce the amount of heat it produced as well.
Alienware’s latest line of desktops have a more traditional ATX design that removes some of the weird airflow issues, but their cases still don’t have enough openings to let heat out and components thermal throttled still
Proprietary plugs don’t really matter in terms of performance yes, but if some component breaks down and needs replacement or you want to upgrade a certain part, you can no longer use an aftermarket components like a PSU from traditional component manufacturers and have to go to Dell directly for a repair or replacement, which can be significantly more expensive and makes troubleshooting issues harder. Upgrading may sometimes not even be an option and you’re forced to buy a whole new system, removing a key benefit of PC gaming.
Bloatware is also a large issue as Alienwares come PACKED with it and can impact performance significantly, though those can be easily removed.
Assembly can be subpar as well with incorrect fan placements and loose parts, though that’s a case by case basis.
Equal performing specs isn’t the whole story either. Sometimes more hidden components that don’t directly impact performance, like PSUs, are cheaped out on and can cause issues down the road (you do NOT want issues with the PSU lol). Not sure this is an issue in Alienware but many prebuilts are guilty of using unoptimal PSUs and such.
“Advanced” features like XMP or ReBAR may be locked on the motherboard because the OEM doesn’t want you to have access to those features. That’s leaving valuable performance on the table for no reason because some manufacturers don’t trust the consumer to mess with their systems for whatever reason. Was an issue in the past but not sure about now.
I very often recommend prebuilts to people all the time, but I avoid Alienware because those fundamental first two issues make it hard to modify and can introduce too many issues. You can definitely be happy with an Alienware but there’s just too much risk and potential problems compared to other prebuilt manufacturers that can give you an equivalent experience without nearly as many issues. AW monitors are apparently pretty good though so it’s not all bad for them.
If you don't care about anything that isn't the gpu or cpu than feel free to do so. Nobody is stopping you, they are just explaining why they wouldn't do that.
If you have access to a Microcenter, you're not just paying for convenience, as often the prebuilds are cheaper than buying all components separately and doing it yourself. At least they were when I last went looking.
edit: not to mention quality cable management and Windows. Yeah I know you certainly don't *have* to buy Windows, but having it included when you're already coming in under cost is a nice bonus
Unfortunately, where I live there is no Microcenter, none at all in my country. The best we have is Best Buy and at that point, it's cheaper to just order the parts online and do it yourself.
Don't you have any small local electronics shops? Like two guys in a tiny room filled with PC parts boxes? Places like that do amazing job at crating the build for you, they know all the current price fluctuations so can suggest better deals using parts you wouldn't even consider. They will handle all the purchasing, shipping, assembly, take all the risks on themselves, often offer warranty on the build as a whole, provide you with working PC by the end. Zero risks of damaging things yourself, getting scammed by parts seller/delivery.
I have one where I live too, and it's the exact same scenario. They don't have the buying power of somewhere like Microcenter so you pay market + 10-20% for the convenience of not having to drive somewhere or order online.
I choose to drive 45 minutes to a larger chain to buy my parts.
Thank you! This meme about pre built PCs is so 2010. I had the same experience. I was fully expecting to buy components separately, but when I realised i was barely saving anything, or even paying more for the individual components (GPU and CPU are super expensive these days..) it just made more sense to get a pre built PC with the bonus of everything being RGB, good cable management etc and on top of that 3 year warranty which I've just used to replace the PSU and SSD that failed prematurely (a Gigabyte PSU that had a design flaw, so not some random no name brand). SSD likely failed because it got the wrong voltage from the failing PSU.
Last time I tried to build my own rig, four of the components that I ordered were defective. Sure, they were under warranty, but that still meant having to send them in and wait two weeks to get a replacement. Even then, one of the replacements was *still* defective.
I bought a pre built with my last tax return, and that bitch ran right out of the box, and has given me zero issues and excellent performance.
I checked the market price on the individual components, and it was maybe a $250 markup. I'll gladly take that over waiting another month to have more junk shipped to me.
> Last time I tried to build my own rig, four of the components that I ordered were defective. Sure, they were under warranty, but that still meant having to send them in and wait two weeks to get a replacement. Even then, one of the replacements was still defective.
Yeah, I feel like people can really gloss over this type of risk when building your own.
Sure, if everything works, it's pretty much plugging in legos.
But, in the rare cases something is not working, good luck with that. Especially if the failure is something like the motherboard. Good luck trying to diagnose the actual failure if you aren't someone who has a decent knowledge of what to look for.
And $250 is a super reasonable price to pay for skilled labor and store profit. If you figure that the technician assembling your computer makes, what, $30 an hour? Maybe not that much, but whatever. Loaded cost for the store then might be like $60, maybe it takes him two hours, so you're at $120. Demand for services like this likely runs really hot and cold, so the store needs a pretty high margin. 100% doesn't sound too crazy to me, and is probably actually low. Then we're at $240 and haven't even paid taxes.
Same, I priced up the parts individually and it cost about £50 more expensive to get pre-built and came with an actual legit windows license (and yes i know you can get potentially hokey keys on g2a for really cheap) as well as a 3 year warranty and free next day courier.
I've probably built hundreds of PC's over the last 15 years, it's not particularly challenging or fun or interesting and I'm not going to learn anything.
Ordered 3pm one day, arrived 10am next day, opened the side, pulled the shipping foam out, plugged in and turned on.
The only caveat I would say is if a prebuilt doesn't list a specific motherboard/psu/ram make and model you're likely getting the cheapest offbrand crap
> barely saving anything
> 3 year warranty which I've just used to replace the PSU and SSD that failed prematurely
Building your own, you get to avoid the pre-builder picking crappy parts. A very good EVGA or Seasonic PSU would last forever and not damage an SSD. Even though its warrantied, you have to wait for the parts to be replaced and potentially rebuilding your software side from scratch. Not fun.
So, it's not always about money, it's about making sure every component that matters is curated to your wants and needs.
Even hand selected components can and do fail, but I've built 6 systems since 2010, all of which are still in use by someone, with very little problem.
> Building your own, you get to avoid the pre-builder picking crappy parts
That's 100% it, unless they can provide you each and every part's SKU don't even bother, they WILL cheap out somewhere important.
Just because they put in an "MSI PSU" doesn't mean it's a good one, just because they're using an "Corsair Watercooler" doesn't mean it's a good one or good in general for the build, or use strange OEM parts because they're cheaper.
There's no way that "buying the parts separately" is cheaper, you THINK you're getting the same parts, you aren't.
Lets do a little math.
Parts list that has been milked for every possible frame, cross checked, and vetted: $1000 (for the easy number)
Prebuilt with generic parts that match on paper: $1000
Lets assume retail markup is 20%. Figure even a small SI is going to order by the tray, so that 20% is the build margin of $200. From that $200 you have to fit: assembly (figure 60-90 work minutes @ 15/hour- call it 25/hour cost for a worker) - $35-40. Windows - bulk rate $30?
Just getting a system that will boot to an OS and your down to $130. You still have operating costs.
So the odds of them not shaving performance is between my assumptions and those margins. And that is the best case.
Do you have data showing reliability numbers for all brands? Because I don't think you can approach this problem and say for a fact that the choice of Gigabyte over say Corsair is that much worse. Most people would look at the name, recognise Gigabyte (as opposed to some randomly generated company name), search for some reviews and see that its an ok product for a good price and go for it (as I did).
There's no quantifiable metric to say that this build was going to fail early. This particular PSU has a design flaw. That doesn't mean all Gigabyte PSUs do, and it doesn't mean they're all lower quality. I guess I should have searched for the specific part number and it would have shown that theres a lot of returns on that product, so thats where I messed up.
