News Why Building Your Own PC Is Still a Smart Move in 2023

[Admin]

Putting together your own desktop should save you money and help you take control of your tech life.

Why Building Your Own PC Is Still a Smart Move in 2023 : Read more

 

[hotaru.hino]

The saving money aspect starts to get a little less so the cheaper you get. For instance, once you get down to the <$800 range or you just need some computer to do basic stuff with, it starts becoming harder for me to feel that building my own computer becomes worth it unless I take advantage of some fire sale like Black Friday.

For instance, the cost of a Windows license is at the minimum around $100. When your OS is approaching >15% of the total BOM cost, that starts to become less appealing. Of course you could just use Windows without activating it, since it's basically like WinRAR at this point. And no, I won't count buying keys from resellers like Kinguin or whatnot because there's no real way to prove they're completely legitimate.

EDIT: I may have missed it, but some websites do offer to build a computer for you, you just send them the shopping list of parts you want.

 

[bit_user]

it starts becoming harder for me to feel that building my own computer becomes worth it unless I take advantage of some fire sale like Black Friday.

Once you have a PC, upgrades get cheaper. Often, you can reuse the same case and PSU. Sometimes, storage as well.

You can also opt to replace the GPU on a different cycle than your CPU/motherboard/RAM upgrades, which can help you stretch a limited upgrade budget further.

I also like the idea that you could build a budget PC today, with an upgrade path towards a powerhouse. For instance, maybe you start with a Pentium Gold G7400, but sometime later you drop in a i5-13500. Then, after that, you upgrade the PSU. Finally, you add a dGPU. So, your entry-point is as low as just about any prebuilt, but you have an upgrade path towards a much more capable machine, where the size of any one step is much smaller than a wholesale upgrade.


For me, the appeal isn't about money-savings, but more that I'm somewhat of a control-freak and like to make all the decisions about different components. Typically, the point is that I can pick better quality, better performing, or more reliable components than you typically get in a prebuilt.


I recently had a friend looking to upgrade the CPU in his Dell prebuilt, from Gen12 to Gen 13. He inserted the new CPU and the system refused to boot, saying Gen 13 CPUs aren't supported. It turns out that even though the socket and chipset are compatible between the two, Dell's BIOS only supports booting Gen 13 CPUs on certain motherboard models. So, you really can't take anything for granted, if you opt for the prebuilt route.

More common examples are people being limited in their dGPU upgrade options, due to the size of the power supply, the size of the chassis, or the number of auxiliary power cables. And it's common for prebuilts to use proprietary power supplies & motherboard connectors, which makes it hard to upgrade to a bigger PSU (at least, without overpaying for it).

 

[cknobman]

"You do get the company’s stylish alien-themed chassis, sleek software and strong build quality, but it’s at a premium."

I see the author has a sense of humor

 

[Dave Haynie]

I always build my own PCs, but my knowledge of computer systems is overkill for a relatively simply system integration. I look at it as a means of getting the exact PC I want, rather than saving money. I'd also wager that, if you don't understand just why you'd want to integrate your own system, specifically in terms of the hardware you want, there's not much point.

The last system I integrated was a PC for my beach house, and it was particularly challenging because it was going into the "Checkmate 1500" PC case, a pretty clever modular case designed to look like an Amiga 3000. This case requires a microATX or other small board, half-height cards (if any), special attention to cooling if you're putting anything reasonable in it. I also wanted a card "drive" for my SD cards and a BD/BDXL drive... a slot drive was possible. And this was for electronics CAD, above any hobby stuff, because I had every intention of doing my professional work down at the beach!

The Tom's Guide article demonstrates that this isn't for everyone. Maybe Dave Meikleham just got lucky for 20 years, but it's a complete rookie move to attempt to upgrade a CPU without checking your BIOS and motherboard compatibility before you buy that CPU.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I look at it as a means of getting the exact PC I want, rather than saving money.

I feel like this is more why a lot of us build our own PCs. You get the PC you wanted.

Most people are fine with their PCs being an appliance.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

The saving money aspect starts to get a little less so the cheaper you get. For instance, once you get down to the <$800 range or you just need some computer to do basic stuff with, it starts becoming harder for me to feel that building my own computer becomes worth it unless I take advantage of some fire sale like Black Friday.

I will say this: If you only need basic computer functionality with reasonable performance, and you're not interested in gaming, getting a basic laptop from Costco is usually the way to go. You can usually find Core i7 / Ryzen 7 (maybe i5 / Ryzen 5), 16GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD for around $500, sometimes less.

Granted, you will get a garbage QLC SSD, I can pretty much guarantee that part. And no, no matter how companies may like to market things, QLC SSDs are not even close to being as responsive as TLC SSDs right now. I have two laptops with QLC drives, and every time I need to install new drivers or update Windows, it takes two or three times longer than a laptop with a better quality SSD (even a Gen3 Samsung 970 Evo would beat most of the QLC drives).

