Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Why Build a PC?
With entry-level PCs selling for less than $500 and fully equipped mainstream
PCs for $1,000, you might wonder why anyone would bother to build a PC. Af-
ter all, you can't save any money building one, can you? Well, yes, you can. But
that's not the only reason to build a PC. There are many incentives:
Lower cost
PC makers aren't in business for charitable reasons. They need to make
a profit, so they need to sell computers for more than they pay for the
components and the labor to assemble them. Significantly more, in fact,
because they also need to support such expensive operations as research
and development departments, toll-free support numbers, and so on.
But PC manufacturers get big price breaks because they buy components
in huge volume, right? Not really. The market for PC components is ex-
tremely efficient, with razor-thin margins whether you buy one unit or
100,000. A volume purchaser gets a price break, certainly, but it's a lot
smaller than most people think.
Cheaper by the Dozen?
For example, when AMD or Intel an-
nounces new processor models, the
news stories often report “Quantity
1000” pricing for the OEM or “tray”
versions. This is what a computer
maker who buys processors 1,000
at a time pays. A maker who buys
100,000 at a time may pay a few dol-
lars less per processor. If you buy just
one OEM processor, you'll typically
pay a couple bucks more than the
Quantity 1000 pricing. You may even
pay less, because PC makers often or-
der more processors than they need
to take advantage of price breaks on
larger quantities, and then sell the
unneeded processors at a slight loss
to distributors who then sell them to
retailers.
Mass-market PCs are inexpensive not because the makers get huge price
breaks on quality components, but because they generally use the cheapest
possible components. Cost-cutting is a fact of life in mass-market, consumer-
grade PCs. If mass-market PC makers can save a few bucks on the case or
the power supply, they do it every time, even though spending a few dol-
lars more (or even a few cents more) would have allowed them to build
a noticeably better system. If you compare apples to apples—a home-
built system versus a corporate business-class system—you'll find you can
build it yourself for less (sometimes a lot less). Our rule of thumb is that,
on average and all other things being equal, you can build a midrange PC
yourself for about 75% to 85% of what a major manufacturer charges for
an equivalent top-quality system.
More choice
When you buy a PC, you get a cookie-cutter computer. You can choose
such options as a larger hard drive, more memory, or a better display, but
basically you get what the vendor decides to give you. If you want some-
thing that few people ask for, like a better power supply or quieter cooling
fans or a motherboard with more features, you're out of luck. Those aren't
options.
And what you get is a matter of chance. High-volume direct vendors like
Dell and HP often use multiple sources for components. Two supposedly
identical systems ordered the same day may contain significantly differ-
ent components, including such important variations as different mother-
boards or displays with the same model number but made by different
manufacturers. When
you
build a PC, you decide exactly what goes into it.
