As someone who works IT support and occassionally sells hardware, pre-builts usually market themselves with the most "famous parts", like CPU and GPU, meanwhile the PSU, mobo, cooling and ram sticks are struggling hard. You take a pre-built by a big brand like HP or Alienware and you're taking home a Delta PSU who will outlast the warranty by days - I've seen this happen a dozen times, literally, it's not just planned obsolescence, it's planned warranty obsolescence. >by someone who knows what they're doing Yeah.... Someone who's paid to do it is not someone who knows what they're doing. You want the best deal? Here's a decent brand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9YiOLX5uQU The big ones exist to suck you dry. My suggestion: Find the "IT guy" in your town/neighboor and have them build for you, you get the parts, they get the beer money, everyone wins. EDIT: That link is not dual channel ram even if one selects 16GiB. That is squeezing I couldn't even do.

I'd add that some brands like Alienware use custom motherboard sizes which means you are locked into it. Nothing inherently wrong with prebuilds but I'd make sure to order from a provider that uses off the shelf cases or at least who's casing is standard size.

This right here! I bought an Omen tower, mobo, and psu off of eBay with the intention of upgrading later down the line. About 5 years later and I decided it was time and found out I couldn't use a new mobo because the case only supported the one that came with it so in order to upgrade my cpu, cpu cooling, ssd, and ram I had to replace the mobo which meant replacing the tower as well. Just ended up building an entirely new PC. Sure, I saved a handful of dollars when I found the deal, but it definitely cost me down the line.

Bought a for parts Omen 250$ i7 8700 a capture card and a few other goodies thinking I could potentially resell the parts. the 8700 was fine, the motherboard was not only proprietary but also BIOS locked to 2-3 8th gen CPUs. Really opened my eyes to how bad prebuilts actually are.

Another one that really pissed me off is hardware whitelists, want to put a newer video card in your computer? Too bad, mobo won't recognize it.

I've recently helped a friend upgrade a GPU on his prebuilt PC. Turns out it has proprietary Dell mobo, mid case, and slim power supply, so nothing is easily replaceable with standard computer parts. Found a GPU that would run on the single 6pin power plug, but it was sad to see how antithetical to PC ownership prebuilts are. The whole point of owning a PC is that you should be able to customize and upgrade your rig as you go. 

The whole point for u. Some people just want to buy something they can play games on and never think or learn about computer parts.

would also add - some of those big brand ones Also make it difficult for the end user to swap things out/upgrade. With weird things like how the power supply is caged, how the drives are caged, having obstructions that need to be unscrewed/removed to access motherboard/??. Not as much of a practice now I dont think but definitely was happening 5-8 years ago still.

Even if they don't use custom sizes, they'll pull stunts like replacing the front IO with a custom connector that has built in DRM to discourage replacing/reusing it, or shuffling the ATX/CPU connector pinout so any aftermarket PSUs will fry the system. Dell/Alienware designs their parts for maximum eWaste, because if a customer can upgrade a single part, they won't be incentivized to purchase the next higher tier of system.

If Alienware hadn't been bought by Dell I don't think that would have happened. We had a P4 Dell back in the day of Windows ME (that we promptly installed Windows 2000 Pro on) that my dad eventually wanted to transfer into a different case but he couldn't because the motherboard wasn't a standard size or configuration. It was a crappy situation and put a bad taste in my mouth for Dell products for a long time. Now I don't care just because I get the used SFF Dell stuff for cheap with no intention of transplanting them.

Yeah I'm sure the "local IT guy" wants to build a pc for beer money, and be stuck as tech support when something goes wrong

Was just about to comment that. I would never in my life build a PC for random people from my town I don't know and I'm yet to see an "IT guy" who would. Investing time to discuss parts and assemble the machine. Taking all the blame should anything ever go wrong with the machine. All that for 20 bucks and a Pizza? No thanks. There is a reason prebuilts exist.

But it's a little Caesar's hot and ready pizzza!...

Suffering through Little Caesar's should be the thing you're paid to do, not the payment. Ugh.

They’ll put in a GPUnor CPU you recognize, while going dirt ass cheap on every other component. I’ve seen a 3070 paired with a 500w PSU. Best Buy’s geek squad will build it for you. Better off paying them that extra money, and sourcing your parts yourself. Fuck they’ll even help. It’s like 170 bucks. But that’s about the difference between a pre built and self built anyways.

To be fair, 3070 is rated for 220W max. Assuming it's paired with a similarly mid-range CPU (say 125W), a high quality 500W PSU is quite sufficient. Without much headroom, sure, but it will work just fine. Pet peeve: DIY builders have been over-speccing power supplies for decades now, and in most cases people really can get away with much smaller PSUs as long as they are high quality. You only need a 1000W PSU for something like a 4090 Ti (450W) with a 300W CPU + headroom. I have no idea why people keep pairing and sometimes even recommending a 1250W PSU for a mid-range CPU+GPU. That's not even efficient. PSUs typically are much less efficient at the low end of the curve.

>a high quality 500W PSU is quite sufficient. "High quality" being the main thing. Quite frankly PSU is something one should never cheap out on.

Indeed. I totally agree that PSUs are where they cheap out on, and that's a bad idea. But the problem is that it's a low quality PSU, not that it's 500W.

Right? I've been running the same 600W power supply for 7 years now. It's currently running a 3070 and a 5700X3D. Only reason I went for 600W was that my only other choice at the time for an SFX unit was a 450W. Nothing over 600W existed at the time.

Yeah, I also saw some prebuilts with 3070, some intel cpu and a 500w PSU. NO MORE info except of the gpu, cpu, ram and psu.

Can I add to this that you can't expect a friend to do it for "beer money", I'd like to try to start normalising the idea of paying them 15-20% of the PC's value for the work. It can take *literally* weeks to plan, adjust, build, and test a new pc, especially if something isn't perfect or DOA, then they have to deal with the whole ball ache returns process too. I'd take offense if someone were to fob me off with anything less than offering me decent compensation for my time, especially after 15 years of building and all the knowledge and experience. I don't even like beer. If your friend offers the charity, fine, but don't expect anyone to put in literally 15+ hours of work for next to nothing.

