Custom build or off the peg pc - which would you go for?

[weblette]

Need a new pc for dh and I. Needs good storage, 1TB probably, would prefer an i3 chip, budget £500 inc monitor, now swithering about where to get it from.
Have any of you gone for a custom-build from a smaller supplier and would you recommend them?
TIA

I've not had a custom build from a small supplier (or do it yourself) build for years now.

The reason is that nowadays I find the most important thing is not so much performance but noise.

My iMac and my Dell desktop are my main PC's. The latter is almost whisper quiet unless doing something intensive. I find PC's which are custom made are almost always noisier. The last PC I built, I spent around £100 on various quiet components and it still ended up noisier than my Dell desktop.

If I were you I'd be checking something like this out: Dell Inspiron 570

Lastly there's been floods in Thailand recently where most of the world's hard disks are made from. Bigger manufacturers are getting their stock allocated first. Everyone else who are on the open market are getting whats left and hard disk prices have shot up. Another reason for going with a big supplier like Dell/HP over your local vendor.

DH just got a new case and components from Scan and was vv happy with the service. We've always built the home tower PC ourselves as you have a lot more control on what you put in - so this one has a sound insulated case, big cooler and a solid state hard drive as well as mega graphics card (Dh games on it). Only takes a few hours to build and well worth it I think.

But if you just want it for general use, I'd buy off the peg. But its hard to upgrade them afterwards

If you are planning on gaming then yes I'd say custom build is really your best option.

But if like most people you really just want it to Facebook/surf the web and write the odd letter/spreadsheet then silence > performance.

Thanks, no gaming but I do edit videos. The only thing that's been putting me off Dell is the cost of the annual repair service. The 570 looks good, might also look at the 620.
Ta all!

I all ways build my own and there is good reason why they are noisier, decent fans, most off the shelf jobs sacrifice cooling for silence, they don't care if components over heat and fail, they want you to buy a new one in a few years, a good home built one should last 10 years+.

It might last 10 years + but the components will be outdated by then. But again that depends on whether you want to keep up with the latest software, games etc or whether you think you will be happy using your current setup for that long. Remember to factor in DCs etc who might be teenagers by then and want to play games.

They do some good bundles in PC world at the moment which come with a motherboard, processor and RAM.

We just got some new computers for the children from arbico.co.uk/ and we were very impressed. DH usually builds computers himself but he couldn't get the parts for much less than the machine cost for the type of machines we wanted. Ours were gaming but they do all sorts.

Only reason anyone needs to be up to date is if they are playing the latest games.

I actually disagree with you there Ryoko.

The Tier 1 manufacturers ship out literally millions of PC's a year. Their failure rates are tiny. The reason they are quieter is usually because the designers have designed them that way. So if I open up a Dell PC, chances are there will be neatly tied back cables and plastic shrouds which direct the airflow through the PC.

Custom jobs can't do that as there are simply too many variations. The company making the motherboard doesn't know what heatsink you will use for the CPU or the case etc. etc.

But yes, unless you are into gaming with the latest titles, performance is not a big issue anymore. I rarely pay much attention to the CPU nowadays.

Dell PCs tend to to heat up like a bastard IMHO which shortens the life of components, don't trust them anyway since they knowingly shipped 12 million faulty units.

You can use wire ties to deal with the wires, it's not wires waving in the wind, my PC has it's wires all tied up neatly, it just all so has acts as a nice cooling fan rather then a heater.

Man I should really proof read, my humble apologies for the above mess ups.

Custom builds are good but expensive. On a budget I would look out for a good deal on Dell or even refurb from Dixons/PC World. I got a refurb laptop (not what you want admittedly), i5 processor, 4gb RAM, 500GB hard drive and free Photoshop Essentials for £350. I would've struggled to get near those specs in a custom build.