I keep hearing this but then think I saved 30% by building my own PC so it doesn't ring true. Also I would expect HP to get parts at least 10-20% cheaper than a consumer increasing this margin. And the time assembling is not that much to warrant additional costs. Maybe because I have a high end rig there are some margins here... but in this context it feels like there are decent margins there to me.
>but you get it cheaper because the people you buy it from are doing it at volume.
Since I've been buying computers I've never seen this to be the case. I have yet to see a single time that buying a prepackaged computer of any brand was cheaper than buying the parts on e.g. pricewatch and building it myself.
Dislcaimer: I've always built machines with an eye towards gaming so maybe at the very low end this isn't the case. I'd be surprised even then.
I'm generally quite price-sensitive and frugal and I want to describe why I think you are right in calling out the author on their "overpriced" comment:
Two aspects are important to keep in mind for a decision of this kind:
This machine is going to be your primary professional tool for the next several years - do you really care about a few hundred dollars extra? Especially if you have niche-requirements (read: non mass-market) like strong Linux desktop support and deep concern for privacy / security?
Sure - you could do the research and build yourself and pay less for the parts - but if you consider your time at market rates, are you really making a financially smart decision by not paying a small premium on the price of constituent parts?
Of course, I am aware of the excitement that can be associated with creating a custom build - if you are into that sort of thing: enjoy it as a hobby project, not because it is a better deal.
Humans seem to have a hard time taking costs into account that are not easily quantified.
Prebuilt maybe have some nice margin, but I don't know any gamers who haven't bought their PC custom, or assembled by the retailer. Those have very thin margins, both component manufacturers and retailers have very stiff competition.
> When time is scarce, you start to prioritize things that are really important to you.
It takes me ~10 minutes to shop online and buy the parts I need to put together my own PC. When I receive it, it takes me an additional 15 minutes to unbox it, and put it all together. Then another 30 installing the OS and all the programs I will need.
That's less than an hour. Given the price difference between a Mac and a PC with the same exact equipment (same CPU, RAM, HD, etc), we're looking at ~$250 USD on the low end and ~$550 USD on the high end. Unless you're making $250 USD (or more) per hour, it's most definitely cheaper time-wise to build your own PC.
No doubt a substantial amount of that margin comes from the economies of scale where you only have a handful of SKUs with comparable sales to some of the PC manufacturers with many more SKUs combined.
>> They claim that to build your own workstation comparable to their $5k base model would cost at least $7k.
It's true for initial costs, but it's a little misleading if you use separate components and recycle them at different intervals. For example I usually go through two or three computers before I even replace my monitors.
Are you implying that they're particularly high? Reference please :)
I wouldn't be surprised if full list price for "brand name" vendors like IBM, HP, and maybe even Dell (presumably Oracle, too) are inflated, but in every case I've heard of, for even modest volumes, the discounts tend to equalize the prices (well, maybe not IBM) and can occasionally be competitive with SuperMicro.
I'd aregue that the only company that really makes (or at least ultra-customizes/optimizes) their own, to the point of being outside of any "class" of hardware, is Google. I suspect they're the only ones whose capex might be deceptively low because of the cost optimization.
> I'm sitting here using a year-old $1300 HP Envy 14. It's the MBP of PCs
Sorry. Had to stop reading after that because it'll be obvious what's coming. The problem here is that you are the prey of "High-End" PC companies with emphasis on the air quotes. You fell for /the works/ and the bells and whistles.
This is the problem with PCs. Anyone who can make a decent build for $700 will tell you the same: Pre-built PCs are the built like matchstick homes. As long as you put enough glossy paint on the exterior, you can sell it to any sap.
Now I don't go out there and advocating that /everyone/ build their own PCs (though they should at least consider it). I do advocate, however, that one should do enough research to be comfortable with their purchase and to NOT be comfortable with "I just bought a $2000 PC with all these shiny parts. It /has/ to be good."
Common observation also : if you build a car from scratch using parts you'll end up with a much higher price. If a competitor builds a similar PC with the same sales volume, enabling the same bulk discount, the comparison would be valid.
