Can you build a RIG Cheaper than the Stores

[Wraith]

Right then boys and girls, this is not my usual area of expertise but spurred on by Feronix' old build guides and watching Linus's recent video I wondered the very same thing Linus did and also it dawned on me that quite a fair few people often wonder the same.

Can you build a rig cheaper than a store bought system?

Now in Linus's video he bought the Asus M32CD Desktop system (specs below) which was from a reputable dealer within the frozen wastelands of Canada for around $1000 (Canadian dollars) :lol:.

ASUS M32CD desktop PC
Intel i5 6400 (Stock Cooler)
8gb RAM
1tb HDD
Intel H110 motherboard
AMD R9 370 2gb
500w Delta PSU
case and OS

I figured this was a nice starting point and so went on the search for an equivalent system, after a quick Google I found the same Asus M32CD desktop system but in the meatier EU configuration and from the store we all love to ridicule for their uber knowledge and advice, PCWorld.

Well here it is:

The PCWorld Asus M32CD.

Intel i7 6700
16 GB RAM
2 TB HDD
Intel H110 Motherboard
Nvidia GT730 2GB
300W Delta PSU
Case, Keyboard, Mouse & OS (Windows 10)
Warranty 1 Year

Total £799.99.

So with this in mind, it got me thinking some more and after clicking the advert at the top of the forums I gave PCSPECIALIST a good old clicking and configured their Vortex 1000 Gaming system to match the PCWorld ready built unit and here's what I ended up with.

PCSPECIALIST Vortex 1000 Gaming PC.

Intel i7 6700
16 GB Fury HyperX 2133MHz RAM
2 TB HDD
Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 3
Nvidia GT730 1GB
Corsair VS-350W PSU
Corsair 230T Case
OS (Windows 10 64Bit Home Edition)
Warranty 3 Years

Total £824.00

Very interesting findings right off the bat! The hardware in the PCSPECIALIST rig is easily well worth the extra £24 you'd pay and the 2 extra years of warranty too! So here comes the crunch, can you build this rig cheaper than the shop bought pre built equivalents, for this I'll be using old faithful PCPartPicker.

Lets find out: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/H2jncf

Intel i7 6700
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Gigabyte GA-Z170XP-SLI
16 GB Fury HyperX 2133MHz RAM
2 TB Western Digital Black Edition HDD
Nvidia GT730 2GB
Corsair CX 430W PSU
Corsair Spec-02 Case
OS (Windows 8.1).

Total £814.37

Now it's clear that it is slightly cheaper but not by much, take away the fact that you'll be building this yourself and factor in the cheaper OS and free upgrade option to Windows 10 which is always a smart move and that is pretty much the only deciding factor on price.

So is it worth it? That depends on you, are you savvy enough to build the system yourself and do you delight in being the master of your rig?

There are so many deciding factors to take from this little exercise, component quality, upgradeability, value for money, warranty. After looking over the 3 systems I'm kicking PCWorld out the door straight away, the Intel H110 Motherboard and 1 Year warranty are pathetic sorry Asus, yes it's cheaper but for what? The PCSPECIALIST rig is I must say brilliant and I'm not being biased here just look for your self, high end components, upgradeability and a healthy warranty plus if you're not the techiest of tech people it's all built ready to go out of the box.

So in conclusion can you build a PC cheaper than the store bought pre built systems... £10 says you can!

Thoughts below as always.

Peace and Love guys ~Wraith~​

 

[Thelosouvlakia]

Paying for the OS doesn't have too be THAT expensive, if you are willing to buy from /r/microsoftsoftwareswap.

Oh btw wraith, I think that you could save a bit more on that system if you went for an H110 motherboard

Sometimes prebuilts -and that's the case in greece- are HORRIBLE, bad OEM or noname PSUs... unreliable motherboards etc...

For example there's a BIG huuuge retailer in Greece whose prebuilt systems sometimes make no sense. A system with an r9 370 an fx6300 -that they market that you can overclock it- with a gigabyte motherboard that isn't even on the 9xx chipsets and ofc no vrm cooler on that thing, and a "FORCE 600W" PSU that I bet isn't even capable of 400Watts of stable power. you have to be really lucky for that thing to not go nuclear on your desk

PS more examples to come when I have some free time.