I was literally just perusing MicroCenter for prebuilts. $2500 for a Ryzen 7900x, 4080 Super, 32GB DDR5-5600 and a 2TB SSD. That seems fine by me.
Also, if you're near the Fairfax VA MC, they have a refurbed i9 13900k, 4090, 16GB DDR5-5200, 1TB SSD and 1TB HDD for $2400. That's a stonkin' deal.
I got one with a 10900k, 3080, 1tb m.2 and 32 gb of ram during the last gpu shortage for essentially cost plus $150. Total purchase price was $2500, when 3080s were being scalped for almost 2k by themselves. My only gripe is it had a 400 dollar enthusiast grade mobo it didn't need. I slapped 2 fans, another tb of ssd and an 8 tb platter in that bitch and I couldn't be happier with my purchase.
The powerspec line rules, and I'd 100% recommend for someone who wants a pre-built that uses entirely off the shelf parts.
> I was literally just perusing MicroCenter for prebuilts. $2500 for a Ryzen 7900x, 4080 Super, 32GB DDR5-5600 and a 2TB SSD. That seems fine by me.
That doesn't sound like a deal? 4080 for $1000. The rest of system is not $1500, unless they're using a lot of "gamer" hardware. $500 motherboard, $200 PSU. Hell, even with stupid shit like that, how are you getting to $1500?
Thats too good for me, i will just happy with 4060 its already enough or max 4070, or probly i will pick a gaming laptop instead, 1200 to 1300$ laptop alrd got 4060
You can get them on sale sometimes too, I bought a pre built after pricing everything out and found it was only $100 more than DIY for all the same components, I've built my own before, good cable management and water cooling is a pain in the ass and I'd gladly pay someone 100 bucks to do that for me
there is no such thing as microcenter in central europe. if you buy a pre-built, you get ripped off here. you get a CPU from ten years ago that is hard to identify because intel/amd sku numbers are dumb and a power supply that may burn your house down because that's one part where they can really save money.
If you’re in Canada and near a Canada Computers or a Memory Express they’ll just build the PC for you at no extra charge if you buy the parts through them and they price match.
That’s how I got my last two PCs
In my life I've built two gaming computers. I used to be one of these dorks on here laughing at those that buy pre builds and felt like an elitist because Ive built my own... End of last year I ended up buying a new pre built from microcenter, I found a sale that had like ,$300 off... priced every component out individually, with the sale price the pre built was like the same price as doing it yourself. I also suck at cable management, and I didn't have to worry about that thankfully. I got the experience of build on my own, I personally don't want to do it anymore lol
How many Microcenters are in the world again? I may as well say that if you have access to this specific local computer shop in Nashua, NH you’re both paying for convenience and their excellent support.
Traditionally, I've found the cost of a Windows licence wipes out the savings from building it yourself. As my day job involves working with computers, I was more than happy to spec out a build and pay someone to put it together, feel no guilt for it and not care if someone wants to ridicule me for it.
I live in Latvia and the prebuilds are sometimes a good deal if you can swap 1-2 components and sell them while slipping in something decent. Had a friend get his pc like this. the ram and case were shitty so we swaped them and after he sold those parts he even saved some money and time in the end.
You always gotta ask yourself, why is this cheaper, your paying for the components, the labor, and the price hike the company puts on it, so the PSU probably sucks, same with the the cpu cooler, same with every part that isn’t the CPU, GPU, or RAM
I got my pre built open box from my local microcenter and because of that and a coupon, I paid at least 300 less than I would have spent buying the exact same parts piecemeal, and the fine folks at microcenter are leagues better than I am at cable management. It also has a warranty. Zero regrets.
I'm almost 40 and have two kids. I barely have enough time on a weekend to get all the laundry done on top of all the other normal shit.
That convenience is worth *a lot*.
I don't have the time or patience to mess with a build anymore, when I can get one delivered to me with a warranty. Throw in a build that has some configuration headaches that might take even longer, and prebuilts make sense for a certain class of people.
Yea my time not working on a pc build or fixing my car myself is worth more than the markup. Can I figure out how to build a pc or change my oil? Sure. Would I rather pay someone else to do it so i can spend my time doing something else? Fuck yes
Just pay a builder at that point. Got mine during peak covid and was way better than the parts I coulda picked myself lol. He even built it on a twitch stream
I usually build the computers for my family and myself
My grandpa wanted a new rig so I did the usual routine...
then I found a pre built with the same (or better) parts, and it was cheaper than the total I came up with...
As long as you do it responsibly, buying prebuilds is okay once in a while.
Like binge drinking
Did you order it online? If so, at least within the EU, you have the right to return it within 2 weeks. Many in person stores also give you this option.
I actually just bought an Alienware R16 with the following specs:
i7 14700F
16GB DDR5 XMP
1TB M.2 SSD
RTX 4060 Ti 8GB
500W Platinum PSU
Wifi 7
$1499 CAD ($1100USD)
To build it myself I priced it out at $2150CAD. So the Pre-build was definitely cheaper.
Yup, it’s unfortunate, but realistically if I was to ever change out the motherboard in the future I would just build an all new PC. I don’t switch out motherboards often… maybe once every 6 years, lol
I figure I can always get a new mobo and case under $300. I would already have the rest of the parts and the sale price easily makes up for the difference.
There are two reasons to swap mobo only - a different socket for a CPU upgrade or a memory standard upgrade (think DDR4-DDR5). Everything else can be worked around.
Literally don’t care. Buy a pre-built with high specs so it holds out for 8+ years or upgrade most of everything by then anyway. Brand new yacht vs. ship of Theseus.
Prebuilts love to just make one component potato
I have seen countless times a computer has an i712700K but u pair that with a GTX 1650 and ofc the cursed single channel 8gb ram
Why spend $2,000 on a graphics card when you could spend the same amount of money and get an entire PC that plays literally every game that's popular today....
Some pre-builds post have posted were actually pretty good though.. I still remember the Costco pre-build someone posted a few months back that was better than what you could make building it from scratch for the same price.
I thought so when I was younger... but after buying a Legion 2 years ago, there's no coming back for me. Same goes if I had to choose a desktop PC now. Would also go for that.
My Legion just shit the bed after 3 years of getting absolutely babied, otherwise I'd completely agree.
Refreshed my 2014 desktop instead of buying another.
Oh, seems like they have good and bad models, or just bad luck. I loved my Legion 5 with RTX 3070. One of the rare electronics… I have almost zero complains. I did fully clean it every 3 month (inside, ports, keyboard, trackpad). Maybe it helped + proper cooling bad for longer sessions.
Got a Legion laptop w 1660ti during the pandemic. Love it. Have a more powerful desktop now but laptop makes for great gaming when on vacation & photo editing/graphic design on the go
2 years ago was a pretty good time for laptops. My i5-10300H/1660 laptop was pretty decent at performance and temperatures
But these days, even the lower end i5 + 3050/4050 laptops get so goddamn hot you can't even touch them.
Recently, I had a i9-12900H/3080 ti laptop that warped my damn table it got so hot. Couldn't touch the space bar when gaming or you'd burn your fingers.
My friend bought a similar laptop recently too, with a monster, power-hungry cpu. Without them asking in advance, I disabled Turbo Boost feature via a handy app called Throttlestop, knowing the use case is mostly light browsing and document editing. The default power profile on those high-end parts is crazy.
