Can the brands beat a custom build yet?

I’m reposting this because I accidentally deleted it. Thank you google cache

My old gaming/development computer is finally starting to show its age. It’s 5 years old now with minimal upgrades so I’m not terribly heartbroken, but I’ve run across three games now that I can’t reasonably play and that’s more than enough justification for me to upgrade.

I’ve always built my own computers and so far I’ve been approaching my new build with this intention. But it occurred to me that I only do this for the cost savings. I have no real desire to put my computer together, I just want to save a bit of money on premium parts. So I decided it would be prudent to see if any of the big brands can match a custom build at a given price point. I put together a newegg wish list so you can see my basis for comparison. Then I went to some of the big manufacturers and tried my best to match these specs with their models.

I wanted to go with an i7 for my build. The processors are fantastic for overall system performance and with the price coming down they’re incredibly competitive, especially the 920. The LGA 1366 socket will be around for a while too so it’s got upgrade potential. I paired the I7 with an expensive but proven Asus P6T motherboard, and went with DDR3 1333 ram, a 300gb Velociraptor and a GeForce GTX 285 to round out the system. I intend to run Windows 7 on this system but for a better comparison I’ve included Vista Home Premium in the price (since very few manufacturers ship without an OS). The only other thing to note is that I also included a Blu-Ray player and standard DVD Burner. You can get a better idea of the full specs at the newegg wish list. Suffice to say, I went with name brands and highly rated parts.

Here we go, note that prices include any tax and shipping that would be applied:

As you can see, some of these guys are starting to get pretty close. HP and Gateway both have offerings that came in cheaper than the target build, but mostly for lack of similar parts. The HP machine is so different, in fact, that I considered not including it in this article. Still, their free shipping and $300 instant rebate would be awfully attractive if I were going for a “two-steps-down” gaming machine. Furthermore, none of the big manufacturers (Dell, HP, Gateway) provided any visibility into which motherboard we’re getting. I’ve opted to pay a $100 premium over the cheapest I7 boards to get quality parts in the epalla build, so mystery meat motherboards raise some concerns, despite the fact that the chipsets are all the same for the I7 boards.

The big story here (for me) is iBuyPower and CyberPowerPC. Their configurators allow me to set up (almost) the exact same computer as the epalla i7 build. I didn’t realize this level of customization was available these days, so it was pretty exciting to see. At this close of a price the question becomes whether you’re willing to pay $100 for someone else to put it all together for you, and that’s not a question I can easily answer. Of course, you forfeit the long term warranties that you can get from major manufacturers’ equipment, but you can also purchase a system without an operating system. The only downside really is that both sites’ default cases are absolutely hideous. I didn’t include a case upgrade in my article, but one would surely be required if you don’t like your cases looking like.. well, like this:

an alien space ship?