Custom vs Store Built Computer: The Art of Shopping for a New Computer

Before I knew how to build computers, it was instinct to go to the local Circuit City or Best Buy and purchase one, thinking I had a good deal. Ignorance is bliss because I didn't know what I was missing with custom builds.

I know when someone needs a new computer, a majority think, "I'll get one from Dell" or "I'm going to buy a computer from 'fill in the blank'" store. In doing some research, I'm going to compare the pros and cons of building a computer yourself versus buying one from the store and extrapolate the 3 basic guidelines for both purchases. Price, product and process; the 3 P's can be used for all purchases not just computers. Please note that I am pricing a mid/medium gaming computers, but we can take the same percentage difference between the compared and apply the research to other types of computers, i.e. if for example it's 25% cheaper to buy a Dell over building one, you can take that 25% as a reference and use it to see the cost differential between two office computers, or two high gaming machines. Please note also, computer parts and manufacturers have myriad of variations for their hardware so I've done my best to look at comparable computers. Here we go, and remember the 3 P's.

PRICE
Let's be honest, the bottom dollar figure is a major factor in purchases before we even do any comparing or research.
I researched four computers and here are the prices for each of them:
DELL Alienware Aurora - $1,994.00
BESTBUY HP Pavilion Elite - $1,671.96
IBUYPOWER.COM Gamer Paladin F760 - $1,555.00
NEWEGG Custom build - $1,550.19

$443.81 is the highest differential between the custom build and the Dell. $121 is the price difference between the custom build and the Best buy. It's safe to say that the price between a custom build and store bought computer ranges from $120 - $444. The average would be a savings of $282 for going the route of custom build. If you want to save money, go with a custom build. If you want to save physical time building the computer, go with the other three. Just remember you will pay with either your time or with money.
It's easy to look at the Dell and think it is the most expensive so it has the most bells and whistles or look at the Ibuypower.com computer and think it doesn't offer much. Prices can be deceiving, let's take a further look via the second P which is:

PRODUCT
I did my best to search for computers that were comparable in parts and power. Here's a breakdown for each computer and their parts. All four computers are priced with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.
The things in blue are the major differences between each.
The things in italics are the parts that are free with the above item.


DELL
Intel® CoreTM i7 920 2.66GHz
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 260 1.8GB
9GB 1067Mhz DDR3
1 TB Hard drive
DVD/CD Burner 24X
24" Dell ST2410 Full High Definition Monitor
1505 PCIe WLAN wireless card

Preinstall World of Warcraft

Alienware grey and aqua colored case

Alienware Avatar

AlienwareWallpaper

Alienware Keyboard and mouse

1 year limited hardware warranty

BESTBUY
Intel® Core™ i7 – 2.66 GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 1.8GB
9GB 1067Mhz DDR3
1 TB Hard drive
DVD/CD Burner 24X
24" Dell S2409W Full High Definition Monitor
Built-in wireless LAN (802.11a/b/g/n)
HP keyboard and mouse
Digital Media Card Reader15 in 1
1 year limited parts and labor warranty

IBUYPOWER.COM
Intel® CoreTM i7 920 2.66GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 – 896MB
6GB DDR3-1333
1 TB Hard Drive
DVD/CD Burner 24X
24" Widescreen TFT LCD Monitor
iBUYPOWER 2.1 Channel Stereo Super Bass Subwoofer Speaker System
Netgear WG311 802.11g 54Mbps PCI Adapter
Standard Warranty Service - Standard 3-Year Limited Warranty + Lifetime Technical Support

NEWEGG Custom Build
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 1.8GB
Intel X58 Micro ATX motherboard
8GB CORSAIR XMS3 RAM
1 TB Hard drive
2 Sata Cables (one for dvd burner and one for hard drive)
SAMSUNG Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM
Free Kingston Micro 4GB SD card w/ purchase, ends 10/31
Gateway Monitor FHD2401 Black 24"
Wireless network card
Microsoft Keyboard and Mouse

Digital Media Card Reader 52 in 1

Approx 1 year warranty on parts

Differences

All in all the computer parts are very similar. The Dell and Best Buy computers have 9GB of Ram whereas the Ibuypower has 6GB and the custom build has 8GB, not enough to tell any naked eye difference. The Dell did not come with a media card reader as the other three did. The Dell Alienware seems to be the all out brand name computer. People know Dell, and being popular, they are able to charge more than Best Buy and Ibuypower. With the Dell Alienware you get a cool Alienware Avatar icon on the case of your computer and a vivid Alienware desktop wallpaper. They all gave free mice and keyboards. Ibuypower was the only one to give a free 2.1 speaker system.

Vagueness
Yet there is some vagueness among certain things, i.e. the monitor for the IBUYPOWER computer simply says 24" widescreen TFT LCD. A customer has no idea what the specs on that are. At least with the Dell monitor there's a model number to at least do some research on it for reviews, etc. The media card reader from Newegg boasts about a 52 in 1 reader. Let's be serious, there's only a few common types of media cards, SD, compact flash, memory stick, and xD. I know there may be more common ones but 52? Let's not puff up the item more than need be.

