Home built computers VS Premade computer

i am doing a report on this subject and i need help on the pro and cons ..but i can not find anything to with ...My A+ book does not go in to this and this report is due in a week ...thanks

 

I will do the pros for a home built computer,, If you build it your self,, you will have all of the manuals to the parts,, so if some thing goes wrong, you can fix it yourself for free. Instead of going to a store and have them do it, and charge you like 120 bucks. second there will be no advertisments preinstalled on the computer ,, (you know when you buy a computer from best buy there will always be the icons "FREE HOT DEALS") Thrid ,You know everything that is running on the computer,, (if you buy a computer from the store, it will often have things running such as updates for HP and crap)

 

Pros of premade comps, Already built, Nice wiring on the inside,


Cons of premade comps Advertisments, off brand parts (sometimes), No back up discs, no manuals..


Hope this helps. let me know what you get on the report

 

Another pro for premade.

Carries warranty over complete machine which should include 'swap outs' nowadays.

And the con - trouble is costs you about £20 just to speak to the helpdesk, and then they just read through the manual and then blame the software

One of my friends just got a HP, lots of issues, but ya know I'm helping him obtain the best out of his warranty.....purchased from PC World.............man they hate me down there, I think I'll be banned soon..........LOL

BTW:That was another pro (for me), I enjoy it............

 

I have both built my own PCs and bought pre-mades. In the past I built my own PC because it aloowed me to select good components and was still cheaper than a pre-made system. However nowadays prebuilt PCs are so cheap that it is more or less impossible to build one yourself for less or even the same amount. I guess the PC manufactuers have bulk purchase power and get the components much much cheaper. Also self building raerly goes completely smoothly. I am typing on a self built PC and it has taken around 2 months to get it running perfectly, ie Bios, and just about every driver has needed updated. Why 2 months, well when it is not clear what part or driver is causing the instability you have to work by elimination. Never have had a pre-built with those problems. I have to say that I have been disapointed by these problems. It is not as if Windows XP is a new system now, it is really quite long in the tooth, all these graphics cards, Mother boards, DVDRW drives etc should come with fully functional drivers in the box, you should not have to spend time downloading and reinstalling.

 

Prmade Computer
PROS: Real Cheap,Saves some time coz OS and other stuff are already installed
CONS: Mostly you will get a 1yr warrenty for more youhave to pay,lot of update program and crap are unning on them,if somethin is wrong you have to take it to the place u bought it and have to wait like in best buy a month

HOME MADEE
PROS: Usually all the good name brand hardware give you a 3yr warrenty if somethin goes wrong will take roughly 2week for a replace,no other stupid software running on em,can update it when eve you want to,lot of veraities of cases,you will feel pretty confident coz you made it and mostly know whats going on in it

CONS: usually cost a lot

 

I go with home built. I never saw a premade that I didn't have to compromise on something, whether it be they didn't have the brand of video card I wanted, the case didn't have front side usb/firewire ports, the dealer forcing bundled software on you, or some other detail. When I build it I get exactly what I want.

The last premade I got was my 486 in 1994, and I still ended up replacing nearly every component evenutally.

Of course it also depends on how comfortable you are with configuring it and supporting it yourself too if you go with home built.

 

No comparison, home built EVERYTIME!
Store bought have poor quality parts. The guys in the shops seem to know very little about PCs, in my experience.
You can build a far superior system for a lot less money.
Store bought PCs are the cannon fodder of the IT world!

Pulsar

 

Homebuilt for future upgradeability and none proprietary parts) And that's that!!!!!!! I really don't care about tech support or none of that crap, screw them and there 3 year service plans!!!!!! Blahhh makes me sick!!!!!!! rip off!! If you buy a Dell or Gateway they have you by the balls, just try replacing a case fan,powersupply, or CPU and see what i'm talking about. If anything people should buy barebones and finish installing Ram, videocard, HDD......etc..etc At least you'll have a non propretary board that you could upgrade in the future. Later Fellas

 

All the computer I have ever had where home grown. You get exactly what you want. The thrill of the hunt is fun when looking for your parts. The parts are of better quality and less likely to give you problems within 3 months. No tech support. Don't need it I am tech support. Besides I cant understand the people on Dell, Gateway or HP/Compaq tech support. But really the biggest pro is better parts and the drivers are easy to find.

Being a computer tech I have worked on many brand name and homegrown computers. The home grown are so much easier to repair. Just run down to the store if you need a part and slap it in. The retail ones are a pain in the donkey. They are quite creative when it comes to building a PC. Motherboards fully integrated (Yuck). Cheap hardware that looks like it will break if you touch it. Custom CPU fans that can only be replaced if you get it from the manufacturer. Some you can use a real fan on but not all. Since it is all integrated there are usually no cards and sometimes one. Their tech support is a joke. All they do is flip pages in a book looking up things that closely resemble what you are complaining about. I hate those guys. Drivers can be a pain to find sometimes. Even on their web sites. Why is a sound card driver named 2100005454.exe. How the hell am I supposed to know what that is for? Anyway I think you get my point.

If you want a stable system with good parts build your own.
If you want a system that is unstable and can start giving you problems very soon as well as having cheap parts buy a retail. In the end you get what you pay for.

-Del

 

Well as I have said self builds are not always stable. At home I have a 'cheap as chips' eMachine PC. It works perfectly, and always has. I have added a DVDRW, extra ram and a firewire card but the core of the system is as was. In my business I decided to build my PC for many of the reasons listed here (and yes I have years of experience upgrading and building PCs). I built the PC. Worked for 5 minutes then black screen and continuous wail from system speaker - needed the CMOS cleared. Why? Installed XP, before I had a chance to start to do anything the system crashed. This happend about 5 times before XP actually told me the problem was the video driver (the one installed from XP disk). Perhaps you can imagine the fun trying to get the software supplied by Ati installed on a PC which was crashing every couple of minutes. By shear luck eventually managed it. Installed office etc and tried to set the machine up on the internet, no luck the integrated ethernet was not recognised by XP (what ever happened to plug and play?), had to install Abits own software. From this point at first all seemed well, but within a couple of day it was obvious that there was a problem. I kept getting random bluescreen crashes. The crash message suggested graphics, so I once again updated the driver from the Ati web page. This reduced but did not eliminate the crashes completely. Microsoft tech support suggested a bad memory Dimm. Downloaded their memory tester and yes one of my 2 1Gb Dimms had faults. £ weeks later I am still waiting for a replacement from the supplier. However even with this dimm removed and running with the remaining fault free 1Gb, I was still getting some crashes. I noticed that these most often happened when using the net. I found a down load to replace the Motherboard chipset drivers and one for the Bios, updated these and finally had a stable system. I finally added a DVDRW drive only to have problemw with that, which required a firmware update!

Now considering all the above with a PC built with high quality branded components and compare it with my flawless cheap as chips prebuilt eMachine, and what do you think I am likely to opt for in the future? There is no reason, except perhaps in the first month or two of a major new OS that the drivers supplied with graphics cards, motherboards etc should need updated to make a system stable. Perhaps to improve performance, but not to get basic functionality.