Do you save a lot more money building and upgrading your own Gaming Computer?

froggyboy604

froggyboy604

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Yes, you can save a lot of money by building or upgrading your own gaming PC if you know where to shop. Newegg, TigerDirect, Ebay, Amazon, and other online stores have good deals. Plus, if there is a sale going on, or you got a coupon code, you can save even more cash.

The used and refurbished computer parts sections at stores usually sell parts for a large discount from the original price.
 
Savings are miniscule compared to the problems which can occur during self assembly. Gaming PC market is so competitive now, and as long as you avoid Alienware, you can get a great machine, ready assembled and, importantly, covered by warranty for not much more then buying the parts and doing it yourself.

And when something goes wrong, you're covered. I have always bought store assembled and limited my upgrades to a new video card or additional RAM.
 
I just have a laptop and as far as upgrading, I've only put in some more RAM, but once I get an actual PC and I will definitely upgrade it throughout the lifespan with more memory, better graphics cards, and so forth
 
I find buying high end computers from smaller chain stores, or mom & pop computer stores tend to be a better deal since their store have fewer employees, and other expenses, so they can have smaller profits, but still own enough to support themselves, so their PCs are cheaper.

Buying refurbished PC from a reputable companies can also save you some money. If your refurbished PC is not powerful enough, you can buy a video card, and add more RAM to make it more fast.

On the other hand, if you assemble your PC yourself and keep all the receipts, and warranty cards, you can get a new hard drive if your hard drive breaks within the warranty period of 3-5 years. I believe many PCs only have a 1-2 year warranty, so if your PC breaks when your warranty is over, you have to replace parts yourself.

Plus, most good RAM have "limited lifetime warranties", but I think if your RAM came pre-installed with your computer, you'll probably need to contact your PC maker and ask if they will send you new RAM.

CPUs, video cards, and mother board warranties are at least 1-3 years for most brands.

Another advantage of building your own PC is if you know which part is broken, you can just send in the one part in for an exchange or repair, and don't have to send in your entire PC like sending broken Dell, HP, Acers computers in for repair at their repair center.
 
froggyboy604 said:
Another advantage of building your own PC is if you know which part is broken, you can just send in the one part in for an exchange or repair, and don't have to send in your entire PC like sending broken Dell, HP, Acers computers in for repair at their repair center.
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...and, on the other hand, if you don't know which part is broken, you can send the full thing back and they will fix it for you. Either way, with pieces missing, you're not going to be using it.
 
AzH said:
...and, on the other hand, if you don't know which part is broken, you can send the full thing back and they will fix it for you. Either way, with pieces missing, you're not going to be using it.
Click to expand...

True, having entire PC ship can be less of a hassle then troubleshooting which part is broken. Buying prebuilt PCs can save people from a lot of frustrations of dealing with broken parts. Dealing with broken CPU, and motherboards can be frustrating since both are not easy to install for the average user.

But, if the part is something like RAM, you can remove the one bad RAM stick, and send it in for replacement while still having 1 or more sticks of RAM still on a PC for running the computer. Windows 7 can run on as little as 1GB of RAM.

Some motherboards also have onboard video cards, so you can use the onboard card till you get your replacement video card.

If you are running your video cards in SLI mode meaning you have 2 video cards on one computer, you can take out the broken one, and still use the good one till the second video card is fixed.
 
Yes, you do save a lot of money but you have to ask yourself if it's worth the frustration ? Customizing your own PC would require a lot of planning and it's very time consuming. :hammer:
 
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