You also won't get any graphics muscle. You'll get Intel's anemic Xe Graphics at best, with 32 EUs. Or maybe you get an AMD chip with two compute units, which is actually worse in many cases than Xe Graphics! But still, some very viable options if you're not planning on gaming. Examples:

https://www.costco.com/hp-15.6"-touchscreen-laptop---amd-ryzen-5-7520u---windows-11.product.4000157083.html — $449 on sale right now, pretty killer deal!

https://www.costco.com/acer-swift-3-14"-intel-evo-platform-laptop---12th-gen-intel-i5-1240p----1080p---windows-11.product.100973090.html — 14-inch with Intel i5-1240p, dropped to a 512GB SSD, but otherwise still a great option. (Upgrade the SSD to 1TB or 2TB on your own if you want more storage!)

In fact, if you are interested in gaming but also need a laptop, and space isn't a primary concern, building a modest desktop with an RTX 4070 for about $1500, then buying a $500 laptop, will get you the best of both worlds and still cost a lot less than a dedicated gaming laptop of even remotely similar performance. My take: gaming laptops are really only the way to go if you travel a lot and want to play games on the road. In which case, you might seriously consider just buying a Switch. No, it's not PC gaming, but it's a way better portable option for gaming. Or you could do the Steam Deck or Asus Ally as well.

 

[RichardtST]

I build for my company... I love the "I built that. It's gorgeous to look at. It's a screamer. And it didn't cost an arm and a leg." feeling. The complexity is getting pretty ridiculous though. Last build I forgot to match up the front panel connectors to the motherboard and ended up with a dead front panel USB-C because there wasn't a connector on the stupid mobo. Doh. I also love shopping for bang-for-the-buck. It's just a great feeling to slap it all together and see it boot. Pacing around the office as I type.... UPS delivery this afternoon!

 

[elforeign]

If you can put together a set of Lego's, you can put together a PC. Plus, with Youtube nowadays, there's no excuse for not "knowing" how to putone together.

Granted, it can be a hassle, the OS installation isn't always straightforward, the initial boot up isn't always straightforward, etc. I would even say that for most people who know what they want, and they build their PC, it's not because of cost savings, it's because of the quality of the components and the overall goal for the PC.

However, that writer on Tom's guide, boy, might need another job. To just tell people to buy whatever off the shelf is downright terrible and negligent advice. He needs a good talking to by his superiors, because that one was a doozy.

 

[ezst036]

By pricing out the parts, we can create an identically-configured DIY PC for just $1,834 (yes, with no OS, but we’ll touch on that soon),

Installing an open source OS keeps those costs from rising any further. Just saying. Also the support lifecycle is longer as well. When buying components often times users choose slightly higher end components since they're still saving money during the process anyways. On the other side, those components can easily last much longer than Microsoft would like them to last. After going through all that effort to do a custom build, being forced to arbitrarily upgrade to a new computer at some point in the future just because they said so is deeply distasteful.

The article also has a sub heading: "Putting together your own desktop should save you money and help you take control of your tech life."

You lose some of that control with commercial options, and you're paying to lose that control.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

The only prebuilt I would ever buy (and plan to do so soon for travel) would be a laptop... and that's only because I can't take the desktop with me.

I'll never buy a pre-built desktop again. Speaking of that... are companies like Gateway and Dell still in business?

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

If you can put together a set of Lego's, you can put together a PC. Plus, with Youtube nowadays, there's no excuse for not "knowing" how to put one together.

Granted, it can be a hassle, the OS installation isn't always straightforward, the initial boot up isn't always straightforward, etc. I would even say that for most people who know what they want, and they build their PC, it's not because of cost savings, it's because of the quality of the components and the overall goal for the PC.

However, that writer on Tom's guide, boy, might need another job. To just tell people to buy whatever off the shelf is downright terrible and negligent advice. He needs a good talking to by his superiors, because that one was a doozy.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if he was asked to write that article, for SEO and ecomm purposes. Telling people to buy expensive gaming laptops could bring in more money, after all! But we have effectively zero insight into what most other Future-owned sites and publications are doing, even if we both have "Tom's" in our name.

 

[elforeign]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if he was asked to write that article, for SEO and ecomm purposes. Telling people to buy expensive gaming laptops could bring in more money, after all! But we have effectively zero insight into what most other Future-owned sites and publications are doing, even if we both have "Tom's" in our name.

