The last PC I owned, I built. Meaning, I separately purchases the case/motherboard/CPU, the hard drive, the RAM, the CD-ROM drive, the floppy drive, and peripherals. I got to pick the components I wanted, and I ended up saving a couple of hundred dollars over a comparable pre-built machine from the likes of Dell or HP.
It was time for a new machine. So I had to weigh the options again: buy one outright, or build one like I did before? This time, I went with buy. Frankly, I don't have the time to spend putting everything together and making it work, and there's hardly a price difference these days. If I were building a high-end gaming PC there probably would be a difference, but not so much for a mainstream PC that I'm looking for.
The inner geek in me is crying a little tear for not assembling my own PC this time around. But I'm also secretly looking forward to having a box arrive with a PC that's pretty much ready to go as soon as I pull it out.
2 comments:
Noo...don't give in to the buying temptation :-)
I just built my PC - it had been a while since I built one (last one was in '99 or 2000). I think the most time was spent in picking the components, reading reviews, figuring out compatibility etc. Once all the components arrived, it took me only an hour to assemble them and a few hours to set up Windows, makes sure stuff works etc... Still worth it for the (re)learning experience, getting familiar with the latest and greatest chipsets and video cards and for knowing each and every component of the machine I expect to own for the next few years.
I know, I know...being able to hand-pick all the components was one of the main reasons I resisted. Oh well, we'll see how it is going at it from the other end (deconstructing what's in there, choosing any future upgrades that are compatible, etc.).
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