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Well i dunno Matt – thats some of the fun uncertainty oftrying to do your own overclocking isn’t it 🙂 Buy the cheap memory… find that you cant overclock to the speeds you wanted… and then find you are stuck because you cant RMA stuff you have overclocked. Thats why buying a pre clocked build costs a bit extra!
Besides the point though – we are just talking about cost here… you cant replace a product with an inferior version and then claim the savings for the self build camp, whether the superior product is worth the extra cash or not is a completely separate topic.
@bmstalker wrote:
We could challenge you the other way, find my system prebuilt for withing this £200 windows with equal or better components.
I dunno – maybe. You need to list exactly what kit you have and the exact price you paid then – that is missing from your post.
These conversations always end up the same way – someone says “build it for yourself it is a lot cheaper” I say “I don’t think it is that much cheaper actually… here is the evidence” and then someone says… “yeah but if you build it for yourself it is much cheaper”. It is a weird phenomenon. Possibly an example of post purchase rationalisation (or in this case post build rationalisation 🙂 )
What you are saying about increasing choice when you build yourself goes without saying – how much better optimised you end up being… that is a hard thing to quantify! If you put a premium on this then of course DIY is the only way to go.
@Lammie wrote:
@Lammie wrote:
When I have more time today I will have a proper look around and price something that is more comparable to PCSpecialist one.
Ok had some time this morning to have another look using Ben’s link to Part Picker. This is a close as I could get to the WET’s original quote with the only noticeable difference being the memory is a Kingston Hyper X Predator instead of the Kingston Hyper X Beast. Also this memory is 1866 and not 2400 not because of cost, but because that exact part wasn’t listed on the site. I’ve also added a more expensive cooler as the H40 wasn’t listed either.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£166.79 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H60 54.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£59.00 @ Ebuyer)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver Arctic Alumina 5g Thermal Paste (£7.27 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LX ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£83.98 @ Dabs)
Memory: Kingston Predator Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£110.60 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 Series 250GB 2.5″ Solid State Disk (£128.60 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£47.50 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card (£279.98 @ Novatech)
Sound Card: Creative Labs SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio 24-bit 96 KHz Sound Card (£63.49 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Cooler Master Silencio 550 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£60.23 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: OCZ ZT 650W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply (£67.99 @ Dabs)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£11.66 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHOS104-06 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Drive (£22.98 @ Ebuyer)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£68.35 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £1178.42
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-06 11:10 BST+0100)So, still £138.58 saving which could go towards something else like a monitor. If you took away the sound card theres another 60 odd quid so total savings push toward the £200 mark.
If fact, If I removed the sound card and the orginal saving with it included then total cost saving would be… £202.47 therefore, I win the challenge! :P. Seriously though, there are savings to be had, depends on whether your willing to pay the extra premuim for someone to build it for you and peace of mind.
!!!!!!!!!!! You can’t remove the soundcard from your list and then add the savings on without taking it away from Eggs! LOL at the maths there!
So that is the best offer? You saved 138.58 quid, but actually the memory was slower… and the chip isnt overclocked at all…. two things that would be worth a fair bit i would say. Oh… and we don’t know what GFX card PC specialist are actually offering to install either – which might reduce the savings further.
Admit defeat! My gut feelings about self builds have been proved right in this case.
I think a rational conclusion from this thread is – if you self build you might save about 100-150 quid on a 1300 quid setup – but you would need to overclock it yourself and if you cant get it to boot when you are finished you could be spending several days troubleshooting (says the voice of experience).
If you have infinite time / like mucking about with computers then saving 100 quid is probably still sensible. For me though it is a no brainer. I have no problems with folk who want to do this… I just think self builders tend to fool themselves a wee bit about how much they have saved whenever these threads come up. 😀
@bmstalker wrote:
Also, if you want to find the cheapest of each part, use this website
you can specify criteria for each part and it will show you the selection available at the lowest price. Great site, but I ordered all from the one site. Might help you though WET
Good site Ben – just looking at it now as I am tempted by a 670 myself. Actually looking at prices it reminds me of another point – that 670 Lammie links to is very cheap – but it only has one small looking fan – there are loads of different versions out there and most people would pay a bit extra to get one of the nicer ones (I am looking at this one) http://www.ebuyer.com/368520-gigabyte-gv-n670oc-2gd-gv-n670oc-2gd
These cost 40-50 quid more than the basic version – so it would be worth you asking PC specialist exactly what brand they are using WET. When I bought my computer from them a few years back I was worried as i was getting a notoriously loud 470 – but I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were going to fit the Palit version of the card with a better cooling set up.