 

[jimma47]

Assuming all your parts come from one supplier and are 'pick up' then it's a no brainer. If you have to buy online and factor in several delivery fees it may be different.

The things you haven't touched on (and are probably not the intent of the post) are the pro's and cons of doing it yourself.

Lack of warranty and fear of stuffing things up versus the fact that every time you power on or look at your rig you get to say "yeah I made that" and the satisfaction that brings. Also it's a very good learning experience.

In regards to warranty I've had store bought pcs lose a drive and had to return the whole rig to the repair centre for a week, if you build yourself and a component fails you are just without that component for the RMA (which could take longer admittedly)

 

[CreatiXx]

the HUGE + points for getting a prebuild pc or letting the store build your pc is. You can be 100% that every single part should work fine. no faults or hardware thats DOA or ready to RMA.

Even if it happens, the shop itself provides warranty itself for the whole system and parts in it, so thats somekind of double safe. Even cables you should need in theorie to connect parts that are normally missing because they were not provided by the manufacturer will be provided by the shop itself without an extra cost, thats atleast what we do ^^
There comes more in a prebuild PC than widely known

You just have to pay that little extra ofc

On topic though ; nice founds Wraith!

 

[Wraith]

We also have the added issue with store bought of who is the OEM of the system? i.e most Dell or HP systems I've had in the past or had to do service/upgrade work on recently are a nightmare with their custom proprietary bios or hardware that's been hot glued to the motherboard to stop you going third party for upgrades.

 

[tinytomlogan]

The PC Specialist kit is actually spot on, they dont sell any tat either.

Not like some of the SI's Ive known in the UK.

I think the point in buying one built is because you dont want or know how to build your own plus you get warranty

 

[barnsley]

part price v part price you can't really beat the PC specialist one. If you were to go for similar parts I reckon you could get better bang for buck however.

 

[Wraith]

The PC Specialist kit is actually spot on, they dont sell any tat either.

Not like some of the SI's Ive known in the UK.

I think the point in buying one built is because you dont want or know how to build your own plus you get warranty

Aye this is so true other than Ginger6, PCSPECIALIST is awesome sauce for build quality, parts, labor and shipping all in the price is amazing, I had a friend ask me before Christmas about a local store system for their son who only plays Minecraft and I did manage to build them a much neater faster system for much less.

part price v part price you can't really beat the PC specialist one. If you were to go for similar parts I reckon you could get better bang for buck however.

I could very well have gone down the alternative hardware route i.e i5 6400, GTX 750 Ti, 8 GB RAM and 1 TB HDD and come out cheaper still and it would have had more gaming grunt, but I wanted to keep the build within the store specs to see if it could be done.

Consequently had I altered the hardware here's what I would have achieved http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/Xs98nQ all for £614.11

 

[Mysterae]

It's a great analysis you done and the result you've found is the reason why I stopped building systems for people years ago - there's not much money in it for the home builder. The stores that do it take their profit from the individual components.

I also stopped because folk wanted cheap computers around the £400 mark, and they are just dumb-ass boring to build. Then there's the support if something goes wrong...

 

[JLR]

Interesting article Wraith, I've done some upgrades in the past on systems like, Dell, HP and Compaq and they were an absolute nightmare. I like to build my own systems not only because I enjoy it but it for the sense of achievement it brings. Reading your article it's good to see PC Specialist is a good option for those who just want to purchase one straight out.

 

[Kilbane]

I got thinking about this earlier today, so decided what I could find from a single supplier. So I went off to trusty Scan.co.uk.

i7 6700
Asus H110-Plus
Asus GT730
Corsair VS450W
Seagate 2TB
Corsair Carbide 100r
Corsair Vengeance 2133 DDR4 16GB
Arctic Freezer 11i
Windows 10 64bit home

Total inc P+P = 694.50 GBP

So based on the idea of around a 815 GBP build, I wondered what spec could be achieved for gaming.