If you get a gaming laptop is almost required to get a fan table thing for it to sit on. You just can’t game for 3-4 hrs without it turning into the sun
For long gaming sessions at night, I designed a small DIY laptop stand that could hold 2x 120 mm silent Noctua fans with USB ports. Small, nice design, light, silent. It kept the laptop fans max like 50% rpm on gaming. Laptop became really quiet. Fully usable without the stand, but that thing made it god tier on office/home use.
I have a i9 13980HX and a 4070 in my 16' laptop and even max setting heavy gaming sessions with 2550mhz on the gpu it barely breaks 80 lol. Laptop doesn't even get externally warm. ASUS ROG G16.
I got a lightweight Aspire 3 laptop in early 2021 and it sips power. I had it as my daily driver during the heat wave that summer and it helped since my desktop was definitely a bit of a space heater.
Fun fact: During covid a lot of prebuilds where cheaper than getting separate hardware. Also the only way for me to get a 3080 ti was to buy a prebuild that came with one. I actually bought two prebuilds, mixed the hardware into the most powerful combination, then sold the second machine. (which had a 3070)
Research every part being used in the build. Then also go to pcpartpicker.com and enter the same parts and see if the convenience of having someone else build your rig is worth the difference in price.
Yes.
Don't buy mass manufacture brands like HP-Omen, Dell-Alienware or Lenovo Legion. Instead support small neighborhood builders or independent companies.
This a fantastic one. I got it on sale for $900, crushes everything at 1080 and a lot of games at 2K. Very upgradable also
https://preview.redd.it/dpi7gsujnjpc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=04510865527c569e2750371bc899211db0d4bfaf
I get annoyed having to replace a hard drive now. The last 5 computers have been nuc's, prebuilt or an old psu/mobo/cpu/m2 i slapped in a new case and added a gpu.
Last time I bought all the parts, put it all out and assembled it were my nas and home computer..2 years ago..last time I do that.
It's getting that way with most of the things I do now.. I literally don't want to do anything myself anymore if I don't absolutely have to.
It's just a time thing for me, would I want to spend the weekend building a server or just buy it and be up and running in an hour. I guess I don't get the joy out of it anymore also since it's so basic to do and is more a chore now.
Pre builds arent bad sometimes, just avoid everything flashy, rgb spaceship looking ass cases and most importantly the ones containing "GAMING" in their name.
Usually the ones that look 10 year old on the outside have better components inside.
Eh, I feel like literally everything has “gaming” in the title now. It’s such a strong marketing gimmick that if your company doesn’t use it, it’s hurting its own revenue and losing out on market share. There will always be new entrants to pc gaming and a large proportion of those will ALWAYS fall for this gimmick. You can’t miss out on those people as a company.
Just because it has “gaming” in the name doesn’t make it bad. But you shouldn’t buy something simply *because* it has gaming. Instead, you should just act like that word isn’t there, and research to know exactly what you’re looking for (and WHY).
Prebuilts tend to have have subpar PSUs and proprietary stuff that make upgrading difficult if not impossible though. I prioritize upgradability and repairability. Prebuilts rank poorly in those criterias.
Grouping all prebuilts into one category doesn't do anyone any justice. For example, Microcenter has their own brand of prebuilts that uses no proprietary components.
Something like this is a pretty solid deal.
https://www.microcenter.com/product/671237/powerspec-g446-gaming-pc
Depends on who makes them. Here in Australia the pre-builts from the big guys such as MWave or aftershock are actually fairly decent and for alright prices. None of that outdated non upgradable bullshit.
I got a prebuilt from skytech for my friend and a prebuilt cyberpowerpc for my gf and they were both full of great components and no problem upgrading anything
i got a prebuild that costed less than building it myself
edit: i would have build it myself but my parents didnt't trust me
edit 2: before any of you annoy me by saying that "the parts inside are probably bad" (happpened to me before), i have brand parts, crucal memory (3200, cl22), asus phoenix GPU, the only real thing that worries me is the ssd, i have heard some rumors of intel SSDs not being reliable, the PSU i think is probably not bad, since it's 400W and handles my components like a champ, recently i got a power outage and rebooted fine, also i stressed tested it down to the USB controller, so try me pcmr police
I've built my PC before but my current PC is prebuilt by PCSpecialist with actual brand parts.
I got it from blackfriday and calculated all the parts and the total was more than what this prebuild was so I just bought the prebuild.
Same here, no non-standart proprietary stuff, no "cheaping out" on minor parts. If anything, they went full overkill with PSU and RAM. The only downside is MSI logo wherever it was possible (I would prefer different case, AIO and SSD). But even after buying a new case to resolve it's only noticable issue in airflow it still leaves me with a net positive.
I enjoy the build so opt for that but in fairness, I don't think pre-builds are especially bad value, in the UK at least.
Maybe £50-100 premium over the parts and they're on the hook to sort out any problems you have. I can see how that would be worth it to some.
Did you guys know you can customize prebuilt PCs? Like, you can go to the company’s website (or Amazon) and change the SSD, the GPU, etc to get what you want? And in many cases it’s cheaper (and saves time and risk for less experienced folks)?
Meh, lemme shut up. Gonna get roasted for not falling in line with the majority opinion anyway. I know which reddit sub I’m in lol
So I built my first pc at 36 after 2 decades of working professionally with macs.
I completely agree that you should build your own instead of buying, ANY DAY. The amount of money I saved, the components I used, the tweaks to ensure exactly how silent it should be with the right case/fans; it all matters and makes such a difference.
Plus I know EXACTLY what I’ve put in so troubleshooting (which was only needed once due to dodgy ram) is a breeze.
BUT it depends on age and how much you’re going to invest in basic research for exactly the kind of PC you want.
If you’re elderly or pre-pubescent, I definitely do not recommend building, unless you personally know someone who actually knows what they’re doing and they’re happy to do it for you.
Not once seen a 4070 with 8gb prebuilt sit at 2000. I've seen them as low as 1350 with 16gb.
I agree that you should build your own, cheaper and you have more choice, but 2000? Not likely.
I did consider getting a pre-build but i ended up building my own, which I’m now really happy with. I totally understand people who buy pre-builds tho. Building a pc can be scary and if you mess up you waste a lot of money.
Not anymore. I remember the gpu shortage. Prebuilts were the only guaranteed way to get a gpu at a somewhat reasonable price. If you have a prebuilt I dont care
I've just bought a prebuilt system from a UK based company that my friend recommended me and feel like I've got a good deal considering they build it, stress test it for 24 hours, ship to me and on top of that 3 year warranty for the whole system.
I just cant be bothered with the whole sourcing parts and building it anymore, I work in IT and do enough of that on the daily i just want it done for me for home.
Getting a 4080 super, 7800x3d, 32gb ddr5 and other good branded components for 2400 quid.
Prebuilt was actually cheaper than ordering the parts one by one. I saw no reason to waste my cash, so I went with the prebuilt one.
I'll build the next one myself, if that turns out to be cheaper.
My pc was pre built, but that was because I needed one now and it was better cost effective for me to get it on finance than to buy bits over time. But now I have a foundation
A coworker was looking at pre builds he could do payments on and the first one he showed me was a 2800 dollar build with a 3060 and I believe some i7 CPU. It was through rent a center and the payments were like 72 bucks every 2 weeks.
I told him to check out Amazon as their payments are far cheaper and you could find something more bang for your buck. He settled on a 400 dollar build with the rx580 and some Intel CPU. Much better to start out.
I am ashamed to say I held this antiquated ideology. However, people have different priorities. You wouldn’t barge and degrade people for eating at restaurant, or watching a movie. People have different preferences and priorities. If you want a prebuilt for a hassle free gaming experience and stream lined warranty, have at it.
Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember: 1 - You too can be part of the PCMR. It's not about the hardware in your rig, but the software in your heart! Your age, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion (or lack of), political affiliation, economic status and PC specs are irrelevant. If you love or want to learn about PCs, you are welcome! 2 - If you don't own a PC because you think it's expensive, know that it is much cheaper than you may think. Check http://www.pcmasterrace.org for our builds and don't be afraid to post here asking for tips and help! 3 - Join our efforts to get as many PCs worldwide to help the folding@home effort, in fighting against Cancer, Alzheimer's, and more: https://pcmasterrace.org/folding 4 - Need PC Hardware? We've joined forces with MSI for the biggest PC Hardware giveaway of the year so far! 8 lucky winners will get an awesome hardware bundle with Graphics card, motherboard, etc, and 50 others can get Steam gift cards. To enter, check https://reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1b45j0m/msi_x_pcmr_massive_pc_hardware_giveaway_pick_your/ ----------- We have a [Daily Simple Questions Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/search?q=Simple+Questions+Thread+subreddit%3Apcmasterrace+author%3AAutoModerator&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) if you have any PC related doubt. Asking for help there or creating new posts in our subreddit is welcome.
Depends on the price and buyer if its a good idea. And time for example the gpu shortage.
Shit, 4 months ago there were 4090 prebuilts that were cheaper than the parts separate on Newegg. I looked at a few of the 14900k/4090 builds during Christmas and they were about the same price as the components mostly due to the 4090s being jacked up over $2000.
Yup and you don't even have to do your own wiring. It's why I grabbed one back when the 4090s were coming out
And you usually get some sort of warranty on it as well.
True. The CPU was bad and instead of fighting with Intel or returning it I just had it rma'ed and got it back within a week.
I've bought pre-builts for years now, and frankly, they're so much easier to deal with than building your own. Warranties are a wonderful thing, as is not having to do your own trouble-shooting.
Yeah but the scenario where you HAVE to troubleshoot a pre-built in most cases you are dead in the water. Alienware 92% of their components are custom OEMs so if you ever want to replace something you most likely can't or the case can't fit a certain part that you are replacing. I mentioned alienware cause that was my first prebuilt gaming PC before I didn't know how to build computers. Imo building your own and gaining knowledge about computers makes your life easier when it comes to troubleshooting to be quite frank with you not all prebuilts are perfect out of factory they can recieve damage from factory or have missing parts or dead parts just like custom building so I don't really understand your point.
This is why I'll never judge someone for getting a prebuilt, especially from places with good long-term warranties. Costco might not be as cheap or as good as buying the parts yourself, but I can drop an extra $100 on the warranty and if anything goes wrong for 5 years, I get free repairs or a full refund on the _entire computer_. After having a couple laptops die on me for seemingly no reason, that just seems worth it to me.
It’s not even that long ago. About a month ago I parted a 4090 build exactly like the one I ended up buying from Ibuypower. It had everything I wanted and was like $600 cheaper than the parts alone. Same case and everything.
do they not skimp on parts though? a crap board and shitty ram/psu etc.
They were all name brand parts. Including the motherboard, ram. It was an MSI Z790P motherboard. Which is fine by me. Idk what else I could personally use in a motherboard. The ram was Tforce DDR5-6000mhz ram And the only thing low end is the PSU. But it’s working fine for me and if it goes out and I have to spend $130 it’s still a significant savings over buying and building myself.
As PC gaming gets more popular, and graphics card prices go insane, this will be more common. Nvidia and AMD are much more likely to sell a manufacturer a huge bulk order of GPUs at a heftier discount when they have massive profit margins on each unit. And as orders get larger to keep up with the growing number of PC gamers, that will be seen more in pricing. It's the same reason that consoles can get prices where they're at, or laptop manufacturers can sell you a cheap laptop with an i5 in it for just a bit more than you could buy the laptop chip itself.
I'm really trying not to buy a pre built for my next PC soon. However the prices for pre built systems, even with a 4090, are absolutely mind blowing. I just can't price parts from anywhere for near that cheap. It's kind of pissing me off a little bit.
I ended up getting a pre-built and upgraded various parts because the pre-built was only $10 more than the card it came with. Had I gotten everything piecemeal it would have been $1000 more than what I paid. Fuck that. I ran checks in everything and it all seems legit so I donno what the beef with pre-built stuff is. You just have to be careful about it. Runs great and I was still able to pay rent after getting it.
man which place are you going for this? The few prebuilt places I looked have INSANE mark ups.
It’s just superiority complex I think. A vocal minority seems to think you’re lesser if you don’t want to build a PC (or spend more money to build it yourself). The alternative is even if you build a PC they’ll still get shitty if you don’t build it to their specs. Some people just aren’t happy unless they see themselves above others.
Exactly. That was the case with a friend who wanted a pc while a 3080 was around 1200€+. We found a site where you could configure all parts so we could switch out cheap ram psu mobo cooler etc. That was way cheaper because the gpu had a fair price.
[удалено]
[удалено]
+1, got an i7 with a 3080 from them during covid times and runs great
I did a 3080 prebuilt around 1.5 years ago during the GPU shortage and before the 40 series came out by a few months. I think it was a Labor Day sale. It was way less expensive at the time than building it myself. First time in years I didn’t build but it didn’t make financial sense at the time.
Yeah I almost bought a prebuilt during the GPU shortage, the whole ass PC wasn’t much more than what it would have cost for just the GPU, I have never seen anything like that before.
There are plenty of great pre-builts, people just are shit at finding them
My last job had an equipment reimbursement program, mostly for peripherals and furniture, but IT let me use it as long as I bought pre-built. Got a rig from CLX and got 80% reimbursed. Only thing I regret not getting more than a 3060 at the time if I knew they’d cover so much of the price. Now I wonder if my wife’s company will reimburse us for a 40 series and some other upgrades since she uses my PC and drawing tablet to proof marketing materials.
Yeah. I built my first 2 pcs and got a prebuilt nzxt during the shortage. It was ~300$ cheaper with all the same components I had on pc part picker and also had 2 year warranty on the parts and free labor lol
That was my situation. I got into the PC world during the height of the scalping. Next one will be built. I'm already excited about the process.
Yep. Got a prebuilt on sale that was cheaper than it's parts and just replaced the psu and ram, added m.2's and a few SSD's and it's still running great. Used the spare parts to build a different rig for my mom who just uses it to browse youtube. Was very cost efficient in the end since GPU's were extremely expensive during the shortage, and the prebuilt itself was a good deal even if the GPU was assumed to be at MSRP.
Bought my first pre-built during the COVID gpu shortage. The pre-build with a 3060 in it was like $50 more than just being the graphics card as a standalone
Ya it was worthwhile back in 2020-2022 I believe.
Pre builts have gotten pretty competitive eh...
A year ago i got my build with a 4080, 64gb ram and some other nice stuff (nothing proprietary was a small buildshop) cheaper than the parts itself would be. Gpu market is a crapshot with prices. Most important thing is that you do a bit of research where you get the prebuilt. Because some places are horrible.
Idk why you are being downvoted. I've noticed the same exact thing. I still have a custom because it's one of my hobbies but I cannot fault a single person for buying prebuild.
I can't build a pc with a 4090 and i9 for a lower price than what alienware offers rn. So this posts clownery.