You're right, that's probably more troubling then. I appreciate the response piece here with some great consumer advice. Build you own PC's don't be afraid. Even a simple PC to browse the web and run Microsoft office, would be even easier! Just an inexpensive set of components, and no need for a GPU.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

If you can put together a set of Lego's, you can put together a PC. Plus, with Youtube nowadays, there's no excuse for not "knowing" how to putone together.

Granted, it can be a hassle, the OS installation isn't always straightforward, the initial boot up isn't always straightforward, etc

You're not wrong. Any questions has answers on YouTube... and I like to tell people "if you know how to operate a screwdriver you can build a PC" because IMHO it's that easy.

Cables are marked... SATA, VGA, CPU, etc... brain dead easy honestly.

My half dozen builds in the last 20 years have all powered up successfully the first time... so can't say I've ever experienced a hassle... but I know it happens. I thought something might be wrong with this one on the initial boot because the debug LEDs stayed on for 4-5 minutes... but it was the "Ryzen memory training." The lights went out and the PC did post.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Also the support lifecycle is longer as well.

Depending on which distribution and flavor of Linux you choose, they're actually as bad, if not worse, than Microsoft. For instance, the most recent non-LTS version of Ubuntu (23.04) was released April 20 of this year. It's EOL is January, 20th of next year (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history#Table_of_versions). Compare this to Windows 11 22H2, which was released September 20, 2022, and has support until Oct 4, 2024 (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-11-home-and-pro)

Even then the LTS branches get their support cut after 10 years, which is about as good as XP (although it was 13 years), 7, and 10.

 

[mkaafy]

My idea is so simple. A friend of mine, almost always plugs his external keyboard and mouse to his laptop. Then, he connects it to an external ultra-wide monitor. He's doubled everything!! He's practically using a PC!

 

[RichardtST]

If you can put together a set of Lego's, you can put together a PC. Plus, with Youtube nowadays, there's no excuse for not "knowing" how to putone together.

There is a huge difference between "putting one together" and "matching up the correct parts" and "getting the best performance parts". I will agree that putting the parts together is easy. However, most (non-Tom's) people couldn't tell you RAM from a disk drive. That of course is why they made pc-parts-pickers. Those are for the noobs. I'd venture to say most posters here don't bother with those. Overall, you'd be surprised by the percentage of the populace that can't work a screwdriver... even with help from Youtube. I'm just saying it's not so easy as you think!

 

[-Fran-]

From all my years of experience I think I have a fairly simple take on this: if you don't want to learn, can't deal with downtime (arguable, but often the case) and need 3rd party support for your software, then getting "off the shelf" is the better approach, even if you know you're getting a slightly inferior product on paper. For everyone else, specially people that wants to learn and dedicate the time to this as a hobby (kind of?), then DYI is the way to go.

RMA'ing, while not that common for me personally, I've had to deal with it a few times and it's just a pain to get things out, box them and all that jazz. When my WiFi module died on my laptop, I just got a replacement of from Amazon and called it a day; I didn't go through the RMA. A normal person I wonder if they'd know how to do that, but they don't need to and can rely on their full purchase warranty instead.

I think everyone here should already know, and going by most comments "we" do, DYI is not for everyone and it's valid to say "it's not for me and I don't want to invest the time in learning".

I love cars, but I wouldn't build my own.

EDIT: Grammerz

Regards.

 

[RichardtST]

I'll never buy a pre-built desktop again. Speaking of that... are companies like Gateway and Dell still in business?

Dell is... And while their baseline systems are almost somewhat barely reasonable, the moment you try to add any performance the price goes through the roof. For example $2500.00 for a 4TB nvme drive... That's why I build for my company. I get the whole computer, plus the 4tb drive, for less than what they charge for just the drive. And that's all top-of-the-line quality and performance parts.

 

[Giroro]

Has anybody on earth, Influencers excluded, ever gotten good or even acceptable customer service from one of the big PC manufacturers?
I'm pretty sure the only way to get Dell to even answer the phone is to have 100+ retweets on a complaint about the company.
If you want customer service that meets the bare minimum standard of "technically exists", then you have to overpay for a mac. I think now they charge you a subscription fee on top of their high hardware costs, but such is the price of not having computer knowledge in 2023.

Before you build a PC, the first question you need to ask is, "Can I do this job with a 4 e-core N95/97/100 mini PC that I can get off of Amazon for under $150"? Because those will be perfectly fine at office work and web pages and video watching at a price that feels impossible (Most cost less than the Windows 11 Pro license that often comes pre installed... and occasionally doesn't work). They can even work ok as your 2nd encoding PC for running your stream, as long as you use hardware encoding and don't expect much from its ability to do things with significant GPU load (like color correcting multiple video sources).

If the answer is no, it's time to build a PC, because anything you expect out of a <$400 desktop can probably be done well enough with a mini PC.

