Ask Slashdot: Buy Or Build a High End Gaming PC?

An anonymous reader writes: Looking at some Black Friday ads, I'm seeing some good deals on Alienware and other gaming rigs that would be cheaper than building them from scratch. If you built or were to build a high end gaming rig, what would you suggest? Or would you just get a prebuilt system and customize it to your needs? I'm not looking for cheap, I want best quality and performance, but not overkill that would rival supercomputers and at the same time break my bank account. It would be a Windows system to keep my family happy, but possibly dual boot with Linux to keep me happy. It will be located in the livingroom hooked up to a regular monitor and the big screen TV, replacing a budget PC that's in there now.

Comments

ALWAYS build, if you can

[kheldan]

I'm not looking for cheap, I want best quality and performance

Unless you're buying a 'package deal' from a retailer and know down to the last fastener exactly what's going into the box you're buying, always build your own box if you can. Even then, if it's me, I'd end up auditing the entire pre-build anyway, to make sure their tech didn't do something stupid that would end up biting me in the ass down the road. But either way, if you have the capability to do so, spec out and build your system yourself, picking the best quality components and case, so you get exactly what you want, instead of what had the best profit margin for someone else.

Be sure they really are cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

I would recommend checking out the reddit forum for building PCs. They often know of deals and resources that can be helpful. People there will also be willing to help you spec out a PC and pick parts / find the cheapest prices.

Also pcpartspicker.com is a great resource.

That said, I've built pretty much all of my PCs for the last 20 years until this week. I found a good deal on an Asus G11 Desktop with an i7-6700 and a GTX 980. I could have saved a little building myself, but I decided to go the pre-built route this time and it's been great so far. Ultimately it comes down to what you prefer. The price is usually upgradability. In my case if I want to add additional components, there's only two PCIe 1x slots on the board that are open, so I'd probably need to get a new motherboard and case if I wanted to do anything other than swap out parts or add hard drives. So consider if you're ok with that before you buy.

Re:Be sure they really are cheaper

[plover]

I second using a site like pcpartspicker. It can help you avoid some petty technical mistakes, like buying an under capacity CPU cooler, or a power supply without enough of the correct connectors and voltages for your cards.

One thing I've noticed about homebuilt rigs is that they are occasionally louder than normal. I think a lot of builders don't think about noise or airflow, and a lot of the cabinetmakers just provide a bunch of fan mounting points but they can't really consider the cooling needs of the particular motherboard and CPU you're dealing with. If noise is important (perhaps you're going to use it as a media PC in a home theater, too) then you can factor that in as well, or consider options like liquid cooling solutions.

Depends if you want to support it

[Sycraft-fu]

That really is the big issue with a self build: If something goes wrong, you have to track it down and handle all the support. If you get a pre-built from a good vendor, they'll handle it all. Say what you want about Dell, but all you have to do is run their diags (baked in to the UEFI) and call them with the code, they'll send a dude with the parts needed.

So that should be the major thing you think about. If you don't want to do support, then buy it from a vendor that will provide you with support to the level you require. I tend to recommend Dell because their hardware is reasonable and they have support available everywhere. They subcontract it, but it all works well. We use it at work all the time.

If you are willing to do support yourself, then building it gets you precisely what you want. I build my system at home because I have very exacting requirements for what I'm after and nobody has that kind of thing for sale. Like I don't want a "good large power supply", I want a Seasonic Platinum 1000, nothing else.

Also you'll find that generally at the higher end of things you save money building a system. For more consumer/office range stuff it usually is a wash: They build the mass market systems around as cheap as you could afford to. However when you start talking higher end gaming stuff, you can pay a large premium for things.

As an example I just built a system for a good friend of mine. He wanted some very, very high end hardware and pretty specific requirements. Origin PC would get him what he wanted... for about $9,000. I put it together for around $6,000. The gamer stuff often commands a hefty premium.