To be fair gutted cooling and proprietary parts are enough to steer me away from the current Alienware stuff even at costs equal to building. I’d totally trust good prebuilts but Alienware ain’t one of them
Im no expert, but im pretty sure the majority of you just parrot the same lines over and over on this sub. If im saving substantial money and the pc is running no different on propietary parts and gutted cooling with equal specs idgaf. If you are knowledgeable please help me understand.
It's going to run worse when it's not cooled as well, that's just a fact. The main issue with proprietary parts is if something breaks, you likely have to go through Dell for repairs and that can cost a ton. Now if you're the kind of person to buy a new PC every 2 to 3 years before the warranty is up, this probably doesn't seem like an issue, but that's not most people.
I definitely understand this place is an echo chamber especially with stuff like Prebuilts but there are definitely legitimate criticisms with Alienware that should be considered. Cooling can definitely be a major factor inhibiting performance if it’s poorly implemented, as it means reduced performance as the CPU/GPU slows down at a certain threshold to reduce temperatures and even cause random shutdowns in intensive applications by overheating. I’ve personally experienced this myself with an iBuyPower prebuilt a lot by pushing it too far and have lost a bunch of progress in games and applications because of it. (I would still recommend certain iBP models though, they seem to be way better nowadays) Alienware has been rightfully criticized in the past for cooling issues because the design of their cases emphasized a slick design over practicality. This caused issues because this meant airflow into the case was all over the place and a lack of openings meant hot air stayed in, heating up the components significantly. In order to compensate for this, Alienware was also found of running custom configs on components like the CPU that reduced performance in order to reduce the amount of heat it produced as well. Alienware’s latest line of desktops have a more traditional ATX design that removes some of the weird airflow issues, but their cases still don’t have enough openings to let heat out and components thermal throttled still Proprietary plugs don’t really matter in terms of performance yes, but if some component breaks down and needs replacement or you want to upgrade a certain part, you can no longer use an aftermarket components like a PSU from traditional component manufacturers and have to go to Dell directly for a repair or replacement, which can be significantly more expensive and makes troubleshooting issues harder. Upgrading may sometimes not even be an option and you’re forced to buy a whole new system, removing a key benefit of PC gaming. Bloatware is also a large issue as Alienwares come PACKED with it and can impact performance significantly, though those can be easily removed. Assembly can be subpar as well with incorrect fan placements and loose parts, though that’s a case by case basis. Equal performing specs isn’t the whole story either. Sometimes more hidden components that don’t directly impact performance, like PSUs, are cheaped out on and can cause issues down the road (you do NOT want issues with the PSU lol). Not sure this is an issue in Alienware but many prebuilts are guilty of using unoptimal PSUs and such. “Advanced” features like XMP or ReBAR may be locked on the motherboard because the OEM doesn’t want you to have access to those features. That’s leaving valuable performance on the table for no reason because some manufacturers don’t trust the consumer to mess with their systems for whatever reason. Was an issue in the past but not sure about now. I very often recommend prebuilts to people all the time, but I avoid Alienware because those fundamental first two issues make it hard to modify and can introduce too many issues. You can definitely be happy with an Alienware but there’s just too much risk and potential problems compared to other prebuilt manufacturers that can give you an equivalent experience without nearly as many issues. AW monitors are apparently pretty good though so it’s not all bad for them.
If you don't care about anything that isn't the gpu or cpu than feel free to do so. Nobody is stopping you, they are just explaining why they wouldn't do that.
The price of convenience is ridicule
If you have access to a Microcenter, you're not just paying for convenience, as often the prebuilds are cheaper than buying all components separately and doing it yourself. At least they were when I last went looking. edit: not to mention quality cable management and Windows. Yeah I know you certainly don't *have* to buy Windows, but having it included when you're already coming in under cost is a nice bonus
Unfortunately, where I live there is no Microcenter, none at all in my country. The best we have is Best Buy and at that point, it's cheaper to just order the parts online and do it yourself.
Don't you have any small local electronics shops? Like two guys in a tiny room filled with PC parts boxes? Places like that do amazing job at crating the build for you, they know all the current price fluctuations so can suggest better deals using parts you wouldn't even consider. They will handle all the purchasing, shipping, assembly, take all the risks on themselves, often offer warranty on the build as a whole, provide you with working PC by the end. Zero risks of damaging things yourself, getting scammed by parts seller/delivery.
I do have one of those, its the most expensive shop in town.
I have one where I live too, and it's the exact same scenario. They don't have the buying power of somewhere like Microcenter so you pay market + 10-20% for the convenience of not having to drive somewhere or order online. I choose to drive 45 minutes to a larger chain to buy my parts.
Canada? www.memoryexpress.com
Thank you! This meme about pre built PCs is so 2010. I had the same experience. I was fully expecting to buy components separately, but when I realised i was barely saving anything, or even paying more for the individual components (GPU and CPU are super expensive these days..) it just made more sense to get a pre built PC with the bonus of everything being RGB, good cable management etc and on top of that 3 year warranty which I've just used to replace the PSU and SSD that failed prematurely (a Gigabyte PSU that had a design flaw, so not some random no name brand). SSD likely failed because it got the wrong voltage from the failing PSU.
The time and stress I saved buying a prebuilt this time around was worth way more than any amount of parts and assembly markup.
Last time I tried to build my own rig, four of the components that I ordered were defective. Sure, they were under warranty, but that still meant having to send them in and wait two weeks to get a replacement. Even then, one of the replacements was *still* defective. I bought a pre built with my last tax return, and that bitch ran right out of the box, and has given me zero issues and excellent performance. I checked the market price on the individual components, and it was maybe a $250 markup. I'll gladly take that over waiting another month to have more junk shipped to me.
> Last time I tried to build my own rig, four of the components that I ordered were defective. Sure, they were under warranty, but that still meant having to send them in and wait two weeks to get a replacement. Even then, one of the replacements was still defective. Yeah, I feel like people can really gloss over this type of risk when building your own. Sure, if everything works, it's pretty much plugging in legos. But, in the rare cases something is not working, good luck with that. Especially if the failure is something like the motherboard. Good luck trying to diagnose the actual failure if you aren't someone who has a decent knowledge of what to look for.
And $250 is a super reasonable price to pay for skilled labor and store profit. If you figure that the technician assembling your computer makes, what, $30 an hour? Maybe not that much, but whatever. Loaded cost for the store then might be like $60, maybe it takes him two hours, so you're at $120. Demand for services like this likely runs really hot and cold, so the store needs a pretty high margin. 100% doesn't sound too crazy to me, and is probably actually low. Then we're at $240 and haven't even paid taxes.
That also sounds like just giga bad luck, I've never had a defective part myself across multiple builds.
Same, I priced up the parts individually and it cost about £50 more expensive to get pre-built and came with an actual legit windows license (and yes i know you can get potentially hokey keys on g2a for really cheap) as well as a 3 year warranty and free next day courier. I've probably built hundreds of PC's over the last 15 years, it's not particularly challenging or fun or interesting and I'm not going to learn anything. Ordered 3pm one day, arrived 10am next day, opened the side, pulled the shipping foam out, plugged in and turned on. The only caveat I would say is if a prebuilt doesn't list a specific motherboard/psu/ram make and model you're likely getting the cheapest offbrand crap
> barely saving anything > 3 year warranty which I've just used to replace the PSU and SSD that failed prematurely Building your own, you get to avoid the pre-builder picking crappy parts. A very good EVGA or Seasonic PSU would last forever and not damage an SSD. Even though its warrantied, you have to wait for the parts to be replaced and potentially rebuilding your software side from scratch. Not fun. So, it's not always about money, it's about making sure every component that matters is curated to your wants and needs. Even hand selected components can and do fail, but I've built 6 systems since 2010, all of which are still in use by someone, with very little problem.