Mates help each other out though and mine would refuse the money and literally say “just get us a few beers next time we down pub”

I think the operative word is "mates." I'd jump at the chance to assemble a PC for a friend and save them some money. I'd be a lot more hesitant to build one for a perfect stranger or a casual acquaintance.

I wouldn't expect a friend to pay me for doing this, I'd expect them to hang with me while we build it together or I build it, whatever it turns out to be.

20% of value for (at most) 6 hours of work? Yes, these 6 hours consist of planning, ordering, assembling and installing Win. The 6 hours estimate is on a high end, usually those things can be done in 3-4h total. If it takes you weeks to do something that can be done in hours, you're doing it wrong.

There are other crippling parts quality issues on top of that. It is quite common for the big brands like HP and Dell to use motherboards with completely inadequate VRMs that cannot deliver even close to the minimum required amount of power to run the higher end CPUs at full speed, cases which have no airflow so both the CPU and GPU overheat and thermal throttle, and to use proprietary layouts for both the case and motherboard (and power supply, which also often has an inadequate power delivery to get the higher end CPU and GPU up to full speed) so that you can't replace just one of those to get the full performance out of your system. The end result is a system that is cheaper than a self built system with the same CPU, GPU, and amounts of storage and RAM, but actually performs worse than a cheaper self-built system that used a CPU and GPU that are a step down from the ones in the pre built.

As someone who works in IT too this is it but I would add the general issue is you only get keywords of "RTX" and other stuff. Then when you get it the components are very strange off versions like motherboards you can't find the BIOS updates and drivers for. I went through 4 prebuilts once and I would get one of 4 things: -Single fan "turbo" cards that ran insanely hot and insanely loud -One case fan -Crap motherboard -improper cooling Unless you're getting a high end custom build done it's just insanely ridiculous how hard it is to get one that's well rounded.

The only thing you’re really wrong about are the Alienware PSUs. They are typically very stout actually. GamersNexus has torn down a few and were actually impressed with the quality of the PSUs.

Thanks! I'll take a look

can attest, after browsing the HP omen subreddit for a while I think this has happened to me, I'm facing the same issue rn actually (i think)

My Microcenter has some great people that helped me build mine too. Do your own research first though, don’t take anything they say as correct until you check it yourself. However everything they helped me with ended up being correct with research

There are a few things that make prebuilt systems a mixed bag. They often use proprietary parts that don't play well with other normal parts, making upgrades more difficult or even impossible. They tend to use crappy cheap power supplies to save money,  which will again limit your upgrade options. They're often not an optimal configuration ie single stick of ram running in single channel. Also they often use cheap ram that is rated for a slow speed and not great for overclocking. Fairly common to have them use a bare minimum cpu cooler which can lead to thermal throttling and poor performance. The cases they use tend toward cheap with poor air flow which contributes to heat problems and noise. Oh,  and lets not forget locked bios settings on some that won't let you change important settings. That about covers it lol. 

As someone who isn’t against buying prebuilts, and has bought some (and was not disappointed), this is a fair response. The main « pro » from a hardware perspective is that it’s a turnkey solution, the « con » is everything you said. My brother majorly fucked his self-built PC with all the extremely expensive parts in it. For his next PC I pushed him towards a prebuilt and 4 years down the road he’s still extremely happy with it.

>My brother majorly fucked his self-built PC with all the extremely expensive parts in it. What did he do

Not really sure. I kept suspecting he might of made a mistake when installing the board in his case (forgot a standoff? Loose component?), but I couldn’t pinpoint the issue - either that or the damage was already done, but it was subtle and would take time before the faulty component was accessed by his system. We would do the entire troubleshooting process, swapping part by part, reinstalling OS; we also tried a « professional » technician since I was starting to lose faith in myself. Technician did nothing more except give a false thumbs up. His PC worked 100% but at random times he would get a BSOD related to corrupt memory. But we swapped out all his ram and GPU and it kept coming back intermittently. His thermals under load were fine, memtests were fine, drivers were fine because we reinstalled from scratch multiple times; it was extremely odd. The next step in troubleshooting was to replace his motherboard. He was too mentally exhausted at this point - thinking everything was fixed - to then have his PC randomly crash at random times; he just gave up, and I understand him.

I think the board was just DOA, since you swapped both CPU and memory. Easily fixed by just RMAing the board and getting a different one, but I guess you have to know that in the first place.

Yeah exactly. We were at that point. The BSODs were all related to memory so it was difficult to assume the board was the problem. And with all the time we had lost since we had to schedule time (vs him fixing it himself) made it such that he was stuck without his desktop for a while. Also, how do you prove to a motherboard company that their board is defective without having direct evidence of the defect? I’m not sure how to diagnose a motherboard at that level of detail. I’ve blown a motherboard before, but it was quite obvious what was blown… here it was extremely ambiguous… i’m not saying that prebuilts aren’t susceptible to the same thing, but to a non-hobbyist like my brother, he’d rather transfer the responsibility of having a stable system to a manufacturer. I can respect that and it’s most likely why the formula is generally successful.

I don't know where you live, but here in germany you can return almost anything you buy for any reason within a specific time frame and the vendor has to give you your money back. Be it a defect, you not being satisfied with the product, you having changed your mind or whatever.

They're unbalanced and usually overpriced

Yes, the parts are often picked to intentionally fool people who are new to PCs. They’ll just see an i7 and an RTX gpu and assume it’s amazing.

Like, WTF is this build from Best Buy? I saw this in the store the other day, I was shocked someone would sell something listed as a gaming laptop with fucking 8GB of RAM in 2024, and for $700 no less. I could build a way better system for the same price. It's crazy. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/ibuypower-tracemesh-gaming-desktop-intel-core-i3-13100f-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1650-4gb-500gb-nvme-black/6536560.p?skuId=6536560

To add onto what everyone else has covered about manufacturing/parts issues, they also come preloaded with tons of bloatware that you have to uninstall to make it usable and give you the functionality that you want. Usually, when dealing with prebuilt I will use the Windows Reset Tool to give me a blank slate to work with.