> they pass on the volume discount to employees who want to buy one for home
Really? I don't see the use case for ordering a PC this way for the home. When I'm buying a home PC, or recommending one for others, it's either:
(a) A bottom-of-the-barrel PC. As long as it has 1GB of memory and more than one core, you can use it for web browsing, Youtube, email, and word processing. This is what non-techies usually want (but they don't know they want it and may get upsold by good marketing). This is what I want unless I'm planning on running a specific application that requires more.
(b) A powerful PC for gaming. It needs a decent discrete GPU if it's going to play current games. Most office PC's don't have one, unless you work for Pixar.
AFAIK the machines purchased by corporations for general office use are usually middle-of-the-road beasts that cost more than category (a) but don't have the discrete GPU of category (b). I'd be guessing they'd be a waste of money for home use, even after the volume discount.
> Guess what building a pc is not worth it. It's not worth it in frustration or anything else.
That depends on how much you value the learning-opportunity provided by building your own machine. I certainly do!
> It's better to buy a commercial business grade desktop with a support contract.
If you're a self-employed SWE who needs a reliable dependable backup machine that you can use the support-contract to get fixed within 24 hours, then yes, I strongly agree.
...but I still think building ones' own primary machine is worth it.
> They always have some kind of weird power issue or something
I've built 8 machines for myself (and a couple more for friends and family) since I started in 2004 and I've never had an issue with power-supplies because I thoroughly research my options. PSUs are a safety-critical component of your PC: if it misbehaves it could kill you (e.g. if the computer-case goes live or the grounding pin fails - fun!) - or at least destroy everything of value inside it - I guess because I refuse to cheap-out on PSUs I've never had a problem.
Actually - there was one incident: back in 2005 I was building my second machine (a box to run Windows Server 2003 on so I could do ASP.NET web-development without needing to install IIS and SQL Server on my XP machine) and the PSU I ordered online was delayed, so I went to my parents' town's small-biz local PC shop and asked if they had any PSUs and all they had was a second-hand jobbie they gave me in a plastic carrier-bag for £20 - that PSU failed after a few days - just in-time for my online-order PSU to arrive.
> There's no profit in building custom PC's anymore, so local computer shops aren't selling them (And if they are, it's at a hefty premium).
Most (all) shops I have seen will sell you custom PCs for the price of the components. Unless you are talking about Entreprise ones (not sure if they do exist), most of these cater for gamers who are price-sensitive. But the components are the same, and you can pick an aluminum case instead of the RGB ones.
The markup on these types of PC's is ~100%. If you needed to build even a few of these per year, the savings in buying the components yourself would pay for an employee to maintain them, (not even including the deep discount you could get negotiating prices on high end parts from a vendor). Not that you would even need a full time employee to maintain them...
> more efficient, cost effective, and reliable than anything prebuilt due to their nature
Absolutely untrue, and I’ve run the numbers to prove it. Prebuilt PCs have lower TCO because they extensively test configurations and have aggressive pricing around support contracts. Every broken pc costs them! Some vendors are better than others, as well.
Now, if we’re talking about gaming PCs, the numbers are a little different there. It makes sense to roll your own for that. But for most people, building their own pc yields nothing but the entertainment of building their own pc.
> yes, you could assemble a similarly specced, similarly priced computer, so long as you're doing it at the same volume
I'm willing to pay twice as much for a single PC with similar gaming performance, but I'm not sure it can be done (no concrete suggestions, just downvotes...) I've been building PCs since before plug 'n play existed, and would love to be proven wrong.
I don't know why people here assumed that I thought a PC was only composed of the parts I listed (no case? honestly?). I just listed out what I thought would comprise 80% or so of the cost. Maybe it's 70%? GGP's estimate is still not far off.
I keep hearing this but then think I saved 30% by building my own PC so it doesn't ring true. Also I would expect HP to get parts at least 10-20% cheaper than a consumer increasing this margin. And the time assembling is not that much to warrant additional costs. Maybe because I have a high end rig there are some margins here... but in this context it feels like there are decent margins there to me.
reply