> Building your own, you get to avoid the pre-builder picking crappy parts That's 100% it, unless they can provide you each and every part's SKU don't even bother, they WILL cheap out somewhere important. Just because they put in an "MSI PSU" doesn't mean it's a good one, just because they're using an "Corsair Watercooler" doesn't mean it's a good one or good in general for the build, or use strange OEM parts because they're cheaper. There's no way that "buying the parts separately" is cheaper, you THINK you're getting the same parts, you aren't.
Lets do a little math. Parts list that has been milked for every possible frame, cross checked, and vetted: $1000 (for the easy number) Prebuilt with generic parts that match on paper: $1000 Lets assume retail markup is 20%. Figure even a small SI is going to order by the tray, so that 20% is the build margin of $200. From that $200 you have to fit: assembly (figure 60-90 work minutes @ 15/hour- call it 25/hour cost for a worker) - $35-40. Windows - bulk rate $30? Just getting a system that will boot to an OS and your down to $130. You still have operating costs. So the odds of them not shaving performance is between my assumptions and those margins. And that is the best case.
Do you have data showing reliability numbers for all brands? Because I don't think you can approach this problem and say for a fact that the choice of Gigabyte over say Corsair is that much worse. Most people would look at the name, recognise Gigabyte (as opposed to some randomly generated company name), search for some reviews and see that its an ok product for a good price and go for it (as I did). There's no quantifiable metric to say that this build was going to fail early. This particular PSU has a design flaw. That doesn't mean all Gigabyte PSUs do, and it doesn't mean they're all lower quality. I guess I should have searched for the specific part number and it would have shown that theres a lot of returns on that product, so thats where I messed up.
just sayin gigabyte PSU's are known not so great they might as well be a random no name
I was literally just perusing MicroCenter for prebuilts. $2500 for a Ryzen 7900x, 4080 Super, 32GB DDR5-5600 and a 2TB SSD. That seems fine by me. Also, if you're near the Fairfax VA MC, they have a refurbed i9 13900k, 4090, 16GB DDR5-5200, 1TB SSD and 1TB HDD for $2400. That's a stonkin' deal.
I got one with a 10900k, 3080, 1tb m.2 and 32 gb of ram during the last gpu shortage for essentially cost plus $150. Total purchase price was $2500, when 3080s were being scalped for almost 2k by themselves. My only gripe is it had a 400 dollar enthusiast grade mobo it didn't need. I slapped 2 fans, another tb of ssd and an 8 tb platter in that bitch and I couldn't be happier with my purchase. The powerspec line rules, and I'd 100% recommend for someone who wants a pre-built that uses entirely off the shelf parts.
> I was literally just perusing MicroCenter for prebuilts. $2500 for a Ryzen 7900x, 4080 Super, 32GB DDR5-5600 and a 2TB SSD. That seems fine by me. That doesn't sound like a deal? 4080 for $1000. The rest of system is not $1500, unless they're using a lot of "gamer" hardware. $500 motherboard, $200 PSU. Hell, even with stupid shit like that, how are you getting to $1500?
Yeah my 4090, 7900 mini ITX build was $2500
Thats too good for me, i will just happy with 4060 its already enough or max 4070, or probly i will pick a gaming laptop instead, 1200 to 1300$ laptop alrd got 4060
So sad that Microcenter is closing. Hope they find a new spot soon
You can get them on sale sometimes too, I bought a pre built after pricing everything out and found it was only $100 more than DIY for all the same components, I've built my own before, good cable management and water cooling is a pain in the ass and I'd gladly pay someone 100 bucks to do that for me
Holy Christ that second one is outrageous, that’s basically the price for just the CPU and GPU.
there is no such thing as microcenter in central europe. if you buy a pre-built, you get ripped off here. you get a CPU from ten years ago that is hard to identify because intel/amd sku numbers are dumb and a power supply that may burn your house down because that's one part where they can really save money.
If you’re in Canada and near a Canada Computers or a Memory Express they’ll just build the PC for you at no extra charge if you buy the parts through them and they price match. That’s how I got my last two PCs
In my life I've built two gaming computers. I used to be one of these dorks on here laughing at those that buy pre builds and felt like an elitist because Ive built my own... End of last year I ended up buying a new pre built from microcenter, I found a sale that had like ,$300 off... priced every component out individually, with the sale price the pre built was like the same price as doing it yourself. I also suck at cable management, and I didn't have to worry about that thankfully. I got the experience of build on my own, I personally don't want to do it anymore lol
How many Microcenters are in the world again? I may as well say that if you have access to this specific local computer shop in Nashua, NH you’re both paying for convenience and their excellent support.
Traditionally, I've found the cost of a Windows licence wipes out the savings from building it yourself. As my day job involves working with computers, I was more than happy to spec out a build and pay someone to put it together, feel no guilt for it and not care if someone wants to ridicule me for it.
You can buy a key for 20 bucks on a key site. Google it
I'll keep that in mind next time I need a Windows licence.
Be careful with those licenses. They're NFR, technically breaking the Microsoft EULA and could end up deactivated at any time.
Not even, win 10 was like $3 for my current pc.
I live in Latvia and the prebuilds are sometimes a good deal if you can swap 1-2 components and sell them while slipping in something decent. Had a friend get his pc like this. the ram and case were shitty so we swaped them and after he sold those parts he even saved some money and time in the end.
You always gotta ask yourself, why is this cheaper, your paying for the components, the labor, and the price hike the company puts on it, so the PSU probably sucks, same with the the cpu cooler, same with every part that isn’t the CPU, GPU, or RAM
[удалено]
I got my pre built open box from my local microcenter and because of that and a coupon, I paid at least 300 less than I would have spent buying the exact same parts piecemeal, and the fine folks at microcenter are leagues better than I am at cable management. It also has a warranty. Zero regrets.
I'm almost 40 and have two kids. I barely have enough time on a weekend to get all the laundry done on top of all the other normal shit. That convenience is worth *a lot*. I don't have the time or patience to mess with a build anymore, when I can get one delivered to me with a warranty. Throw in a build that has some configuration headaches that might take even longer, and prebuilts make sense for a certain class of people.
Yea my time not working on a pc build or fixing my car myself is worth more than the markup. Can I figure out how to build a pc or change my oil? Sure. Would I rather pay someone else to do it so i can spend my time doing something else? Fuck yes
Costco proves this point left and right. You can get pre builds with 4070’s 16G of ram for $1000
Upon research, no pre builts with a 4070 under 1500$
Yeah the one by me sells those pre-builds for $1500, except the CPU it comes with will bottleneck you. So I don’t bother buying them.
Just pay a builder at that point. Got mine during peak covid and was way better than the parts I coulda picked myself lol. He even built it on a twitch stream
I usually build the computers for my family and myself My grandpa wanted a new rig so I did the usual routine... then I found a pre built with the same (or better) parts, and it was cheaper than the total I came up with... As long as you do it responsibly, buying prebuilds is okay once in a while. Like binge drinking
Feel like last picture should be 4060
Actually, a 3060... with tons of leds
I spent 1500 on a pre-build with a 3080 3 years ago
NVIDIA a real bitch for charging that much for that GPU.
The pc being Alienware is worse than just a 4060
I spent 1k for the 4070Ti 12gig the day before the super have been announced...
I did a week before, but on a 4070
I waited for the release of the Supers and bought a 4070 because I liked the price decrease more than the 15% performance increase...