If they are doing the same with their 670s that means that you would have to knock off another 40 or 50 quid from the potential savings from building yourself. Once you are down at the 100 quid mark i reckon you are wasting your time building yourself for sure.
Ohhhh… good effort.
That is a very good match….. EXCEPT.
You have cunningly changed his 2400mhz 16gb ram for 8gb of 1600mhz.
So go to your link… http://www.palicomp.co.uk/intel-amd-cpu … d_338.html and click the option for 16gb of 2100 ram (still not a s good as PC specialist ./ not as good a brand name but let it go.
Adds a cool 80 quid to your build…. total savings now £150 so you fail my challenge. 🙂
Hey – £150 is not to be sniffed at… but I would still conclude that the PC specialist price there is pretty damn good. Whether you think £150 quid is worth a year warranty, the removal of risk of you frying something by accident in the build, and the saving in time that it takes you too build the thing… thats for you to decide.
By the Way WET – I agree with what peeps have been saying about the soundcard – you might as well leave it off. I did buy an expensive sound card as I was using my PC to power a home cinema surround system – but in retrospect it wasn’t worth the cash.
@Gary Goat wrote:
I don’t think you can buy pre overclocked chips on there own as its the motherboard that does all of the overclocking. At the very least you’d be looking at a pre overclocked barebones system but i’ll have a look when i’ve got time and see what i can come up with 🙂
Lol – well that goes without saying – you knew fine what i was talking about 😈 – there are a few places around sell you either a barebones rig or just the chip +memory on the MB with cooler I think.
Hey lets put this baby to bed – if any1 can be arsed… go through WETs build.
Prove to me you can get a machine EXACTLY LIKE THIS for at least 200 quid cheaper than PC specialist are selling it for and post links to the components you have sourced.
It needs to be pre overclocked – but plenty of component sellers will sell you overclocked chips.
I would argue that setting up all the system and troubleshooting it is worth a fair bit too – but lets just take that out of the equation.
Genuinely wanting to see an answer to this.
I was just worried that folk were saying – oooh that looks expensive… and then comparing it with your system that was a different kettle of fish – thats all.
I suppose it is hard to prove these things definitively. All I know is – for my last comp I looked at pre builds… and i looked at buying the components … and at the end of the day found that I couldnt save any (significant) money doing it myself.
In the old days i would easily save myself 2 or 3 hundred quid on a self build – I just wasn’t seeing that now, but maybe you found better shops than me – I dunno!
You also have to take into account intangibles like warranties and your own precious time. I have better things to do than play computer meccano if I can help it, and a return to base warranty isnt to be sniffed at. Sure… if one component goes down you can replace it – but it aint always that easy to troubleshoot PC problems… and when you start overclocking things there are a lot of factors at play that would make it quite nice just to send the whole system away to be sorted out.
I aint a good example though… I bought a pre build.. then the watercooling block leaked and fried 2 different components and a PSU a year after the warranty ran out 🙂
Pros and cons to either way.
Just to make sure peeps know what they are talking about re price… Lammies set up looks OK – but eggs build is pre overclocked, has a bigger SSD, expensive after market cooler, a GFX card that is much better (twice as expensive at any rate) pre built and has a return to base warranty for the whole system (not just components).
I keep saying this – but the idea that you can build your own system for a lot cheaper than from one of these build companies is in general not true anymore – though people keep coming out with it as if it is true!
re GFX cards. In my mind ATI give better value for money, they are also a must if you want to mine bitcoins (though soon they will be superseded so not a hige factor) NVIDIA has CUDA though – basically if you want to do video stuff… NVIDIA is still the way to go.
If i had the extra money i would go for Eggs system rather than Lammies… bit more future proofed and less could go wrong.
As if climbing everest wasnt dangerous enough…
Cant way to play dead island and left 4 dead with it. Really helps with the whole bashing brains in feel…
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