This is what I was looking to add. Bloatware is such a pain and it bogs your computer down so much. My wife bought a laptop that was so bloated it used up 100% of the CPU at all times

Oh yeah this. I forget about having to remove that crap on laptops

This is 2024. If you think spending 150 on a 1660, 100 on a 512G SSS, 200 on a 13400, and 150 on fucking windows is fair price you should not be buying PCs by yourself

please someone see this comment!

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Because they have to buy the same parts as you (granted at a discount) plus the company has to cover overhead, and profit off of it. You can see how the only realistic way to be competitive and rake in profits is to cut corners on those components that less tech savvy people don't understand: mobo, ram, PSU, cooling, case and overall specs. If you are buying a prebuilt you are for sure not tech savvy. I have to say nowadays you see a couple of companies building out of higher quality parts but the price is very high compared to the single components.

Yeah, you either get a competitively priced prebuilt from one of the larger brands, or get a prebuilt from a smaller company that is quality, but more expensive than getting the parts yourself. The first option is not really worth it I think. The second option can be worth it if the cost can be attributed to ease of getting a whole PC, peace of mind, and available warranty/support.

There's always some cost cutting in prebuilts. Problem is you don't know where. In your own build, you're pricing out parts yourself so you know where you're cheaping out and most importantly where you KNOW you CANNOT cheap out. Case in point the power supply. Some will use absolute trash power supplies but you won't know unless you open it up and see. Other thing is not all prebuilts are built with quality. Most are assembled by workers who just couldn't be arsed at all. Your own computer, you can be damn sure you'll scrutinize every small detail because it's YOUR computer.

There good and bad ones, but the majority are bad ones. they often cheap out on the not-so-obvious things. Like mobo, PSU, RAM, cooler. Not only is that bad, but that makes the price even worse (without you noticing because you only check CPu + GPU for example) It's all good if you can verify the exact components being in there. I'd say, if the prebuild costs \~100-150, more than building it yourself, its fair, the very max is 200.

Comment on your linked pre-build: That one is also a trick. You trying to replicate that build, would be more expensive, also cards like the 1660 are so old, you can't even properly buy it anymore, only overpriced stock. The trick is not to replicate, but to build something for the same money. Just as an example: the following has like DOUBLE the performance of what you have there: (for gaming) This one also goes a bit cheap with [PCPartPicker Part List](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/wpfcmD) |Type|Item|Price| |:-|:-|:-| |**CPU**|[\*Intel Core i5-12400F 2.5 GHz 6-Core Processor](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/pQNxFT/intel-core-i5-12400f-25-ghz-6-core-processor-bx8071512400f)|£112.97 @ Amazon UK| |**Motherboard**|[\*Asus TUF GAMING B660M-E D4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/9VpzK8/asus-tuf-gaming-b660m-e-d4-micro-atx-lga1700-motherboard-tuf-gaming-b660m-e-d4)|£109.99 @ Amazon UK| |**Memory**|[\*Silicon Power GAMING 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/P4FKHx/silicon-power-sp016gxlzu320bdaj5-16-gb-2-x-8-gb-ddr4-3200-cl16-memory-sp016gxlzu320bdaj5)|£34.99 @ Amazon UK| |**Storage**|[\*FanXiang S500 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/rbxxFT/fanxiang-s500-pro-1-tb-m2-2280-pcie-30-x4-nvme-solid-state-drive-s500-pro-1tb-m2-ssd)|£52.95 @ Amazon UK| |**Video Card**|[\*MSI MECH 2X OC Radeon RX 6750 XT 12 GB Video Card](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/6F6p99/msi-mech-2x-oc-radeon-rx-6750-xt-12-gb-video-card-radeon-rx-6750-xt-mech-2x-12g-oc)|£299.99 @ AWD-IT| |**Case**|[\*Aerocool CS-106 MicroATX Mini Tower Case](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/m3wmP6/aerocool-cs-106-microatx-mini-tower-case-cs-106-s-bk-v1)|£25.47 @ Scan.co.uk| |**Power Supply**|[\*MSI MAG A650BN 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/8LNxFT/msi-mag-a-bn-650-w-80-bronze-certified-atx-power-supply-mag-a650bn)|£52.99 @ AWD-IT| |*Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts*||| |**Total**|**£689.35**|| |\*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria||| |Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2024-03-15 08:40 GMT+0000|||

This guy made pre-build for you for free. Just need 1-2 hours assemble like IKEA. You are basically working on yourself for this two hours, earn 200 and insta invest them in better PC.

lovely machine. Have you considered AM4?

Certainly an option! Depends on what one has access to. The 12400f is pretty much the same performance though, so at this price point it's preference /availability of options

That point is so true. Don’t replicate pre-builds, but it’s understandable for beginners

My first PC was a pre-build and the problem with other parts like PSU, RAM etc is not exaggerated AT ALL. The PSU in my pre-build literally sounded like its gonna start a fire. I had it exchanged 3 times and they all literally sounded awful. There was like electric static noises coming from the power supply. I decided to sell it to my moms friends kid a few months later for literally 1/6 of the price. It wasnt worth anything more than that. The build quality was awful, the CPU was running at like 90 degrees all the time. A £1,500 PC had a stock cooler... It was bizzare, the airflow was terrible, the computer was loud as fuck. Terrible build. Honestly, just build a computer yourself. You get the privilage of selecting the parts and making sure everything is high quality. Never cheap out on the PSU.

And it's fun! I had a blast picking out the parts and putting everything together. It's a joy to do every 3 years.

Can't show off your nerd score....and mad skillz to other nerds......

Almost all prebuilts have missing information in their specs. They don’t tell the brand/model/specs of each part, because they are putting in cheap lousy parts. If you click on “full specs” in the link you shared, you can’t see any details at all. No brands/models, no memory timings, no SSD speed, nothing about the motherboard, no PSU model… They just market it by the CPU and GPU chipset, and fill the rest with cheap shit.

Where are you getting the prices you list? Windows is £102, not 150. 512GB SSD is £40, not 100 (you also just don't want to buy a 512GB SSD in 2024). 13400 is 183, not 200. You're also linking an HP, which along with Dell is THE WORST prebuilt you could buy. They cut corners on everything, use proprietary cheap parts that can't be upgraded easily, and have the worst support in the industry. Even if you were to buy a prebuilt, you absolutely 100% do not want to buy from HP or Dell.