Warranties scare me. If you look up vagueness in the dictionary, it'll have warranty as an antonym. You know as well as I know that sometimes if your part craps out and you call customer service, they find all these ways around not fixing your item. And if you are eligible to have the item fixed, you have to pay for shipping. Especially the term "Lifetime" warranty. That does not mean the rest of your life. That means for the rest of the products life. If an item is discontinued or superseded by its upgrade, then you're out of luck. And seeing as computer technology changes quicker than you can say "Microsoft wants how much for that program?!" those lifetime warranties more often than not, mean nothing.

Let's move on to the third P:


PROCESS
Process will include the selection time, check out, the slated delivery date, and for the custom build the process of building it to a functioning PC.

By far, the quickest and easiest computer to purchase would be the BEST BUY computer. There was no customization process, picking which CPU, if you wanted a second hard drive, or anything like that. The computer was already pre-built ready to be shipped as soon as you hit the finalize and checkout button.
This computer would be for someone who needs one asap without having to do too much research but a quick run down over the specs.

Check out: Tax is the question The customization process was a breeze but upon checking out there was some confusion.  Confusion, by the way, is a good marketing technique.  If you can confuse the customer enough where they don't ask any questions and continue with the process, you will make money.  I believe that's what Dell and Ibuypower intentionally do.
I saw a line for shipping for Dell and Ibuypower, which calculated from your zip code and which service.  But the tax never calculated, the only way it probably would have, was if i signed up for an account.  Whether or not you'd be taxed, as a customer you'd pay it.  You wouldn't stop the process of buying your perfectly customized computer now.   MD tax is .06% so that would be $127 tax on the Dell $1994 and $93 on the Ibuypower's price of $1,555.  Best Buy did however, have the tax calculated showing $97.  Newegg custom build did not charge tax, which on a $1,500 system, saves you $90.

As my fellow blogger would say, "You may need a cup of coffee in order to understand the next readings."

(Calculations to come)

Dell and Ibuypower give the customer a feeling of control as you go from screen to screen picking the power of the cpu, to how much ram to a second monitor and even what kind of anti-virus or Microsoft office software you wanted. Dell even had an option to install World of Warcraft for you if you play the game. You might be thinking, "Big deal." Well I know from installing the game a few times over the past five years that it is a time consuming process. You have the regular game, two expansions, and updates. I would say that whole process is about two hours. But even as both Dell and Ibuypower give you power to pick which pieces to for your computer and make it special, there is something still lacking that is only allayed by a custom build.


With a custom build you have true power over what you want in your computer. Dell and Ibuypower may give you choices but they are only limited to five to ten options for each item. What if I don't want an Intel CPU, what if I wanted an AMD CPU? What if I want a case that doesn't have a side window? What if I want a bigger power supply and more fans? The possibilities are endless with a custom build.


The shipping process is confusing for Dell and Ibuypower. Dell for its standard shipping says 3-5 business days. Great! Well in reading the fine print, it could take up to 15 days to get the computer. I put the computer in the cart online and it said, "Delivery date estimated to be 11-17-09." Hmmm. If I submit the order on 10-27-09, that means it'll be 22 calendar days before I get my order. Take a look at the order stages by Dell.

Let's break it down even further, from 10-27-09 to 11-17-09 is 22 calendar days. 11-17-09 minus 5 business days would be 11-10-09. So if you ordered one on 10-27-09, it wouldn't ship at least until 11-10-09, which is 15 calendar days. They don't ship on weekends. So if you spend the $109 for next day shipping, you still wouldn't get it for at least 16 calendar days. That's two weeks and two days. Personally, I'd want something quicker than that.

I'd assume that Ibuypower would be the same way since they have to put it all together. Best Buy would probably get the computer out faster since it's already built.

The Newegg custom built computer I know personally ships the parts within three business days. That's fast! They have an option to add a $2.99 rush option, but don't fall for that, just make sure you order before noon and it will be packaged and ready to be shipped out that day.
From personal experience of building my last five computers, it's typically a 3-5 hour process once parts are received to put it all the together, installing the OS, installing updates and installing your games. Sometimes you do get a piece that's DOA which slows the process but if you ship out the item the next day they tend to get it back to you within 5 business days. You do however, pay to ship it back to them. I've only had two pieces arrive messed up and one Newegg rep gave me a $10 credit for a future purchase. I'll take it.

The very fact that you're building your computer, you know what's in it, you don't have to deal with proprietary parts and voiding warranties if you pull the case cover off. If you were smart enough to build a functioning computer, then you're smart enough to fix it if something happens. Worse comes to worse, you just buy the piece that craps out.  Another plus for custom build computers is, if you want to build another computer you can certainly keep the one you have and build another one.  But if you want to take parts from an older custom computer and put them into a newer custom computer, that is feasible as well.  I've done this every time, I've used the same hard drive in 3 different computer, same floppy, same video card, etc.
The point is, if you're one to buy computers pre-built then you're probably not the type to take old parts out of the older model and put them in the newer one.  But some computer parts are perfectly usable for years.  For all you green people out there, this is good for the environment as well.


I personally enjoy building a computer because you learn so much. You may let Dell build you a computer but you are definitely paying for the labor. There's still so much to learn about computers, what better way than dig deep and build one yourself?  Check out this guide by Maximum PC: Maximum PC's how to guide to building a PC The principles for building a computer are all the same, it's just the parts that will differ.


So there you have it, the price, product and process difference between buying a computer versus custom building.