Updating the 'puter for hardcore ownage

[Taem]

Hi,
You know, I've seen other people make this same claim. IMHO, it's bull#$%&. Only if you think all HD are the same, all memory is the same, etc. can you make that claim. But if you were to actually take the trouble to compare fresh oats to fresh oats rather than used ones, you would find that you can almost always match, and usually beat, the price of a 'stock' system. Often, the only impediment to getting parts equivalent to the stock parts is that no-one retails that stripped down, detuned OEM special made crap. And you can definitely beat the price of a top of the line (e.g., Alienware or Falcon) system. If you expect to get top of the line components for Dell prices, then you are fooling yourself.

--Pete

Well possibly not Alienware, however when I built my computer, I got $greedy$ and purchased - at the time - only the *best* 2-GB RAM, CPU, Motherboard, 2xGraphics Cards with SLI, SATA hard-drives, and a better Power Supply for the more intense load. I went to Fry's Electronics and local computer expo's to find the cheapest prices available. The only things I kept from my old computer which I was upgrading from was the case (I should have gotten a new one because it's constantly over heating causing me to play games with the case open and an external fan on the motherboard), 2x DVD R/RW+/- Rom Drives, my 250-GB IDE Drive (for storage), the NIC card, my Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, Speakers, Headphones, and Software (ah yes, Windows XP Professional). My computer price for doing this myself? $2,200.00. Had I of bought a Dell *at this point in time*, I could have gotten one with not quite as powerful a video card but everything else + a monitor + speakers + Windows XP for the exact same price or lower. It was the thrill of building my own computer that made up for the price, but that was it.

As you might have heard, I made fairly recent upgrades (within the last year) and purchased a new video card and ditched the 2xSLI format (not much improvement at all from using 2x SLI cards of lower stock than using one next gen video card), upgraded to 4-GB of RAM, and got the dual-core processor + heatsink. I ended up spending about another $800.00-$900.00 for "used" parts; had I of bought these new, I'm sure the price would of been much higher. Total price for this computer: $3,000.00. Using Alienware as an example, I could have gotten the same computer (+windows, but w/out a monitor) for roughly the same price! No, if your purchasing top-of-the-line components, I don't believe you will save money building your own computer, or at least not that much more.