Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Don'T comParE aPPlEs To orangEs
For more than 25 years, Robert's friend Jerry Pournelle
wrote the Chaos Manor column for
BYTE
. One month, Jerry
decided to build an inexpensive PC as a project system for
his column. He wanted to see if he could match the price of
a mass-market system he'd seen advertised in the morning
paper. So Jerry headed off to Fry's and returned to Chaos
Manor with a stack of components.
Robert
: “How about the motherboard?”
Jerry
: “I got an ASUS motherboard for $130. They didn't have
that $90 ASUS motherboard you recommended. They had
an ECS motherboard for $38, but there was no way I was
going to use that.”
And so on. Jerry did what most of us would do and what any
sensible person would do. He built his “inexpensive” PC us-
ing the least expensive high-quality components he could
find. But he then compared that top-notch inexpensive
system against a mass-market system that was built using
the cheapest components available. Would the mass-market
system's maker have used a $14 case and power supply and
a $38 motherboard? In a heartbeat.
Shortly afterward, Robert got a phone call from Jerry. Jerry
said he'd spent $50 more on components than the mass-
market PC would have cost him, “and that doesn't even
count the time it'll take me to assemble it.” That didn't sound
right, so Robert started asking questions. The processor
speed, amount of memory, and hard drive size were the
same, so Robert started drilling down.
Jerry couldn't bring himself to take the cost-cutting mea-
sures that mass-market PC makers take without a second
thought, so he ended up comparing apples to oranges.
Jerry spent about $150 more on just the case, power supply,
and motherboard, and ended up with a system than cost
only $50 more than the piece of junk being advertised in
the morning paper. If instead he'd compared the cost of
his system against a system of equivalent quality, such as
an entry-level business-class system, he might have been
surprised at just how much he saved.
Robert
: “What kind of case and power supply did you buy,
and how much did they cost you?”
Jerry
: “It's an Antec with a 350W power supply. I paid about
$70 for it.”
Robert
: “Was that the cheapest case and power supply Fry's
had?”
Jerry
: “Well, no. They had a no-name case with a 300W
power supply for $14, but I sure wouldn't use something
that cheap for any of my systems.”
Flexible design
One of the best things about building your own PC is that you can opti-
mize its design to focus on what is important to you and ignore what isn't.
Off-the-shelf commercial PCs are by nature jacks of all trades and masters
of none. System vendors have to strike a happy medium that is adequate,
if not optimum, for the mythical “average” user.
Want a small, quiet PC for your home theater system? There are three op-
tions. You can use a standard PC despite its large size and high noise level,
you can pay big bucks for a system from a specialty builder that does
just what you want, or you can build your own. Need a system with a ton
of redundant hard disk storage for editing video or a professional audio
workstation? Good luck finding a commercial system that fits your require-
ments, at least at a reasonable price. When you build your own PC, you can
spend your money on things that matter to you, not things that don't.
Brian Jepson Comments
Regarding home theater systems,
there is another option: the Mac Mini
is hugely popular here, so you might
want to give it a nod. That's probably
one reason that it's often at the top
of Amazon's desktop PC category.
Better component quality
Most computer vendors cut costs by using cheaper OEM versions of pop-
ular components if they're “visible” and no-name components if they're
not. By “visible” we mean a component that people might seek out by