Re:Depends if you want to support it

[LVSlushdat]

I'm a retired sysadmin, supported Dell products exclusively for the last 10 years before I retired. The advice about Dell is spot-on, but with ONE stipulation.. With Dell, its kind of like there is two separate "Dell" companies.. One that makes the cheap consumer-grade stuff you find at CostCo/BestBuy, with brand names like "Inspiron/XPS/Alienware", then there is the "company" that makes the corporate models, namely Optiplex/Latitude/Precision... The consumer-grade machines come with very short warrantees, offshore/phonetree "support" and they're LOADED with bloatware/crapware.. The corporate models, however, come with 3-year warrantees, US-based support, and a clean copy of the OS, with only necessary drivers loaded.. You do pay a bit more for the corporate models, and they're only available thru the Dell website. Prior to about 2000, I used to build my own systems, but once I learned about the Dell Outlet, with their refurb'ed systems, that come with a significant discount over a build-to-order from the regular Dell website, all of my systems, both workstation and laptops, have come from there... Unless the time needed to build the system is worthless to me, I can't build a system for what I can get a Dell Outlet refurb for... YMMV

Re:Depends if you want to support it

[AthanasiusKircher]

If you're going to plug Alienware from experience, do that. If you're going to talk about high end machines that don't have vendor customizations (or in many cases, modern video cards), how is that topical?

Well, it's topical in the sense that GP's experience was that consumer-grade Dell products were crappier. Basically, GGP was saying "Buy from Dell!" GP replied, "Well, you could buy from Dell, but in my experience the only machines worth having were X." As you rightly point out, product X is not the main focus of the current thread... which effectively means that GP's experience is that Dell isn't a good option to answer the OP's question, contra GGP's experience.

You can agree or disagree with him, but he was basically providing his experience of the nuances of which Dell computers are good vs. bad (with the ones which would be most relevant here falling into the "bad" category).

(Personally, I think his advice may be slightly outdated, as Dell has had its ups and downs in the past few years in terms of quality. But most of the post was definitely on topic.)

Build! And skip SLI.

[sheetsda]

As other posters have said - Build!

What I haven't seen noted yet - Skip SLI graphics cards. I went SLI on the gaming machine I built in 2005. What I found was that a top end graphics cards can play games at high settings for a while, and that the extra $450 would've been more effective if spent 50% of the way through the life of the PC (i.e. 2 years later) on another high end card of the next generation.

Depends

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no 'good' deals on pre-built systems. The cost on these hosts is anywhere from 50% to 200% markup on the cost of the components. Mind you there is a good deal of investment on the part of the manufacturer to ensure component integration is without defect, but it isn't guaranteed that some bug will crop up.

If you have the excess cash and don't wish to spend the time researching/building/risk taking involved in building a custom rig then purchase one from a common dealer.

If you would like an affordable system and are willing to add time in both researching building and addressing unforeseen issues then build one.

The markup cost is so great and the advantages just don't seem to be there. I usually will opt to build one and invest some time into research. I no longer actually need to do this, but the miser in me just won't let me purchase a pre-built rig.

Here are my cost saving and stability recommendations:
  * Don't worry about overclocking... leave that to the kiddies who want to burn up their shit.
  * The cheapest defense is in Herd Immunity or Apple Research. You can lean towards a very popular board on newegg or just buy a hackintosh board. I have found these to be extremly stable and they tend to work when dealing with things like sleep/resume on wake.
  * Trailing edge of technology is both affordable and less buggy. I typically purchase the high end components that are being phased out. These will often be very comparable with the latest generation, but at a fraction of the cost.
  * Avoid Version A... Never alpha test hardware for a manufacturer. I've seen gigabyte release limited updates for version A's and Asus tends to crap on them as much as possible.
  * Read the motherboard compatibility guide. The motherboard manfacturer does a limited amount of tested with existing memory. While I have found compatability issues not really a big of deal as they used to be the old timer in me says just read the book and pick something on the list.
  * Be Prepared to RMA
    - Kingston and Western Digital have been the friendliest when dealing with RMAs in the past. Corsair used too (this may not be true) would only deal with the retailer for an RMA and most retailers won't deal with returns past 30 days. Make sure you know what the replace and repair process is with the manufacturer. In the event you do have an issue you are able to troubleshoot it can save you anywhere from a 100-200 depending on the component failure.

Budget builds are risky, not high-end

[Anonymous Coward]

A clueless person doing a budget build, like yourself, will always hit issues. You use bad cases with bad cooling. Then you are dumb enough to push the parts beyond their happy working stats, or use cheap pre-overclocked rubbish that never works stably at the over-clock.

SMART budget builders know the nature of the hardware, and frequently DOWN-CLOCK the budget components a little to gain total stability. IDIOTS scream "this dammed card says it can run at 1.2 GHZ, so I'm damn well going to run it at 1.2 GHZ", even when the card is cheap and clearly has poor cooling and power components.

And of course, some parts from cheapo suppliers are just know faulty crap in the first place. Even quite expensive motherboards, for instance, may have a list of know issues with various functions, like their non-main SATA ports, or their non-main USB ports. A smart pre-build person knows this from the support forums, and lives with the issues by only relying on the outputs/inputs/functions that work properly.