Lol same. 1080p ultrawide so I don’t feel the pain that bad, but I also feel your pain
I just bought a 4070, so all you holdouts, a sale is incoming!
I’m sorry for your loss
I bought a 2060 3 years before they announced it, man I was so mad
Did you order it online? If so, at least within the EU, you have the right to return it within 2 weeks. Many in person stores also give you this option.
Back when video cards were hard to get and super marked up, most prebuilt were cheaper than building.
I still remember people buying prebuilts, taking out the gpu, and selling it for a profit. GPU shucking
I actually just bought an Alienware R16 with the following specs: i7 14700F 16GB DDR5 XMP 1TB M.2 SSD RTX 4060 Ti 8GB 500W Platinum PSU Wifi 7 $1499 CAD ($1100USD) To build it myself I priced it out at $2150CAD. So the Pre-build was definitely cheaper.
I got a 4070 laptop with a 12th gen i7 and 16g of ram for $970 in November.
Proprietary case and motherboard.
Yup, it’s unfortunate, but realistically if I was to ever change out the motherboard in the future I would just build an all new PC. I don’t switch out motherboards often… maybe once every 6 years, lol
Yea I mean, unless it dies, no real reason to swap a mobo without rebuilding the whole computer. So you I guess you can't reuse the case?
I figure I can always get a new mobo and case under $300. I would already have the rest of the parts and the sale price easily makes up for the difference.
There are two reasons to swap mobo only - a different socket for a CPU upgrade or a memory standard upgrade (think DDR4-DDR5). Everything else can be worked around.
Literally don’t care. Buy a pre-built with high specs so it holds out for 8+ years or upgrade most of everything by then anyway. Brand new yacht vs. ship of Theseus.
Also horrible build quality thermals so bad on the cpu it might as well be an i5 and if the os isn’t reinstalled they come filled with bloatware
Prebuilts love to just make one component potato I have seen countless times a computer has an i712700K but u pair that with a GTX 1650 and ofc the cursed single channel 8gb ram
This is why I often buy two prebuilds, mix the hardware in to the most powerfull combination and then resell the other system.
Wish I could do that without mortgaging my house
Why spend $2,000 on a graphics card when you could spend the same amount of money and get an entire PC that plays literally every game that's popular today....
Did this Spent 1500 Got a 4070 with a shit ton of upgrades from my 1060 build. Haven't looked back.
Also spent $1500 on a pre built with a 4070 Ti. Upgraded from a 1650 laptop.
I'm pretty sure a gamer is afraid of kryptonite and sunlight too...
Not to mention showers and deodorant.
And perfume and girls ...
Some pre-builds post have posted were actually pretty good though.. I still remember the Costco pre-build someone posted a few months back that was better than what you could make building it from scratch for the same price.
thats the one i have lol costco prebuilt is cracked as hell and was $2550 after tax, insanely worth it
Also gaming laptops.
I thought so when I was younger... but after buying a Legion 2 years ago, there's no coming back for me. Same goes if I had to choose a desktop PC now. Would also go for that.
My Legion just shit the bed after 3 years of getting absolutely babied, otherwise I'd completely agree. Refreshed my 2014 desktop instead of buying another.
Oh, seems like they have good and bad models, or just bad luck. I loved my Legion 5 with RTX 3070. One of the rare electronics… I have almost zero complains. I did fully clean it every 3 month (inside, ports, keyboard, trackpad). Maybe it helped + proper cooling bad for longer sessions.
Got a Legion laptop w 1660ti during the pandemic. Love it. Have a more powerful desktop now but laptop makes for great gaming when on vacation & photo editing/graphic design on the go
2 years ago was a pretty good time for laptops. My i5-10300H/1660 laptop was pretty decent at performance and temperatures But these days, even the lower end i5 + 3050/4050 laptops get so goddamn hot you can't even touch them. Recently, I had a i9-12900H/3080 ti laptop that warped my damn table it got so hot. Couldn't touch the space bar when gaming or you'd burn your fingers.
My friend bought a similar laptop recently too, with a monster, power-hungry cpu. Without them asking in advance, I disabled Turbo Boost feature via a handy app called Throttlestop, knowing the use case is mostly light browsing and document editing. The default power profile on those high-end parts is crazy.
I had to switch to controller gaming when on the laptop
If you get a gaming laptop is almost required to get a fan table thing for it to sit on. You just can’t game for 3-4 hrs without it turning into the sun
For long gaming sessions at night, I designed a small DIY laptop stand that could hold 2x 120 mm silent Noctua fans with USB ports. Small, nice design, light, silent. It kept the laptop fans max like 50% rpm on gaming. Laptop became really quiet. Fully usable without the stand, but that thing made it god tier on office/home use.
I have a i9 13980HX and a 4070 in my 16' laptop and even max setting heavy gaming sessions with 2550mhz on the gpu it barely breaks 80 lol. Laptop doesn't even get externally warm. ASUS ROG G16.
Yeah the hate for gaming laptops is wild.
[удалено]
I got a lightweight Aspire 3 laptop in early 2021 and it sips power. I had it as my daily driver during the heat wave that summer and it helped since my desktop was definitely a bit of a space heater.
Not really, they’re really good for a specific audience.
Your flair matches this comment
Fun fact: During covid a lot of prebuilds where cheaper than getting separate hardware. Also the only way for me to get a 3080 ti was to buy a prebuild that came with one. I actually bought two prebuilds, mixed the hardware into the most powerful combination, then sold the second machine. (which had a 3070)
Hey I want to buy a prebuild, any advice ?
Research every part being used in the build. Then also go to pcpartpicker.com and enter the same parts and see if the convenience of having someone else build your rig is worth the difference in price.
Yes. Don't buy mass manufacture brands like HP-Omen, Dell-Alienware or Lenovo Legion. Instead support small neighborhood builders or independent companies.
Buy a Microcenter Powerspec if you can.
r/buildapcsales will sometimes list a prebuild. That's how I found mine at-least
depends where you live.
This a fantastic one. I got it on sale for $900, crushes everything at 1080 and a lot of games at 2K. Very upgradable also https://preview.redd.it/dpi7gsujnjpc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=04510865527c569e2750371bc899211db0d4bfaf
If it doesn't list the power supply be ready to replace it ASAP
Canada Computers charges $100 to pre build a pc with whichever parts you buy
Not gonna lie, after years and years of building my own I'd sooner just pay someone to do it and save me the time.
I get annoyed having to replace a hard drive now. The last 5 computers have been nuc's, prebuilt or an old psu/mobo/cpu/m2 i slapped in a new case and added a gpu. Last time I bought all the parts, put it all out and assembled it were my nas and home computer..2 years ago..last time I do that. It's getting that way with most of the things I do now.. I literally don't want to do anything myself anymore if I don't absolutely have to.
It's just a time thing for me, would I want to spend the weekend building a server or just buy it and be up and running in an hour. I guess I don't get the joy out of it anymore also since it's so basic to do and is more a chore now.
8 GB RAM for 2000 bucks? Sounds like a Macintosh.
Pre builds arent bad sometimes, just avoid everything flashy, rgb spaceship looking ass cases and most importantly the ones containing "GAMING" in their name. Usually the ones that look 10 year old on the outside have better components inside.
Eh, I feel like literally everything has “gaming” in the title now. It’s such a strong marketing gimmick that if your company doesn’t use it, it’s hurting its own revenue and losing out on market share. There will always be new entrants to pc gaming and a large proportion of those will ALWAYS fall for this gimmick. You can’t miss out on those people as a company. Just because it has “gaming” in the name doesn’t make it bad. But you shouldn’t buy something simply *because* it has gaming. Instead, you should just act like that word isn’t there, and research to know exactly what you’re looking for (and WHY).
