Why so much animosity towards prebuilts?

Having built many computers in my day (I did it for a living for a while), I can%26#39;t understand what the big deal about it is. Yeah, its fun the first couple of machines you build, but it is just so much easier to fork over the money and get your comp. handed to you. No matter what people say, if you look around for a while and weigh your options you can%26#39;t save that much money.For Example:My Prebuilt - little over 4 grand - shipping; 2 year in house warranty; G5 Mouse: %26 T-shirt (a $20 value!) Single parts from New Egg: (I know all are not best possible price) QX6700 - $970 (not overclocked; you kind of have to know what you%26#39;re doing)Sound Card - $89 MoBo - $260Hard Drive - $200 1000 W PSU - $250 (Couldn%26#39;t even find one New Egg) 8800 GTX - $559Vista home Premium - $110 Liquid cooling - $100 (A pain to install)RAM - $300 DVD Drive - $40Lighting - $30Case - Maybe $150 G5 gaming mouse - $60Odds and Ends - $20  Subtotal - $3138+243.04 tax (at 8%
+shipping (possibly on every part) 100?= $3,481.04  Keep in mind, this includes no construction, which gets a little more worrisome when you have $3500 you can mess up. When you also factor my 2 year in house warranty/maintenance (can%26#39;t be underrated), and Alienware bragging rights, it doesn%26#39;t seem too much different to me.How about you? Why so much animosity towards prebuilts?
Well, some people don%26#39;t understand that there is a business of other people building a computer for you and making a living from that. It also costs more because someone else that is payed to help is your computer service, and make sure there ISNT 3500 wasted. I just hope this doesn%26#39;t turn into a flame war again. I respect other people%26#39;s choices to buy a prebuilt system, and I would lean either way.Why so much animosity towards prebuilts?
I guess those who have such animosity towards prebuilt either had previous bad experiences with them or take the hearsay of those ''horror'' stories with prebuilts. I have nothing against prebuilts, having a Dell XPS 400, but in retrospect, if I had built my computer here in Indonesia, I wouldn%26#39;t have had to spend over a grand on the XPS 400, and instead would have gotten a second insanely decked out computer (just to give you an idea of how rediculous the prices here are, QX6700 or the X6800 can be gotten for ~USD400, 8800 gtx for ~USD242) but this prebuilt hasn%26#39;t failed me since I bought it, and the build quality and the power supply quality continues to amaze me (EVGA 8800 GTX KO ACS3 on its 375w psu woohoo!)
I don%26#39;t really hate prebuilts but I will never buy another prebuilt again. It%26#39;s just more exciting to make it yourself and you save a little money. And you get to learn more. :)  You mention Alienware bragging rights but I%26#39;d rather brag about my ability to build a computer and maintain it successfully on my own. Bragging about owning a specific brand of computers or any other product (including iPods or people who think they are original cause they have a Zen) is stupid anyway. It just doesn%26#39;t make any sense to me. I%26#39;d rather stay away from people like that because they are the kind of people who will show off everything they have and it just gets annoying after a while. 
I think I like putting computer%26#39;s together more than acctually using them. It%26#39;s like a ultra expensive jig-saw puzzle. I cobble up old pieces just fo%26#39;fun mang! THATS WHAT I DO. Just me though. Im sure most people dont care 
I feel the need to accomplish something myself, not someone else doing it for me. I used to on my old case get hole saw%26#39;s and mod the case to a master piece, but that didn%26#39;t happen :) no reason to mod my new cooler master 830... yet... Anyways, modding comps theres an accomplishmentor just assembling it yourself.  Theres an accomplishment feeling to it. And not just maxing out those games from a prebuilt manufacture.