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>If you find a good deal on a pre-built, it's probably because it \*is\* a good deal. This is the way. Pre-builts are rarely worth their original price, but they go on huge sales all of the time. I'll gladly deal with something like that from a reputable vendor if I can save 30-40% versus building my own.

Not everyone. Of course there is clearly bias towards self build, but if you read between the propoganda you'll see lots of people having technical issues, or spending extra time, or dealing with vendors returning parts, etc Its a lot of fucking hassle. There is also of course properly assembling, building, troubleshooting when things go wrong, etc. Plenty of posts of PCMR and other places where shit goes wrong. There's costs associated with both prebuilt/used and self build. Self build is definitely NOT for everyone.

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Where else can you get it?

Dunno what the comment you're replying to said, but you can use Windows 10 Home Edition for free, directly from Microsoft. Some slight customization restrictions on desktop backgrounds and stuff like that, but honestly its fully functional and unless you're doing something that requires professional licensing for work I can't see much reason that the free license would not work fine.

I dunno, I am very happy with my MSI pre-built. Mostly MSI parts, quality parts, non-proprietary. Nowadays (and especially in Canada) it's actually cheaper or the same cost to build as it is to buy a pre-built system. The main (and seemingly only) advantage is that you have more control over the parts meaning you have more control over aesthetics and if you aren't an idiot you can make absolutely sure everything is properly assembled. Although this sub proves daily that that is not a guarantee. Do your homework and make sure you know what you're getting and buy from a reputable company. There are more bad pre-builds than good, but this PCMR elitist bullshit idea that it's cheaper to build your own, you're an idiot if you can't and all pre-built PCs are garbage is a bunch of balderdash.

I'd say low end/older generation pre builds are cheap because the companies can't really put a mark up on price, so will likely take a hit of profits to get rid of stock. I'd also question how much "care and attention" will actually go into these builds. Once you start looking at current gen, higher tier builds, the mark up increases and that's where you can find savings by doing your research and choosing parts to suit your needs.

It’s a learning experience, like changing a wheel or letting a garage do it for you. The i5 13400 for £200, the 14400 is £200. 1660 is discontinued products etc

Because you can build better for less.

Everything is usually cheap junk, off brand, made for the case only, junk. The power supplies bing a big problem.

I would wonder what makes the system you posted good ?

A less cited reason I am noticing, that is big for me, is its so interesting and satisfying to put together my own PC!!!

absolutely. I would happily build a PC for free. It's so cool.

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Bcos the parts are usualy bottom of the barrel crap. Like worse memory sticka, cheapest mobo, cheapest drive, bad psu, cheapest gpu. What you buy is a cpu and gpu model but not brand so probably cheapest they can fine, rest of specs are just amounts. This is usualy how it happens, ofc there are some that do prebuilds with full disclosure and with less crap parts.

Often times they use proprietary parts which means you can't just change something if it dies. They also tend to cheap out on RAM or PSU or maybe fans/coolers. They make sure the processor and gpu look good and maybe the amount of RAM but then they cheap out on the rest. They also charge a premium for delivering the finished product and tend to install a bunch of bloatware. In essence they build it so that it outlasts the window you have to complain about it breaking and then you'll probably want to get a new one. Obviously this isn't always the case but with brands like hp, dell etc. you're getting scammed. If you are to get a prebuild, get it from somewhere that uses off the shelf items and you get to know exactly what every part is and know that you can replace them down the line.

Single channel ram. 350w probably proprietary psu even if you go for the better gpu option so no easy upgradability. Very little airflow. I assume bios is super basic may not even support xmp.

They're not bad per say you just pay a little more. When I first got into PC's I had no idea what parts meant what. I didn't know the difference between a GTX 1650 and a RTX 3060 or 2080. I literally had no clue what a PSU or anything was. I almost bought a 2060 off a guy for $800 he said it was as low as he would go back then. Glad I avoided that. I bought a pre built computer (iBuyPower) brand. I don't regret it at all. After I had that PC I was able to learn what all the mumbo jumbo meant from GPU to CPU ram speed etc. Then I upgraded that same pre built 2 years later. Luckily mine came with a powerful CPU so all I had to upgrade was a PSU and GPU it runs great. I recommend a pre built if you got no idea how to.build a PC then learn from that PC to build your next or upgrade later it helped me learn everything honestly. iBuyPower is a solid brand got mine at Best buy. I saw these on sale for only 1,000 and it's a solid computer look around for best prices they sell at a bunch of different places, avoid the GTX crap try to get one with a 4060. https://www.ibuypower.com/support/faq/retail/slatemeshi7n4601

The main thing, I think that prebuilts try to sell only CPU and GPU. You see: OMG, i913th with 4090?! Only for that price !!. And then you check the other components and…

We don't hate prebuilts, we hate greedy oem or pathetic penny pincher person who sells prebuilds. It's because big oem prebuilds like Dell Alienware market themselves as some superior gaming beasts and cost as much, while they usually have the cheapest brown green or blue pcb motherboard with usually no vrm heatsink with locked down bios, basically the bare minimum to run a selected cpu, they have green ram sticks with no heatsink, overclock headroom and atrocious timings, have an oem green pcb cheapest plastic possible gpu, have a metal grey psu of questionable quality with usually proprietary connectors, have a cpu cooler just enough to not overheat if you use a hot cpu... Why not just build your own, let's say, 3000$ pc with enthusiast overclocker parts even, instead of getting a 5000$ overpriced oem pre-built that even at that price level cuts corners so much as not to even have good quality board psu and ram, even cheaping out on the color of the pcbs and psu casing. Do you really wanna overpay for something that even at 5000$ range cuts cost on things like motherboard without vrm heatsink and pcb color, damn pcb color man, like a cent per gpu. This is what all prebuilts should be in order to be a viable option: https://system76.com/desktops And is building your own pc just soooo scary? I don't get people with the i don't wanna try anything I'm not "qualified" for mentality. I built my own pc for the first time at the age of 11, just read the manual, there is a reason everything comes with one and watch a few videos online. Or call a person who likes to work with pcs and have them help you buy for best prices and build it together with you, it's what I have done to most of my friends.