The obvious way to achieve that would be to swap out the GPU, with an extra 120 GBP to play with, you can in fact upgrade to either a GTX 960 (800 GBP) or R9 380X (820 GBP).

 

[Wraith]

£694!! That's awesome! The gauntlet has been cast, its become a challenge now. Who can top this? Keep the base hardware in mind though.

 

[RobM]

I got a slightly better the the op spec for £701
I decided to do this on Aria as I buy from them usually and i got
i7 6700
Asus H110
gigabyte GtX 750Ti 2gb
XfX 600w modular 80+ bronze
Corsair carbide spec02
G-Skill Trident 2x8gb 2133
Toshiba 2tb drive
Windows 10 64bit home
Add on vat and delivery for a total of £690.46

 

[Wraith]

Excellent. I like the idea of doing this on a regular basis so we have an upto date reference build at a set budget. I can spend hours with pc part picker throwing rigs together.

 

[firefly]

Can you build a rig cheaper than a store bought system?

Yes and I did.

Largely because I got the OCUK black friday deals;
X99 bundle for £670 or £690, r9 390 8gb for £206
Great base for a system

Buying from a store means you get one that just works from the box (and have a warranty) - though I kind of like making them myself.

(It did occur to me after buying several new bits of kit that I'm flat rate vat registered and If I'd spent £2k in one store I'd immediately get 20% back, so it's £1600 (you get vat back if you spend 2k or more in one store under the flat rate scheme). Add another 20% back corporation tax, it's probably a false economy for me not to just buy an entire system and peripherals from one place)

 

[Wraith]

Firefly you have a fair few points, with the UKs new found addiction for American trends like Black Friday we do find some epic deals. Also VAT returns on £2k + 20% back on corporation tax not everyone has access to such things and our OP budget was £800.

 

[RobM]

interesting you mention black friday deals, when I built my current rig I searched on the main etailers and none came even close to Aria on price by the time I had factored in delivery.
Its usually best to buy from store 1 then you only have 1 delivery charge

 

[Greenback]

If your'e not in a rush to build a new system you can save plenty on sites that do special deal, when I got my current system I checked out Aria and got lucky that 1 time they had the MB and ram on a week special and the cpu on a 1 day special saved me a nice bit.

 

[Wraith]

While I feel that sales are a great thing for getting a system cheaper not all stores do this with fully built systems, it's why I didn't include any sale, refurb or reduced components in the OP. The challenge here was much like the budgeted builds Feronix used to do here, though his were more take a price bracket and see just what you could get for your money (really good threads).

Of cause reduced sale hardware would be an advantage in such a task but sales are few and far between usually holiday seasonal, if however people are building and they can grab a bargain at the time then bingo grab them. But for this particular exercise I didn't factor them in. I think though that taking on board what you guys are saying about sales and bargains I might just do 2 more builds later using the motherboard, CPU & RAM bundles which most eTailers offer all year round.

Get ready Intel & AMD builds incoming and remember £799 is the budget for our store bought machine.

 

[RobM]

AMD FX-8350 4.00GHz (4.20GHz Turbo) 8x Core Processor - £111.25
Gigabyte GA-990X-Gaming SLI ATX Motherboard with USB 3.1 Type £79.99
G.Skill TridentX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-17066 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit £66.16
XFX Radeon R9 380X Black Edition AMD Graphics Card £154.99
120GB ADATA Premier SP550 2.5 inch SATA 6Gb/s Solid State £26.25
1TB Western Digital Blue 3.5" inch Internal Hard Drive / HDD - Caviar Blue £35.83
Cooler Master G750M 750W Hybrid Modular Power £59.99
Phanteks Black Eclipse P400 Windowed RGB Midi PC £43.30
Windows 10 Home 64 bit Operating System - DVD £61.65
Gladiator 30cm Blue LED Strip with 18 LED's £2.98

Basket Total £642.39
Approx. Delivery £10.26
VAT £130.54
[FONT=&quot]Total £783.18[/FONT]