[QUOTE=''PC-junkie''] Having built many computers in my day (I did it for a living for a while), I can%26#39;t understand what the big deal about it is. Yeah, its fun the first couple of machines you build, but it is just so much easier to fork over the money and get your comp. handed to you. No matter what people say, if you look around for a while and weigh your options you can%26#39;t save that much money.For Example:My Prebuilt - little over 4 grand - shipping; 2 year in house warranty; G5 Mouse: %26 T-shirt (a $20 value!) Single parts from New Egg: (I know all are not best possible price) QX6700 - $970 (not overclocked; you kind of have to know what you%26#39;re doing)Sound Card - $89 MoBo - $260Hard Drive - $200 1000 W PSU - $250 (Couldn%26#39;t even find one New Egg) 8800 GTX - $559Vista home Premium - $110 Liquid cooling - $100 (A pain to install)RAM - $300 DVD Drive - $40Lighting - $30Case - Maybe $150 G5 gaming mouse - $60Odds and Ends - $20  Subtotal - $3138+243.04 tax (at 8%+shipping (possibly on every part) 100?= $3,481.04  Keep in mind, this includes no construction, which gets a little more worrisome when you have $3500 you can mess up. When you also factor my 2 year in house warranty/maintenance (can%26#39;t be underrated), and Alienware bragging rights, it doesn%26#39;t seem too much different to me.How about you? [/QUOTE] you cant save THAT much money? it looks to me that you saved almost 600 dollars.Last time I checked, 600 dollars was quite a lot of money
[QUOTE=''Random__Guy'']I think I like putting computer%26#39;s together more than acctually using them. It%26#39;s like a ultra expensive jig-saw puzzle. I cobble up old pieces just fo%26#39;fun mang! THATS WHAT I DO. Just me though. Im sure most people dont care [/QUOTE]same here man 
I%26#39;ve always had a pre-built system, but I%26#39;ll be building my next rig. I think it%26#39;s cool because I can choose exactly what I want, which company, and get to finally build one and stuff. Plus, I save over $2000.
Hey PC-Junkie i understand where your comming from. It seems you%26#39;ve outgrown that feeling of ''Ultimate Accomplishment'' when putting every component together. I%26#39;m still in the ''build it yourself'' stage but if i had the money i%26#39;d definately hire somebody to put my watercooling unit together which i%26#39;ve had for almost 8 months and havent used due to its complexity.   
I can afford a 4000$ prebuilt pc, but for me part of the fun is to look for the best prices at etailers and calculate the sum + taxes using MS Excel lol. And the other fun part is building it.
I think a lot of the animosity has to do with lack of maturity.  Some folks here just cannot disagree politely, and have to express their disagreement in somewhat of a rude way.  There is a lot of fun to be had building your own PC, for some, and there is a lot to be said for the peace of mind and lots of free time to be had with buying prebuilt.  Rather than respecting each other%26#39;s differences, some here just can%26#39;t help it and they jump up and down like you killed their puppy.  Its sad, really.I built my first PC over 20 years ago, and built quite a few since.   I had a lot of fun.  Now, I have fun doing OTHER things, but I still enjoy gaming and doing a little tweak here and there.  My dog appreciates it when I take time out to walk him instead of trying to replace my PSU...
I enjoy my prebuilt - it meets my expectations and works well. Building your own can be fun and rewarding, but it can also be a horror show for those that don%26#39;t know what they are doing (and so many people don%26#39;t). I think of it like vehicles. If you are a mechanic you can dig in and do it yourself, otherwise you should just hire one to do it for you.  