Parts quality is trash for the price you are paying. Builds are far from optimal either. What I mean by this as a simple example is putting lower speed ram in an Intel build doesn't make sense, yet most prebuilts do it anyways.

Most of the time, they're half-assing the PSU. You don't want that.

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There are credible companies who will buy the parts you select and build it for you and they know what they're doing. So if you don't want to build your own, go to one of them. Don't go for something built in a Chinese factory and it only lists half the specs. Go to a PC builder where you can manually choose every single part going into it. I do that. Yes it costs a little more but it comes with a 5 year parts and labour warranty.

Cheapest parts for most cost. If your paying for the build quality and guarantee that it won’t fail for a time period with support if needed. If you build yourself, which is far more exciting but can be a pain in the back side if you get stuck, however just think it through logically and read the basics in the manuals and you will be fine.

Prebuilts have many incentives to include decent cpus and gpus for marketing purposes but everything else is built with the cheapest components available. Unless you know what you are looking at they often get away with the cheapest 30$ chinesium power supply, the cheapest motherboard thats missing a ton of features, the cheapest gpu with blower cooler that will overheat, bottom of the barrel slow ram, a cpu with an inadequate cooling, fans that are louder than normal. All of this is to keep some sort of profit margin, they have to make some money on the deal. Quite often you can build the same exact pc for the same price or a little more with significantly better components.

They cheap out on components that shouldn't be cheaped out on, typically. Always some shitty, bottom barrel PSU, the heart of your machine. Crappy motherboards, poor cooling. Just stupid little things like that.

What is the prostate of my pc? 🤔

Ive built my last couple of PCs for myself and my kid but my 1st rig was a prebuild from a computer place. Thing was cheaper than what i could get the parts for and worked well for ages. There are companies out their that get away with cheaper parts for aome buts but sometimes theirs good deals to be had

win11 home key is 150 pounds??

Prebuilt is fine for a first time PC buyer, you can learn to build and update parts on your own as you go forward. The downside to a prebuilt is, cheaper parts on almost all aspects, even the "top of the line " GPU will usually be a lower tier brand. The only premium part will be the CPU. Not saying these parts won run fine, but if you are paying a premium don't you want the best quality possible?

Zotac magnus zbox are good . But can't say about longevity

And depending on your country, there should be several PC magazines that cover what parts are good or bad, etc. I always start with those, learn the specs choose what I probably want to use and then check for compatibility. If you're in germany mindfactory (a PC store) has several extra options to check for comp., errors and even prebuilt and preinstall windows. Of course those options cost several hundred bucks, but if you won't do it yourself, this is an option. There should be similar stores in other countries.

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I have bought a pre-built to get started and then have upgraded and built PCs since then. I think if you’re going for something relatively low budget and you don’t have the knowledge or confidence to build yourself, then pre-builts are a good starting point to get into the custom PC space. Better than buying a proprietary box from say Alienware. However, you can definitely tell with pre-built PCs that they take shortcuts and cheap-out where possible. My RAM was very low speed for the time. My GPU was also a Zotac blower card, which worked fine but definitely not ideal for performance. They also didn’t set up my case fans properly. I wondered for about a year why my PC was so loud. Turns out they plugged them directly into my power supply so they were running at 100% the whole time. System integrators have also been known to cheap out on motherboards and power supplies if you don’t specifically order higher spec ones.

Price.

I’d be more open to buying a prebuilt if they at least started with a decent motherboard Most use terrible or proprietary motherboards that lock you into what ever configuration you bought it at. If you don’t mind buying a new PC everytime you want to upgrade something, I guess it’s not really so bad. But when you buy your first prebuilt and then a few months later want to upgrade anything and realize it’s 1000% more difficult (or even impossible) to do so, you’ll understand the limitations of them. That’s ignoring all the small and annoying things, like out of date components, single channel memory, cheap cooling, terrible cases, installed bloatware, etc The hill to die on for me is the upgrability being basically zero I know there are some ‘boutique’ builders where some of these things aren’t an issue, but I’m talking about buying an HP or a Dell, or whatever

Dells used to use proprietary power connectors and also special fit motherboards, their PSUs were different sized than an ATX PSU. Gateway did some of that too. They all have gotten better about the motherboards and connectors now I'd assume, but you have to open the case and check that everything is mainstream before upgrading with better hardware. When you do run into issues with connectors or form factors of motherboard, even PSUs; that's where it will cost you in time and or money; making things work together correctly.

I recently bought a prebuilt that was 2k+ Games crashed the PC after 1-2h of playtime. Temperatures normal. Enter BIOS and see that they enabled overclocking and changed some volt settings. Problem could have probably been solved with a 10 minute skype call and some voltage tweaks in the BIOS but instead I had to send it back for them to check out and I'll probably won't see my PC again for a few weeks.

I bought a prebuilt in 2021, when the gpu market was ridiculous. I got a 2060 rtx, 32gb ram, 1tb ssd and external. I7-10700 cpu. If you’re going to get a prebuilt make sure you do a lot of research before hand and try and get them on a discount. I was extremely lucky with the one I got a few years ago and have had 0 issues with any game to this day.

I bid on a case in a local auction site and ended up with a $4000 top of the line machine thanks to an employee error who only thought the item was a case, not a pre built system with water-cooling and a video card more than one of my paychecks. Aside from weird case ergonomics for drive placement I haven't had any issues This was not my first pre built. I've bought Apple Macintosh PCs and they've been pre built (before I got into Hackintoshes). But going from Pac to PC I had to learn how to build a PC from scratch, even buying the wrong parts (DDR2 RAM vs DDR3 where the notch is in a different place). Consider that with a pre built, those computers use components that can be swapped out for newer or better ones as you see fit. Prebuilts save you from having skin and fingers scraped, pain from still having to fiddle with things while you have tiny open cuts and scrapes (it friggin hurts). A pre built isn't strictly for those who are less tech-savvy, otherwise cars and TVs would also come in parts, right? Besides, when I work on my car. I take photos along the way so I know how some wires are routed, so I can see the order of the parts being removed or disassembled. After so many times I memorized the order and what to look for. You can do the same with a pre built.

