When did buying a prebuilt PC become a taboo in the PC community?

[Ragedaug]

To be honest if you pay attention to what fits where and don't force stuff, you're halfway there. My first experience with PC building was being handed a graphics card and a screwdriver and being told to find the part that looked the most like it and switch them.

Then again, you would want your assembly line workers to be efficient so I suppose they get trained.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Everything has a specific place it plugs in. So I suspect even people who get overwhelmed would eventually figure it out. Probably the only question would be putting memory into the optimized slot/banks, and of course, not destroying the CPU socket pins when you drop the CPU in there.

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This is implicit. Ergo, you generally don't build a PC to save money. You build a PC because you enjoy the process, saving money is a fortunate secondary circumstance.

If you need a PC for work and you don't particularly enjoy the building process, it's much smarter to get a good pre-built system (yes, they exist) and spend the time you would have spent building, earning money.

I build my PCs specifically because I save money. It's not that I dislike building them, but if I could pick it up all put together with the parts I want, and with a base minimal Windows 10 OS installed at the same price, I'd do that. Could be I'm lazy, I dunno, just other things I would prefer doing if given the choice.

[nocturnus]

I build my PCs specifically because I save money. It's not that I dislike building them, but if I could pick it up all put together with the parts I want, and with a base minimal Windows 10 OS installed at the same price, I'd do that. Could be I'm lazy, I dunno, just other things I would prefer doing if given the choice.

As I said, it's all relative.

Superficially, diy systems are often cheaper unless;
- you consider building one work and you would've otherwise spent the time earning money.
- your hourly fee is low that the discrepancy still makes it worth building one.

[Thunderball]

I disagree. There are plenty of justifiable reasons to pay a relatively small premium for a pre-built system.

How exactly is 30-50% a small premium? Also for a a non-corporate buyer their service is close to unusable as you have to send the whole PC in, so no savings to be made there.

[Twoddle]

Yeah, that ''skill'' is called reading. I guess you're going to say putting together something from IKEA requires ''skill'' too.

It does to a point. There are people who couldn't even fix a monitor to its stand, will go into denial blaming it on "bad design" and have OCD about reading instructions.

[nocturnus]

How exactly is 30-50% a small premium?

How exactly are you pulling those numbers from your arse?

Look, believe whatever the hell you want, here in this country, pre-made pc's are slightly more expensive; between 100 and 200 euro.

[Orby]

I have brought pre-built PC's my current PC is one... then I just sort of modify from there. But I never even know there was a taboo mentality.... but then again this is the internet, everyone has to be marginalised somewhere :P

[highroller1962]

I built this myself for just over $2800

Corsair Graphite Series 780T Black Steel Full Tower ATX Case
Intel i9 9900k Coffee Lake 8 core 3.6 ghz (5.0 ghz Turbo) Processor
Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Ultra motherboard
Sabrent Rocket Q 2tb NVMe PCIe m.2 SSD
EVGA Geforce RTX 2070 Super FTW3 Ultra graphics card
32 gb Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro ram (4x8gb)
Enermax ETS-T50 Axe CPU cooler (didn't have the patience to install liquid cooling)
EVGA Supernova 1000 G5 1000 watt fully modular power supply
Replaced stock case fans with 4 Corsair ML140 Pro 140mm MagLev fans

I couldn't find any pre-built with these exact specs so I have nothing to compare it to price wise but considering I saved on labor and price mark up, I think I got a fantastic deal.

Even if I add the Logitech Z906 5.1 1000 watt surround sound system for another $331, I think I still got a great deal at $3100

That's why I went custom build because I couldn't find any pre-built PC that matched what I wanted. If you got the motivation to build one yourself, you can do it. Like someone else said previously, there are all kinds of videos on youtube to get you through it. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.

[Ragedaug]

Yeah, that ''skill'' is called reading. I guess you're going to say putting together something from IKEA requires ''skill'' too.

Sure, but read what? If you don't know anything about PCs, you don't know where to look. How to you know what systemboard to purchase? What chipset do you need? what's the difference between the zillions of boards out there? What's RAM and why do I need it? This CPU doesn't fit into this hole. Where do I plug this SAS disk drive in, and why isn't it recognized?

You say everyone should know all those answers because it requires no skill. I say that is an unrealistic expectation.
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Just to add on here, if you do read, and figure out all the things, do you know what you just gained? The skill taught in the literature you just read. That's how skills work. You don't know the skill until you read or are taught, and learn it.

"It doesn't require any skill, it just requires you read and learn what to do"...the definition of learning a skill. /facepalm.

[Feanoro]

I hang around in the PC building communities on reddit, facebook, etc and recommending a prebuilt PC is a recipe for downvotes or getting made fun of. Not everyone has the time or the skill to build a PC. The amount of posts on tech support forms from people screwing something up is really high. Nobody can recommend a prebuilt without being shit on.

Study the two bold parts and see if you can spot the problem.

[Ragedaug]

You just described me of a year ago before I built my first PC ever. I was super intimidated by it all, but read a lot of google and bought the parts, watched a youtube video of how to put it all together, and bam! Now I can type messages on mmo-c thanks to my reading ''skills''! I skill I continue to use to this very day in fact.