cuz when u buy prebuilt your paying for labour, so its cheaper to do it yourself and in some cases (cough DELL cough) your paying for them to plaster their names all over the net, all over our games, all over the tv, etc basically it comes down to just cheaper to put it together yourself, but if your unable to then its aiight to buy prebuilt 
[QUOTE=''PC-junkie'']Single parts from New Egg: (I know all are not best possible price) QX6700 - $970 (not overclocked; you kind of have to know what you%26#39;re doing)Sound Card - $89 MoBo - $260Hard Drive - $200 1000 W PSU - $250 (Couldn%26#39;t even find one New Egg) 8800 GTX - $559Vista home Premium - $110 Liquid cooling - $100 (A pain to install)RAM - $300 DVD Drive - $40Lighting - $30Case - Maybe $150 G5 gaming mouse - $60Odds and Ends - $20  Subtotal - $3138+243.04 tax (at 8%
+shipping (possibly on every part) 100?= $3,481.04  Keep in mind, this includes no construction, which gets a little more worrisome when you have $3500 you can mess up. When you also factor my 2 year in house warranty/maintenance (can%26#39;t be underrated), and Alienware bragging rights, it doesn%26#39;t seem too much different to me.How about you? [/QUOTE]Some of those prices are pretty off-the-wall - both in terms of being over and underpriced.I build a machine on Newegg that matches all those specs for $2950 shipped ($3200 with tax, which only applies in California and Tennessee). There are naturally a few discrepancies - I have no idea how much hard drive space you need, so I picked out two 250GB hard drives, and I%26#39;m not sure what sort of liquid cooling setup you had in mind, but I went with the Gigabyte Galaxy II. For lighting I picked out four 12'' cold cathodes, and I used a SATA DVD RW drive (something Alienware doesn%26#39;t offer). It%26#39;s also worth pointing out that you do not need a 1kw power supply for that rig - a decent 750w power supply would be more than enough, which would cut that price back to $3100 shipped.That being said, there are pros and cons to pre-building and building. Pre-built machines have customer service, work right out of the box, and when dealing with the extreme high-end components you don%26#39;t have to worry about them messing up. However, building your own machine is generally cheaper, a good learning experience (only applies to newer builders, of course), and unlimited customization.
[QUOTE=''ZBoater''] I think a lot of the animosity has to do with lack of maturity.  Some folks here just cannot disagree politely, and have to express their disagreement in somewhat of a rude way.  There is a lot of fun to be had building your own PC, for some, and there is a lot to be said for the peace of mind and lots of free time to be had with buying prebuilt.  Rather than respecting each other%26#39;s differences, some here just can%26#39;t help it and they jump up and down like you killed their puppy.  Its sad, really.I built my first PC over 20 years ago, and built quite a few since.   I had a lot of fun.  Now, I have fun doing OTHER things, but I still enjoy gaming and doing a little tweak here and there.  My dog appreciates it when I take time out to walk him instead of trying to replace my PSU...[/QUOTE] You always make thing interesting, Zboat. I%26#39;ve gone both ways, and both have worked wonderfully. I usually end up making many modifications to my system whether it%26#39;s prebuilt or not...so it ends up working out pretty much the same way. But yeah, as you get older (I%26#39;m looking at you, immature board-riders ;)), you have other responsibilities that make it more difficult to find the time to tinker with a PC...as sad as that is =/ Growing up sucks, eh? That said, on a 2k system, you could save roughly 2-400 bucks or so. Is it cheaper and often times more fun to build your own? Sure. But prebuilts have their perks as well...and then there are custom builds, which are often indiscriminately lumped in w/prebuilts...They are the same, yet different ;)
Since I%26#39;m on a tight budget, building my own rig is the only way to go. I worried for 2 months about building my first system and finished it in two hours with a few breaks. Pre-builds often use less then quality parts in order to turn a profit, while with your own build, you know exactly what your getting as you pick out the parts. I understand why people buy Pre%26#39;s as I use to,but I%26#39;ll never buy a Pre-built again.
I like to build my own for the same reason people buy pre-builts: trust. I don%26#39;t trust the pre-builts to have everything just the way it ought be in terms of the parts that are in there, the way they are seated, and all the ins and outs of how it was put together; I just don%26#39;t trust them to get it all right every single time. I also like knowing exactly what parts are in there, whereas someone like Dell often sticks in no-name hard drives, power supplies, motherboards, RAM, optical media drives, etc... and that sort of thing. Besides, the cases you can build your own machines in are just so much cooler. They only add to the sense of elitism that custom-builders share in.
its because people here think if they can build a PC, others can too.
[QUOTE=''TheDarthvader'']its because people here think if they can build a PC, others can too.[/QUOTE]
yep and some people like just really cant be bothered to build a PC.