Building Your Own PC vs. Buying a Dell

I first want to preface this (before I get any hate-mail from Dell or anyone else) by saying that I regard Dell PC’s, especially the Dell Precision Workstation very highly. At work, my primary machine is a Dell Precision Workstation T3400 with a E6850 Core2Duo, and I really do like that machine – it’s a good performer (I do need more RAM…hint, hint ), and Dell PC’s work well in a corporate environment. In fact, if I weren’t a “do-it-yourselfer” and I wanted to buy a PC, Dell would be my first and only stop. Seriously…

What I’m analyzing here is the cost differences between an entire system when building your own, vs. buying off-the-shelf (or even built-to-order) for a large manufacturer such as Dell. This is not an apples to apples comparison, as there weren’t any “consumer” grade video card options for the Precision, and also, there was no option for a 1TB HDD (which I couldn’t believe!).

Even though I carried my Video Card over (it’s an XFX 9600GT Alpha Dog Edition), I included the price of an eVGA Superclocked 9600GT since it was the closest equivalent currently on NewEgg in “my” build.

First the Specs and overall system price of a Dell Precision T3400 525W Workstation, and the cost of each component upgrade I chose (to get it to match my system):

Precision T3400 w/ 575W PSU with Vista Business x64:
$339 to go from E7300 to Q6600
$720 to upgrade from 1GB (2×512) to 8GB (4×2GB)
NV290 Quadra 256MB Video Card
$45 to upgrade to DVD-RW
$260 to upgrade to 160GB 10K RPM SATA
$179 for 320GB 7.2K RPM SATA
$309 for 500GB 7.2RPM SATA (No option for 1TB)
$2755 grand total for machine.

Now, here is my build:

Vista Business x64 OEM $139.99

Case (Antec 900) $109.99
PSU (Antec EA650) $99.99
Minus $40 Combo savings

Intel Core2Quad Q6600 (OEM) $184.99
Xigmatek HDT-S1293 CPU Cooler $36.99
Crossbow mounting kit for the Xigmatek cooler $9.99

Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R P45 Motherboard $114.99

Kingston 4GB DDR2 800 Dual Channel RAM Kit $40.99 (x2 for 8GB) $81.98

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB 10K RPM SATA $179.99
Western Digital Caviar WD3200AAKS 320GB 7.2K RPM SATA $54.99
Western Digital Caviar WD10EADS 1TB 7.2K RPM SATA $89.99

LG 22x DVD-RW DVD Burner SATA (OEM) $24.99

Athena 12" 8-pin CPU Power Extension Cable (b/c of bottom mounted PSU) $3.99

XFX 9600GT 512MB Video Card $99.99

$1192.85 grand total for machine

The big things that stick out at me like a big fat sore thumb in the cost are:

First: $339 to upgrade from a E7300 Core2Duo (a $120 CPU) to the Core2Quad (a $190 CPU) – by my math it should have been somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 for that upgrade – even adding a “premium” it should be $100 or less…wouldn’t you think?

Second: $720 to upgrade from 2×512MB Sticks of DDR2 800 RAM (1GB Total) to 4×2GB Sticks of DDR2 800 RAM (8GB  Total). On Newegg right now, a 2×512 Kit of Kingston Value RAM can be purchased for $19.99 – I paid $81.98 for my 2 4GB Kits for a total of 8GB. Again, according to my math around a $60-70 upgrade max!

Some others:

$260 to upgrade to a 10K Boot drive, $179 for a $60 320GB drive, and $309 for a 500GB drive when I paid $90 for a 1TB!

Now – there are some things you get for that ~$1500.00 cost difference – you get someone else to do the work of putting it all together and loading up the OS, and you also get (a limited amount of) support, and a warranty on the entire unit as itself.

However, with the built PC, you still get a warranty on each part, and you have to keep track of that yourself, and you do have to put it all together (or pay the gamer kid next door $25 to do it for you) and load the OS yourself. But you also get peace of mind knowing you selected all quality parts, you’ll have better cooling, likely a better motherboard (I doubt the Dell motherboard has a nice heatpipe cooling system or all solid capacitors – I know my T3400 at work doesn’t), and you have more options in the BIOS to really tweak it for performance (for example, I can’t disable C1E on my Precision at work – it spends most of it’s time at 2GHz).

The video card was the real wildcard here – I couldn’t even get close to apples-to-apples because I am not familiar enough with all of the Quadro and/or FireGL cards to get something even roughly equivalent to the Nvidia 9600GT I have – I *do* know that NVS290 isn’t it – my work system has that card and it gets a 3.5/4.0 graphics rating in Vista, and my 9600GT gets a 5.9/5.9 rating.

So, sure, there are trade-offs either way, but which is really the better deal?

You tell me, I’d really like to hear your opinions!