Sean's post on pros/cons of buying major OEM box.
Good post, Sean. These very valid reasons for forgoing self-assembly should be considered by readers of the thread before taking the plunge and building their own.
A question: given your experience, what led you to build your own last system instead? I can think of several plausible answers, but it might benefit the thread to hear your thinking on this.
Agree that traditionally, you wouldn't save much $ going with a homebrew system. I think recently that's changed somewhat, but it depends largely on what exactly you're looking for.
A few added points:
-Generally, the more unusual the system you want, the bigger the advantage building it yourself. The box maker's MBs tend to be short on things like expansion slots and bios customizations, in my experience. Moreover, their tech support people are trained to handle common configurations, and getting help with something different can be a big hassle. If what you want is simply a solid PII system with reasonable expandability and few hassles, it's tough to beat a box from Gateway/Dell/Micron.
-If making your own, make sure that the components you're using come from companies with excellent documentation and tech support. Your point about subtle incompatibilies is well said, and will be much worse if a person uses brand x MBs and video cards. OTOH, if one avoids the "bleeding edge" and goes with names like Asus, Matrox, etc., problems are much reduced. |