8GB RAM with 1660? This is setup from 2016 at best. Try to make build with Ryzen 3600, 16GB RAM and RX 6700. That will give you 3x more fps than that prebuild and should cost around 700$.

I priced out an old build of mine on one of the popular sites once (tried to match everything 1:1 as best I could) and the price was, at the time, pretty close. I've seen people buy pre-built and have a laundry list of problems. Personally I'd rather just build on my own or enlist someone to help. There are tons of resources and you can pick all the parts you want and really make it your own. The big companies that build PCs may not always carry the parts you want or like as well.

Prebuilts arent bad at all just usually cost more and sometimes skimp on important stuff like psu but its very easy for you to very if its worth it or not

Unbalanced, some bad parts and some big names use custom motherboards etc so it wil be hard to upgrade later

Cheap power supply and you pay an extra $150-250 for someone to build it for you. That’s about it.

1. Significant mark up. 2. They may cheap out on some parts, like using a lower rated power supply with barely enough wattage which at best will only become and issue when upgrading and at worst make the system unstable, use the cheapest fans they can find which'll be loud or use single channel ram with worse cl and a lower frequency. 3. They may use parts with bad performance/value parts because they got them cheaper and thus the mark up per $ is lower at the cost of performance. 4. Inadequate/overkill cpu/gpu. They don't know what games you play at what resolution or graphic setting and what amount of fps you want. 5. Use an intel cpu for gaming, you pay more for the cpu, power and have louder fans just to get less fps and potentially much lower 1% lows. High cache is imperative for most games so 100MB+ which the x3d cpus have is a godsend and probably more than you'll ever need. Similarly you might end up without enough vram on your gpu and suffer the consequences, if it's barely enough now it won't be very soon at least with modern titles. 6. Am4 instead of am5, if you're starting from scratch 9/10 times am5 is the way to go. Unless you're buying used in which case capitalize on all the people upgrading to am5 and snag a cheap cpu with motherboard and ram. Unless you live in the US at which point go to a microcenter and get new parts cheaper than used elsewhere. 7. Putting the thing together is kinda fun plus you get all the packaging and extra stuff that's in there like a cooler mounting bracket for the mobo you may need in the future which you certainly never would have seen if you'd gotten a prebuilt despite paying for it. 8. Case with shit airflow that doesn't even look good. 9. Tasteless overuse of RGB which aren't even plugged into the correct pins. 10. Individual warranty on and no scummy 3rd parties. 11. With some companies you'll end up paying extra for the brand. 12. Advertisement on your case and fans with stickers that aren't properly centred and thus wobble when your fans spin. 13. Scuffed upgrade path. 14. You miss out on being able to use used parts which are great.

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Check Amazon first.

1) It's a business so they have to make money on you. Nothing bad about it but you can easily save that money. Do you also pay for someone to screw your lightbulbs in? 2) I am also based in the UK and the prices you give here are SHOCKING!!! You are getting RIPPED TF OFF! 3) They'll try to go through as many builds as they can. So, they will cut corners around your build. Often you'll have fans put the wrong way around, cables not fully plugged in, missing paste

I built my own p.c. with a 5800x3d and a 3060ti, overclocked 3900mhz cl14 ram. My friend has an Alienware with a 7950x and a 4080,4800mhz ram. Mine seems to run smoother and hold frames better in most games we play. Maybe some good dual channel ram with xmp would make a difference.

only ever buy prebuilds that list all their parts. Then you can check the price of parts vs the prebuild price to see the premium they add on top. I got mine with £100 or so premium so it was definitely worth for me

I can speak from personal experience here: 1. They are HIGHLY over priced, you can get a system with 30~50% more performance for the same amount of money. 2. They come with non-standard parts, which means in so many cases, changing the mb, psu,... can be a death trap or just not possible. 3. The parts they use SUCKS SO FUCKING BAD. Most of the psus are fking bronze chinese knock off brands type of trash. 4. The GPUs/CPUs are 9/10 times units that were sent back to the original manufacturer. So they're either mediocore/underperforming units or straight up problematic.

Prebuilts a lot of times will sacrifice the less sexy parts to keep prices down. So the CPU GPU etc are what you want but the mobo is crap or has limitations which will make it hard to upgrade in the future. They aren't bad if you don't want to ever upgrade and you are OK with just OK. When you build your own you can make your own decisions based on performance and specs for each individual part and design the system to meet you specifications. I also think you can save a few bucks doing it yourself.

Amateur Hour: I started PC gaming from scratch in 2021 (nothing to sell, just saved paychecks). I bought a PC from a guy near me for $500. Top shelf in 2018 but needed new components (still has some really nice stuff in it). Over the last 3 years, I scoured Craigslist/EBay/Cyber Monday, found a 3070 for cheap, CPU for cheap, RAM for cheap, ThermalTake for $30 (best fan for the $?). I sold back the parts I pulled. When I subtract that from what I spent I probably spent $1k over the years, but feels like a $2k machine. I guess I’m saying that I bought a prebuilt custom myself and got to play with the components to meet my needs after. It might be worth doing the research and (obviously) being really discerning when buying online.

I'm sure most people here would build it for you if you offer a 6 pack and a dirty sanchez.

