Pricing - DIY vs. Purchased

By James Gaskin, NetworkWorld.com, 10/25/04

Many people believe building your own PC will be cheaper than buying a PC. I don't find that to be true, but maybe that's because I'm cheap and don't buy name brand PCs. Since I have a SMB lab to populate, I sometimes need PCs to be network clients, even though no person is using them regularly. So I've gotten into the habit of buying used name brand machines off leases through eBay or uBid. When I buy my own machines, I look for white box systems rather than brand names to save the money. I'm not channeling my Scottish ancestors, I promise, I'm merely working the way many small businesses must work to save their pennies.

I like to stay as close as possible to $300 for my own PCs (and those I buy for the kids). Network test machines should be as close as possible to $100. Luckily, Microsoft and various Linux distributors provide operating systems for use in my lab, and I have monitors and keyboards aplenty.

Since I planned to eventually make this my primary system, I wanted it to have enough CPU horsepower to be useful for another 18-24 months. I decided that meant at least an Intel Pentium 4 3GHz or AMD Athlon 3000 or better. The top end speeds are slightly higher, but my desire to save money overwhelms my desire to be the fasted CPU wrangler in the neighborhood. Memory must be at least 512MB, although I have 768MB in both my primary systems (one runs XP Pro and the other runs XP Home for comparison). Disk space is less critical, because I have network disk storage available, but should at least match the 60GBs in my current primary system.

A check of my standard online haunts (eBay and uBid listed above) came up with pricing around at least $425 or more, sometimes much more, for the level of system I wanted. None of the ones I saw listed had more than 512MB of RAM, so add some $$ to the total auction price. Shipping can vary widely, and one common ploy of eBay dealers is to make an attractively priced system but slap a $79 shipping and handling charge on top. The uBid people are better at shipping prices (usually $40-$50), but their prices tend to be higher because uBid acquires and resells the systems, taking responsibility for returns and warranty. This gives more protection, but costs more money. Another coin flip.

I figured I would save money building my own PC. Next time I'll total it all up and let you know if that's true.

Back to Small Business Tech Notes

Comments