The ONLY serious unfixable hardware issues I've seen have been with pre-builds - home builds that use components based on a little research avoid this.

Overclocking errors can be a simple wrong number

[perpenso]

Overclocking is fine if its only a gaming PC but if it is also used for anything serious, anything where the correct results are important ... do *not* overclock.

Overclocking errors are not some black and white easy to recognize situation. It is literally a progression through various shades of gray. At the lightest shades of gray, where overclocking errors begin, at perhaps quite modest overclocking settings, the errors are subtle. Literally it may simply give the wrong answer, the wrong numeric value, no crash or anything dramatic. And what instruction yields this simple wrong answer, and beginning at what overclocking setting, and what instructions must precede it if any ... are all variable and will change from one specific CPU to another. Hence the inability to reliably test for overclocking errors. The errors manifest different on every CPU, and the required conditions manifest differently, and these conditions may include being immediately preceded certain instructions or certain data patterns. Instructions and data patterns that also differ CPU to CPU.

So if a PC is just for gaming and other casual use, overclocking does little harm. However if the computer is also used for serious numeric work, software development, etc ... its best to avoid overclocking.

Re:BUILD

[zenlessyank]

The question was about the fact of better, not cheaper. It is always better to build it yourself. And the reason is this.....If Origin PC closes up shop, the warranty is dead, since it was purchased through OEM channels. An OEM warranty is not the same as a Retail warranty. I can always send back my retail motherboard to EVGA and my retail hard drive to Western Digital. If I try to send back an OEM to WD, they will deny it. Been there, done that. Now if we were talking about cheaper then you are correct. You can find companies who basically use standard parts purchased under OEM discounts. But I will NEVER use them. Because it is NOT BETTER. NEXT QUESTION.

Re:BUILD

[ranton]

And what if a pre-assembled PC is cheaper than your custom built PC by $300-$400 provided certain minor things are inferior to your custom PC?

This never happens. Not for a high end gaming PC anyway. For budget computers that are sold for a few hundred dollars that may be true but not for anything that will accommodate high end gaming. It is in fact the other way around, where a custom built PC can be up to and above $1000 cheaper than a pre-assembled one.

Take a simple example of an Alienware Area-51 PC with an i7-5930K, 16 GB 2133MHz DDR4 RAM, GTX 970, and 512 GB SSD. Not top of the line but certainly a great gaming PC. It costs $2750. Going to Newegg, I can get the processor (460), motherboard($150), ram (100), video card (350), intel 480 GB ssd (270), a high endcoolermaster case w/850W PS (280), and OS(100) for $1710. That is a $1000 difference. When looking for a higher end machine with 32 GB RAM and dual GTX 980 the difference came to almost $1250. That is pretty extreme.

Re:BUILD

[Xyrus]

And what if a pre-assembled PC is cheaper than your custom built PC by $300-$400 provided certain minor things are inferior to your custom PC?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Oh....my sides! You should have been modded +5 funny!

This never happens. Ever.

Businesses can buy components in bulk, at a far cheaper rate than the huge markup a typical customer gives to component makers when he buys individual components.

Ok, think about the market. Is the largest market segment high end or low end? The answer is low end. Vendors have a much easier time moving low end systems than high end systems, so they always bulk rate the low end in significantly higher quantities. The markup is lower, but they move a hell of a lot more of it. That's where the bulk of their profit comes from.

If you order a machine (via some configurator or something) and select a component that is either higher end or not something they're trying to dump, then you will pay a significant premium.

Go over to someplace like PC part picker and put together a machine for some budget. Then go to someplace like CyberPower and try and configure one with the same parts for the same price or cheaper. Even for low end you can put together a machine for at least $100 cheaper (and with better parts).

You also don't have to deal with malfunctioning parts because the pre-assembled PC has been tested.

You missed your calling. You should have been a comedian.

Perhaps you should go read forums about some of these vendors. DOA's. Foreign call centers. Botched RMA's. Runarounds. You're at the mercy of whatever QA process and team they had test these machines, then your at the mercy of whatever craptastic customer service they're running.

There are quality vendors out there, but you're going to be paying a premium. Good service isn't cheap and neither is good QA.

So it's not all black and white.

Yeah it is.

If you're fine paying a premium from a GOOD vendor, then by all means go ahead and do that. If you don't mind taking a chance with dumpster vendors or don't really care about getting the best value for your money, then go ahead a buy a prebuilt. But the best bang for your buck is going to come from building your own.