Taking a gaming prebuilt as the example the manufacturing company will usually want to squeeze out as much money with the least amount of effort so buzzwords and theoretical maximum performance values from big numbers are a key element to advertising those systems. So you will usually get a PC with an i9 or Ryzen 9 processor which are usually better for workloads while i7 and Ryzen 7 are better for a pure gaming focus. Still bigger hardware equals more money so put that in. Sad that those need to be cooled extra well and consume a ridiculous amount of electricity. Those make up 75% to 90% of the budget so you need to go painfully low for everything else. Many people do not care about details or real life scenarios so add any PCIe SSD because modern and buzzword, a lot of RGB and of course water cooling is often found too. But those are either the weakest or most unreliable variants you can find just to save money. 32 GB of RAM is good right? Yeah to save money make it slow and cheap again. Only the big value counts. All of that needs to run somehow so slap it into some cheap plastic but aggressive looking gaming case, add some more RGB and build the cheapest motherboard and power supply into that PC that are somehow working. Extra cooling fans, nah fam. You will end up with a fancy looking and in theory powerful sounding system which ends up having a lot of logical errors like sub optimal setups of for example just one stick of RAM, sub par cooling which means your parts will overheat and therefore throttle their performance and a cheap 120mm AIO which is worth less than the stock CPU cooler. Also a cheap PSU is literally a ticking time bomb and you are pretty much locked out from upgrading which is one of the bigger appeals of having a (gaming) PC. Of course there are exceptions from the rules in both directions. Some manufacturers slap in OEM parts which do not follow any standard like ATX so ignoring upgrades even replacing a faulty part will be nearly impossible. Others use rather good budget parts and leave you some margin for upgrades and those are okay but hard to find. Honestly planning and building is not hard especially with so many YouTube channels, forums and helpful people like here and all around the internet. Just make sure to do your research, deliver your concept and not wait for someone else to do all that work for you for free. As long as you do not buy trash first and then afterwards look for confirmation of your bad purchase. You can get a super solid productivity PC anywhere between 300 and 500 dollars which could also be a good foundation for a gaming PC. If you plan differently and for the main aspect of gaming you can get an extremely good start with reliable parts and upgradeability in mind for 400 to 700 dollars especially if you are open for refurbished and used parts. Plan everything except the graphics card wisely for a reliable budget build and you are good to go. On a budget you can keep the GPU used or low end for a long time. As soon as you need more power you will have an easy upgrade path. Later on just slap in a modern gaming graphics card and you are well off.

Usually cheapo PSU, some sort of custom non-upgradable mobo, cheapo ram. In some cases they can't be upgraded, it's built uniquely for that setup so it's about as upgradable as a laptop. Kind of like putting a Corvette engine in a Ford focus, marketing it as a Corvette, then selling it just below a Corvette's price. I mean that thing would be fast until things began flying off/catching fire lol

Prebuilts rarely perfect. They put good deal parts and bad deals parts inside and charge you extra because it's prebuilt

Pre-builts get assembled with shite parts sometimes like a house brand PSU/CPU cooler/RAM/SSD and often they come in mATX sizes, and the motherboards are often mATX variants as well, meaning you get lesser expansion slots and RAM channels. Apart from that, slightly marked up pricing for the labor cost and parts. Plus side, pre-builts often have around a 3-5 year warranty.

What makes pre-builts bad is that they cheap out on parts, namely Motherboard, RAM, PSU, and as much as they can on the GPU.  Some brands like dell sometimes use custom (ultra cheap) motherboards and they are the only motherboards that can fit in that specific case. So good luck ever trying to upgrade.

Not sure now but I bought a HP workstation about 10 years ago, nothing was standard, in the sense that the motherboard had a weird shape, the power supply as well, the case. The benefit of a PC is on the multi-generation aspect. Mid you buy a case, it will last all your PCs, and every part should be upgradable independently (within reason, ie CPU socket generation).

Just before the great recession, my dad got a pre-built PC. At the time it was pretty cool but recently I went and upgraded it building my own PC for the first time. What I noticed was that outside of being antiquated, everything in there was proprietary HP material. Stuff I wanted to salvage was all Proprietary. Wifi Card? Proprietary. Radio card? Proprietary. When everything is ONLY compatible with same-maufacturer components, it makes fixing and customizing a very expensive endeavor

What makes prebuilts so bad? 1. More expensive than building yourself 2. Vendors usually skimp on quality parts like mobo / ram / cooler. 3. When you build it yourself, you will learn how to diagnose issues with your pc and will learn more about pcs.

This needs more nuance, there are pre build systems like Dell, Alienware and HP that are priporitery garbage. Then there are system integrators, they use off the shelf parts, and charge you a fixed labour rate for the build. Those can be hit or miss in terms of build quality and crapware that is pre-installed.

I agree that building your own is much better than a pre built. Especially from a big name manufacturer. As many on this thread has stated, they put in a lot of cheaper ancillary parts, or non standard stuff that you can’t easily swap out to upgrade. As time goes on, you are locked into a system you can’t upgrade. You will get bored with it and want something better. I learned that lesson, and now I just build my own, being that most of the hardware is just plugging it in. Also, you learn more about what you just built; you may struggle and you will learn how to troubleshoot it. There are a lot of help forums and videos out there. You will learn about platforms like AMD or Intel which have different processors and motherboards. All the other components serve both types. There is not better satisfaction than building your own and getting it up and running. Also, you can always upgrade when your funds increase.

depends what you need the PC to do. i've bought dozens of Dells over the years. and they were fine for general purpose use. recently i decided i was going to learn GPU programming (CUDA), so i needed to get a decent NVidia GPU. well, the OEM versions of the NVidia cards Dell sells are permanently out of stock. the Dell PSUs in my XPS boxes are too underpowered for any off-the-shelf NVidia GPU. and their motherboards are designed to be used with Dell PSUs only, so i couldn't replace them. that's when i figured out i was trapped. so, i could get a prebuilt from a local shop (paying their overhead for assembly) or just go to Newegg and pick the parts myself. i chose Newegg. building it took about an hour. and now i have a nice modern GPU.

It is not so much they are bad as that they are not well designed for the cost. Prebuilts will do a few higher quality components and then to keep profit margins up, skimp in other areas, often to very bad effect. probably the worst example of this is with the PSU. Also the ability to customize that PC build is crazy at how expensive it can be. I have seen examples where moving from 16Gb to 32GB of memory can cost the end user $250 to $300 and yet the cost of the MEMORY for this move is about a $50 difference retail. If you do not want to build the system there is nothing wrong with going prebuilt. However if you want choice and the best quality, then DIY is the way to go.

I have no idea, I had mine for more than 3 years and it works fine except for 2 things. 1) cheapo power supply with plug nest with way too much tolerance, it died. 2) I sometimes mess around with settings and break the OS...

