Welcome
My name is George Dadson
III and I am a student at Remington College in Tampa, Fl. This is my current
student project to make this page. The following information is on building
your own PC. There is a Power Point presentation on some of the things I did
to make this page and also links to some of the places I got the information
from.
It is increasingly popular to build your own computer.
In most cases, it saves money, and it guarantees you get what you want. It also
assures you avoid proprietary designs many companies use to keep you coming
to them for new parts. Best of all, having built the system yourself, you become
very familiar with that system and with computers in general computers in general.
People from all walks of life today build their own PCs. Executives, engineers,
students, housewives, they all do it today. But, at the same time, pre-built
PCs have come down in price quite a bit. Today, one is left to wonder whether
it is best to build a PC yourself or to simply buy one off the shelf. I'll address
that here.
If you are a real PC enthusiast, this question may be a non-issue. The answer
may be as obvious as the color of the sky. This is predictable, of course. When
one builds their own PC, they are able to not only understand their PC better
because they built it, but they are able to choose each component that goes
into their PC. There is really something to be said for choosing your own components,
and I'll go into that further below. There is also a certain sense of satisfaction
with having built a PC. One spends a few hours (or less for those more familiar
with the process) to put the thing together. Then comes the moment of truth
when one hits the power switch for the first time. If it works on the first
try, its beer time!
But, besides the joy of it, is it worth it? Is it a practical use of your
time? Will it really save you money? The answer to that question today has become
a bit gray. A few years ago, the answer was obvious. Pre-built PCs were typically
built from OEM, cheap components. The performance was average to simply awful.
The choice was obvious: If you wanted a decent PC, you better build it. Today,
the line has blurred. Where many off-the-shelf PCs today still use cheaper components
in an effort to save money, there are more pre-built PCs today which do use
quality hardware and whose performance ranks up there with the best of them.
Let us look at some of the key areas of interest in this:
Component Selection
Most commercial PC buyers (except for the ones who build higher end models)
do not make a big deal of which components they use. They will, of course, tell
you the specs of the system, but often do not elaborate on the brands of the
equipment they use. Most lower to average priced pre-built PCs use more or less
generic hardware. It gets the job done, but what you get is what you get. Upgrading
can be a problem for this reason. In contrast, building your own PC means you
can handpick all components in your system. You can ensure you get good, name
brand hardware which will have proper manufacturer support and driver support.
Most importantly, you can ensure you get hardware that will perform. One aspect
of pre-built is that compatibility issues are taken care of by the manufacturer,
but there is a tradeoff made in that guarantee.
Price
In general, you can get more bang for your buck building your own PC. In many
cases, you will find equally priced and comparable PCs, where one is pre-built
and one would be homebuilt. You can buy PCs cheaper than you can build them,
but when you consider the hardware choices within, the price is offset in favor
of homebuilt. One thing to consider here is the value of your time. If you are
a very busy person where time is money, then you most likely want to buy a pre-built
PC. If you don't mind taking the time, though, you can do better doing it yourself.
Support
Available support is a key concern for do-it-yourselfers. When you build it
yourself, there is nowhere to take the PC for service. You can't say "Here,
make this work." On the other hand, pre-built machines typically do come with
manufacturer support. But, support is anything but consistent. Some manufacturers
have questionable records on support whereas some are quite good at it. Having
support for your PC is no guarantee of having a problem-free user experience,
and it is certainly no guarantee that they will take responsibility for your
PC if it doesn't work. The good news for do-it-yourselfers is that the community
of people who do this kind of thing themselves is increasing. There is a lot
of data on the internet, and community sources for assistance. I'm compelled
to mention our own forums where a community of thousands is available to help
you out on your PC.
Warranty
On pre-built PCs, there is typically a warranty on the whole system, and in
many instances, you are offered an extended service plan at the time of purchase.
Home built PCs do not have full system warranties, of course, but if you buy
good name brand hardware, most of the components will themselves have warranties.
So, really, either way, you can be covered here.
Software
Pre-built PCs often come with much software on it, most importantly the operating
system itself. The actual price of the software is pretty good, because manufacturers
get great deals on this software because they buy in bulk. On the flip side,
though, these PCs sometimes come with too much software, meaning garbage that
you do not want and just clutters the hard drive and bugs you to buy stuff.
It can be quite annoying. On homebuilt PCs, you might pay a little more for
the software per unit, but you will get what you want and only what you want,
plus you can set it up how you want.
In general, I'm a big fan of the homebuilt PC. I've never used a PC I didn't
build myself. I think its a huge money saver. In my case, I built it myself,
and then as technology progressed, I incrementally upgraded the machine. This
saves a lot of money in the long run, because with a pre-built commercial machine,
once it goes out of date, you pretty much need to start anew with a new PC.