Originally Posted By: Nick R
Before you make a deicion: think about WHY it's so much cheaper than building it yourself. The OEM PC makers can sacrifice on quality, they generally use lowest bidder components, especially for important things like motherboards and power supplies. It has no SSD, which these days is something you want. It has next to ZERO upgradeability. I will never ever buy a prebuilt PC again, I like picking my own parts and getting high quality, reliable components.
And I'm sure the buying power of purchasing hundreds of thousands of parts in quantity has nothing to do with it.
I disagree completely with the notion that there is "next to ZERO" upgradeability. It CAN be the case, but it's not always the case. Most retail PCs today use very standard micro-ATX or ITX form factors with industry-standard footprint power supplies. Most have motherboards where you can upgrade processors and RAM, and most have expansion slots where you can add additional capability. If you're buying a mini tower, most also have the capacity to add at least one additional internal hard drive and one additional external 5.25" drive, depending on size of model you get.
You do have to be watchful of what you're buying, though, and this is no different than specifying your own parts. Some will come with a motherboard with no additional SATA ports, so even though it might have room for an extra drive, you effectively couldn't add one. Some may also come with proprietary power connectors, though I think this is becoming less common these days. If you don't know what you're doing, you can pretty easily come up with a kitten kaboodle of PC parts with limited interactivity or even no interactivity at all. Either route, DIY or retail, deserves a fair amount of research if you want the machine to be relevant in the future (or to work at all).
I'm also not sure it's necessarily the case that you're guaranteed better quality buying your own parts. Most "consumer" grade motherboards on Newegg, for example, ones selling in the neighborhood of $80-120, have multiple reports of DOAs and failures after very short time periods. I think, like automotive parts, OEM computer parts have more consistent quality and reliability. The Foxconn motherboard that's in my Dell computer may not have the bells and whistles as a top-shelf aftermarket Foxconn on Newegg, but I'd wager that the quality of the OEM Foxconns is at least as consistent as the quality of their aftermarket line.