But the big downside to building a PC right now, is that decent motherboards with good features are gaudy and still overpriced AF. That's a bummer because having a way better and more controllable motherboard is a very significant upside to building a PC, instead of attempting to upgrade or maintain a locked-down big-box computer.
Plus, case manufacturers definitely prioritize looks over functionality, so it can be hard to find a good case that meets the holy trinity of affordability, cooling, and efficient use of space.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't get why so many cases need to be a heavy full-atx glass behemoths made to literally shine a spotlight on the empty wasted space where a rack of drives should be.

 

[Geezer760]

The saving money aspect starts to get a little less so the cheaper you get. For instance, once you get down to the <$800 range or you just need some computer to do basic stuff with, it starts becoming harder for me to feel that building my own computer becomes worth it unless I take advantage of some fire sale like Black Friday.

For instance, the cost of a Windows license is at the minimum around $100. When your OS is approaching >15% of the total BOM cost, that starts to become less appealing. Of course you could just use Windows without activating it, since it's basically like WinRAR at this point. And no, I won't count buying keys from resellers like Kinguin or whatnot because there's no real way to prove they're completely legitimate.

EDIT: I may have missed it, but some websites do offer to build a computer for you, you just send them the shopping list of parts you want.

I've bought full RETAIL versions of Win 7,8,10 but I've also bought keys for $30 and I've had no trouble with them what so ever they work just fine, I will never buy full price ever again, and I won't move to W11 till I absolutely have no choice.

 

[bit_user]

Most people are fine with their PCs being an appliance.

Until they're not.

I know a guy who bought a compact mini-PC without a dGPU. Then, he started playing some games and it turned out that his dGPU upgrade options were limited to single-slot, low-profile. That effectively limited him to just a RX6400, which he said gave him decent 1080p performance on his game but ran loud, probably due to being in a cramped case.

 

[Geezer760]

I would never buy a pre-built PC, I like having the control of what I want and how I want to build it with part choices I choose and want the build to look like, and how much I can afford to spend for the needs I want to use it for, you just gotta be smart about shopping for parts and always plan out your build before spending one cent on it.

 

[Geezer760]

Has anybody on earth, Influencers excluded, ever gotten good or even acceptable customer service from one of the big PC manufacturers?
I'm pretty sure the only way to get Dell to even answer the phone is to have 100+ retweets on a complaint about the company.
If you want customer service that meets the bare minimum standard of "technically exists", then you have to overpay for a mac. I think now they charge you a subscription fee on top of their high hardware costs, but such is the price of not having computer knowledge in 2023.

Before you build a PC, the first question you need to ask is, "Can I do this job with a 4 e-core N95/97/100 mini PC that I can get off of Amazon for under $150"? Because those will be perfectly fine at office work and web pages and video watching at a price that feels impossible (Most cost less than the Windows 11 Pro license that often comes pre installed... and occasionally doesn't work). They can even work ok as your 2nd encoding PC for running your stream, as long as you use hardware encoding and don't expect much from its ability to do things with significant GPU load (like color correcting multiple video sources).

If the answer is no, it's time to build a PC, because anything you expect out of a <$400 desktop can probably be done well enough with a mini PC.

But the big downside to building a PC right now, is that decent motherboards with good features are gaudy and still overpriced AF. That's a bummer because having a way better and more controllable motherboard is a very significant upside to building a PC, instead of attempting to upgrade or maintain a locked-down big-box computer.
Plus, case manufacturers definitely prioritize looks over functionality, so it can be hard to find a good case that meets the holy trinity of affordability, cooling, and efficient use of space.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't get why so many cases need to be a heavy full-atx glass behemoths made to literally shine a spotlight on the empty wasted space where a rack of drives should be.

If you build your own and choose good parts, then WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' CUSTOMER SERVICE! lol. out of all the builds I've built over the the years I've never ever called any customer service for any part or problem I've ever used and all of these systems are still running today, and a couple of these systems are over 12yrs old still running today.

 

[bit_user]

You also won't get any graphics muscle. You'll get Intel's anemic Xe Graphics at best, with 32 EUs. Or maybe you get an AMD chip with two compute units, which is actually worse in many cases than Xe Graphics! But still, some very viable options if you're not planning on gaming.

I actually made a point of getting an Intel laptop with an iGPU. I run Linux on the thing and I knew I'd never have to fuss with proprietary drivers and that it would basically be supported until the end of time. Performance is absolutely fine, unless you need hardware support for the latest codecs or you're trying to play any games. Having just an iGPU also means less heat, more compact, and possibly better battery life, not to mention cheaper.

Linux support for AMD laptops is improving year-by-year, but it's still not as trouble-free as most Intel laptops. If buying an AMD laptop and not wanting to fuss with various issues or patching, you do a lot better by staying at least a year behind (which is also a cheaper route).