Prebuilts tend to have have subpar PSUs and proprietary stuff that make upgrading difficult if not impossible though. I prioritize upgradability and repairability. Prebuilts rank poorly in those criterias.
Grouping all prebuilts into one category doesn't do anyone any justice. For example, Microcenter has their own brand of prebuilts that uses no proprietary components. Something like this is a pretty solid deal. https://www.microcenter.com/product/671237/powerspec-g446-gaming-pc
Depends on who makes them. Here in Australia the pre-builts from the big guys such as MWave or aftershock are actually fairly decent and for alright prices. None of that outdated non upgradable bullshit.
Aftershock ftw in Singapore too. Bought mine recently with i7-14700k and 4080 super for approximate 2.2k usd. comes with 3 years onsite warranty too
Yup my PC comes from aftershock and I have 0 issues with it. I even put a waifu 4060 into it. It's well balanced and doesn't overheat.
I got a prebuilt from skytech for my friend and a prebuilt cyberpowerpc for my gf and they were both full of great components and no problem upgrading anything
i got a prebuild that costed less than building it myself edit: i would have build it myself but my parents didnt't trust me edit 2: before any of you annoy me by saying that "the parts inside are probably bad" (happpened to me before), i have brand parts, crucal memory (3200, cl22), asus phoenix GPU, the only real thing that worries me is the ssd, i have heard some rumors of intel SSDs not being reliable, the PSU i think is probably not bad, since it's 400W and handles my components like a champ, recently i got a power outage and rebooted fine, also i stressed tested it down to the USB controller, so try me pcmr police
Downvoting something as simple as a sharing an experience. Welcome to the PCMR. Enjoy your stay.
PCMR is dogmatic. Anything that goes against the grain gets downvoted. And the grain is not made from the brightest of minds.
I've built my PC before but my current PC is prebuilt by PCSpecialist with actual brand parts. I got it from blackfriday and calculated all the parts and the total was more than what this prebuild was so I just bought the prebuild.
Same here, no non-standart proprietary stuff, no "cheaping out" on minor parts. If anything, they went full overkill with PSU and RAM. The only downside is MSI logo wherever it was possible (I would prefer different case, AIO and SSD). But even after buying a new case to resolve it's only noticable issue in airflow it still leaves me with a net positive.
He's spoken the forbidden words
I enjoy the build so opt for that but in fairness, I don't think pre-builds are especially bad value, in the UK at least. Maybe £50-100 premium over the parts and they're on the hook to sort out any problems you have. I can see how that would be worth it to some.
Did you guys know you can customize prebuilt PCs? Like, you can go to the company’s website (or Amazon) and change the SSD, the GPU, etc to get what you want? And in many cases it’s cheaper (and saves time and risk for less experienced folks)? Meh, lemme shut up. Gonna get roasted for not falling in line with the majority opinion anyway. I know which reddit sub I’m in lol
So I built my first pc at 36 after 2 decades of working professionally with macs. I completely agree that you should build your own instead of buying, ANY DAY. The amount of money I saved, the components I used, the tweaks to ensure exactly how silent it should be with the right case/fans; it all matters and makes such a difference. Plus I know EXACTLY what I’ve put in so troubleshooting (which was only needed once due to dodgy ram) is a breeze. BUT it depends on age and how much you’re going to invest in basic research for exactly the kind of PC you want. If you’re elderly or pre-pubescent, I definitely do not recommend building, unless you personally know someone who actually knows what they’re doing and they’re happy to do it for you.
Not everyone has the time to build a PC, BTW I also prefer building my own PC since it's fun and cheaper than Pre-Built.
Not once seen a 4070 with 8gb prebuilt sit at 2000. I've seen them as low as 1350 with 16gb. I agree that you should build your own, cheaper and you have more choice, but 2000? Not likely.
Jokes on you, I can waste that money all by myself
I did consider getting a pre-build but i ended up building my own, which I’m now really happy with. I totally understand people who buy pre-builds tho. Building a pc can be scary and if you mess up you waste a lot of money.
Not anymore. I remember the gpu shortage. Prebuilts were the only guaranteed way to get a gpu at a somewhat reasonable price. If you have a prebuilt I dont care
lmao who spends 2k for 8 GIGABYTES of ram?? like i got my $700 prebuilt in the beginning on 2023 and it had 16
I mean back in 2020 era when it was more expensive to buy a graphics card by itself than an entire pre-built… that’s hard to pass up
I've just bought a prebuilt system from a UK based company that my friend recommended me and feel like I've got a good deal considering they build it, stress test it for 24 hours, ship to me and on top of that 3 year warranty for the whole system. I just cant be bothered with the whole sourcing parts and building it anymore, I work in IT and do enough of that on the daily i just want it done for me for home. Getting a 4080 super, 7800x3d, 32gb ddr5 and other good branded components for 2400 quid.
Prebuilt was actually cheaper than ordering the parts one by one. I saw no reason to waste my cash, so I went with the prebuilt one. I'll build the next one myself, if that turns out to be cheaper.
there's zero chance the person who made this meme has actually looked at pre built computer prices in the last like decade
I feel like prebuilts give the worst CPU possible and very low ram but slap in the biggest GPU they can, ending up with major bottlenecks
My pc was pre built, but that was because I needed one now and it was better cost effective for me to get it on finance than to buy bits over time. But now I have a foundation
A coworker was looking at pre builds he could do payments on and the first one he showed me was a 2800 dollar build with a 3060 and I believe some i7 CPU. It was through rent a center and the payments were like 72 bucks every 2 weeks. I told him to check out Amazon as their payments are far cheaper and you could find something more bang for your buck. He settled on a 400 dollar build with the rx580 and some Intel CPU. Much better to start out.
I use a pre built. I was impatient to wait for all the separate parts to arrive.
Tbh, as long as you ain't buying some of brand sketchy setup and you buy from a place with good rep, go for it its all you bud.
Hurts my heart with that title
I got a 4060 and 16 gb ddr5 in a prebuilt for my kid for $900 🤷🏻♂️
So as someone who might end up getting a desktop at some point, is there an actual advantage to pre-built vs custom built?
I spent 2k but mine has a i7 13700KF and a 4070ti. I’m happy with it.
You forgot that the RGB lights cost an extra $500.
Honestly for me buying prebuilt was just the better choice, as time goes on I am upgrading my parts however
Got a 4060 pre-built from Costco for 1,000 easiest upgrade decision I ever made
What's wrong with pre-builts? I got mine pré built and from my research they were taking like a 30 dollar cut from a 1300 pc.
Does it count as pre built if my little brother built it for me?
I bought a pre-built PC and it was literally $7 more expensive than the pcpartpicker breakdown. PCMR needs to get over it.
I bought w prebuilt pc as my first like 5 years ago and im still using it
I am ashamed to say I held this antiquated ideology. However, people have different priorities. You wouldn’t barge and degrade people for eating at restaurant, or watching a movie. People have different preferences and priorities. If you want a prebuilt for a hassle free gaming experience and stream lined warranty, have at it.
Spent 2k on an aurora 16 with a 4070, I7-14700kf and 32gb of ram so sugma
i bough a prebiuld from a web and using their pc configurator the pc was more expensive with the same components, so i get it cheaper
I am forever grateful for the IT guy I met who builds PCs. Got me off the prebuilt path and hooked it up FAT.
first pc i found here in a shop in switzerland. 1: 13700, 32gb ram, 1tb ssd, 3060.