In hindsight I don't see how I was ever intimidated by it all, but it was because of my own ignorance about the topic, not the topic itself. Hell reading is a daunting and intimidating skill, until one learns how to do it.

Sure. Same for me. I was completely ignorant of what made PCs run until I built the skill up.

[minteK917]

You can always just ask someone else to build a PC for you. Which would still be less expensive then premade pc that are just mishmash of parts left over from china factories.

[nocturnus]

You can always just ask someone else to build a PC for you. Which would still be less expensive then premade pc that are just mishmash of parts left over from china factories.

How about you stop presenting what you think you know as "fact"?

You just described me of a year ago before I built my first PC ever. I was super intimidated by it all, but read a lot of google and bought the parts, watched a youtube video of how to put it all together, and bam!

This is excellent and unfortunately something that relatively too few people do. Coincidentally it's the perpetual topic of debate when it comes to both secondary as tertiary education; pupils/students should be taught to be inquisitive problem solving individuals and to take ownership of their development. Rather than learning stuff by heart merely to regurgitate it on a test. Which is why maths is one of the most important subjects and (imo) should always be compulsory.

[Azerox]

Because you mostly buy low quality gear.
Most of them have asrock with low key cpu and gpu for the same price als medium key stuff.

[Gref]

its because of the scummy tactics by retailers I think.
I mean, recently I saw a laptop, gaming laptop lets say and it had some cool evangelion, nerv logo etc, black and red so frigging cool.
then I check the price and the specs and hoo boy, they don't even list the graphics card in it and there was some i3 or celeron processor while being around 2k price tag.

and yes there are people naive enough to buy that shit.

[KrayZ33]

I usally buy mine from sites where I can order each part and let them assemble and ship the whole thing to me.
I could probably save money by ordering everything from different stores and different sellers, but having everything in and from one place is a benefit on it's own.

The prices for individual pieces were I buy are however relatively cheap/acceptable by themselves and I just pay another 50€ for it to get assembled.

I wouldn't necessarily buy prebuild PCs and prebuild configs from just anywhere though. My current one is a pre-build/pre-config however which I did upgrade some years in.
I'm from Germany though, and from what I can tell and always see, prices are extremely high for PC components in general.
You basically pay $ prices in € and then some.

As for OPs question, maybe you picked a bad one that was simply not well suited for the task it was supposed to do?

[nocturnus]

its because of the scummy tactics by retailers I think.
I mean, recently I saw a laptop, gaming laptop lets say and it had some cool evangelion, nerv logo etc, black and red so frigging cool.
then I check the price and the specs and hoo boy, they don't even list the graphics card in it and there was some i3 or celeron processor while being around 2k price tag.

and yes there are people naive enough to buy that shit.

Sure, you have those, but you also have these:
https://www.mediamarkt.nl/nl/product...d-1640410.html

Try to assemble a similar system and see how much cheaper you'll be.

ars in.
I'm from Germany though, and from what I can tell and always see, prices are extremely high for PC components in general.

They're not; they're practically identical to the rest of Europe.

Downvoting your post may be reasonable in the communities you're talking about but not making fun of you for it. People do that for the same reason frat guys drive awesome cars. They just need everyone to think they have really huge genitals.

If you don't give a fuck about things like RGB rainbow bullshit, 'super cool' dragons on your motherboard, awesome names like "GSKILZZ" and "Ultra Gaming Super Elite" tags on your hardware, pre-built computers can be just fine for fairly similar prices.

I assemble my own computers because I'm a control freak and I always want the best possible hardware. But I'm not that invested in the process to pretend my way is much cheaper. Actually, in my case it's not.

[WinningOne]

I hang around in the PC building communities on reddit, facebook, etc and recommending a prebuilt PC is a recipe for downvotes or getting made fun of. Not everyone has the time or the skill to build a PC. The amount of posts on tech support forms from people screwing something up is really high. Nobody can recommend a prebuilt without being shit on.

Downvoting your post may be reasonable in the communities you're talking about but not making fun of you for it. People do that for the same reason frat guys drive awesome cars. They just need everyone to think they have really huge genitals.

[KrayZ33]

They're not; they're practically identical to the rest of Europe.

Yes, Germany is in Europe. But I'm pretty sure there is a country that isn't, that also speaks the english language to some degree and uses $....

[nocturnus]

Yes, Germany is in Europe. But I'm pretty sure there is a country that isn't, that also speaks the english language to some degree and uses $....

Yes and considering how much we earn in our countries, I'd wager that parts are quite a bit cheaper for us than for the average American. For reference, a simple example;
10700k EU: €399
10700k US: €363.10 ($409.99)

Not that big a difference, chap.

[KrayZ33]

Yes and considering how much we earn in our countries, I'd wager that parts are quite a bit cheaper for us than for the average American. For reference, a simple example;
10700k EU: €399
10700k US: €363.10 ($409.99)

Not that big a difference, chap.

I have no idea why you think a 10% difference is not a big difference "chap"