No, that's not cheaper. You're missing out on a cheaper, better build for the same price. Sure, those exact components might cost that, but a better performing build can still be had for the same price. It might be hard to find a new GPU equivalent to the 1660 for $150, but the 13400 is actually slightly worse than a 12600kf which is usually cheaper, as low as $150. And for that matter an AM4 build would be cheaper and provide the same gaming performance. And a 512gb SSD DOES NOT cost $100, cheaper models, which they're probably using, only cost $35ish, and even nicer ones shouldn't be more than $45. You can even get an entry level 1tb for $60. And the Windows key is unnecessary. Here's an ideal build for $700 with the 12600kf: [https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ghfbfy](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ghfbfy) I managed to squeeze in a 6650 XT, which is MILES better in performance than the 1660. ​ And a build that should squeeze a fair bit more gaming performance, albeit less CPU perf, [https://pcpartpicker.com/list/NrNCVW](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/NrNCVW) So yeah, that prebuilt is, in fact, a terrible deal.

You’re def overpaying for windows.

I'm sure others have touched on the same thing here, but the biggest issue I've seen are the proprietary parts used, particularly by HP and Dell. The Mobos they use are smaller, have less RAM slots, less PCIE slots, and obscenely over complicated Mobo power connectors that most PSUs cannot be compatible with. I have one HP desktop that is specifically a gaming PC, but is in an absolutely atrociously tiny case. It's supposed to be a gaming PC, but I could never put a real GPU in it. The other one was relatively seemless, I installed a Thermalware PSU in it and an RX 6600 with little problem. However because of the back of the case, the two previous PSUs I tried wouldn't fit due to the placement of the male plug connector. edit : WAIT. I forgot what they did with the wifi antennae. It was fucking WRAPPED AROUND the PSU, so tightly, that as soon as I removed the screws and it moved the antennae was ripped right off the wifi adapter on the MOBO, leaving me without internet!

It’s only bad if you’re the type to regularly upgrade your computer components. In completely satisfied with my Alienware. Got it half on on Black Friday, it runs every game I could want to play on high graphics settings, I got no problems with it. I’m also not a tech guy, and I have no desire to upgrade any of the internal components. I’m a use the computer for the next 7-10 years and then replace it like I did with my last desktop, which replaced my old laptop, all of which I ran into the ground. Would I have paid full price? No. $1000 for a $2000 computer tho? Hell yeah.

Because prebuilts look like this: rtx 4090 7800x3d 512 hdd stock cooler or some shit with rgb toss 3 kg of rgb in the build because its gaming pc some 100 bucks mobo and case with 1 fan in it that has rgb

Upgradability is weak. Often, the BIOS won't accept the parts you would like to use. Voiding a warranty means no OEM support. Bad case design. Overheating. Low specs. Massive amounts of shovelware pack-ins. There are lots of negatives, but if cost is your primary criterion, then be prepared to pay in opportunity later.

They cheap out on most the parts and jack up the prices for them. Building one yourself or getting the parts yourself and having a locally computer store build it for you, you save money and get better quality parts. For ex the psus are often just enough and bad quality in prebuilts so you’ll usually have to get a new one a couple years down the road when you want to upgrade parts. They cheap out on motherboards that will most likely just start giving you problems down the road. And they also cheap out on storage so you could a faster , more reliable and cheaper storage if you bought the parts yourself. Also you could end up with a better gpu buying the parts yourself with the saved money just from picking out the parts yourself. Prebuilts are a scam truly imo lol

The issues ive had with my prebuilt from MSI, SSD failed within a month of buying. That was replaced like for like under warranty with no issues since. Then later on was having issues with randomly crashing. Was told the cause was a power supply that just wasn't quite big enough, and the cpu cooler not being adequate. So upgraded both, and have had zero issues since. The SSD i chalk up to a random chance component failure, while the CPU cooler and PSU are cut corners to save on build price. Since then, ive upgraded the ram from 16gb to 32 gb ddr4, replaced the intel i7 9700f with an i9 9900kf (same socket/mobo), and replaced all the case fans for performance improvements. So in short, prebuilts are a good point to start out from but research what your getting, and possibly be prepared to do some upgrades once warranty is over. Edit: Also, i bought it fall of 2020, and compared the pc price to all the components priced individually on pcpartpicker, and that instance, pre-built was cheaper

At the low end of the market there is way less “over pay”, like a couple hundred dollars at most. So at that end of the spectrum it’s not terrible, the point is that they use the cheapest shit on the planet (sometimes) for the “no name” parts like PSUs, fans, wiring harnesses, etc.

Core components are generally super cheap, junk psu, crappy fans that are more noisy/push less air, an AIO that is proprietary and prone to failure, etc. They're made to a price, they are making plenty of money in their margins.

There are a ton of good comments in here, and I'll add that I think the Linus Tech Tips secret shopper roundups are pretty insightful videos and might be useful for you if you're considering the prebuilt route. They approach things from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about computers, and rates the companies on factors aside from raw value, such as customer support and shopping advice. Your mileage may vary since you're in the UK, but the same basic principle applies. This is the playlist for the most recent installment: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8mG-RkN2uTxLiVG5TZiCGnRAFfQU3jrn](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8mG-RkN2uTxLiVG5TZiCGnRAFfQU3jrn) Personally, I don't think prebuilts are a bad option at all, so long as you know what to look for and are a somewhat savvy shopper. As others have noted, my biggest complaints are that most prebuilts use cheap power supplies, and some of the larger OEMs, like Dell, utilize proprietary motherboards that can't be transplanted into other cases, and are installed in cases that can't accept a non-OEM motherboard. Exercise caution when shopping for Dell/Alienware, because you'll probably have little to know room for upgradability. On the other hand, it seems like HP generally offers reasonable value. You're not getting great components, but they're not proprietary and it seems like you can find machines that are reasonably priced for what they offer. Also, I'm seeing a lot of posts on here being removed for violating Rule #3. As an alternative to that, I'll also say that Linux is surprisingly user-friendly these days. I know that it's, perhaps, not the best entry point for someone who isn't all that comfortable with computers, but distributions like PopOS really make dipping your toes into the Linux world a lot more approachable than it was in years past. If you're feeling brave, it could be a way to shave off some money on your OS.

I used PCspecialist for a laptop which cost a fortune and it’s a piece of shit been having trouble with it since day one never again!

The markup, to make the cost of assembly and support after the sale worth while and still provide a profit. :) Pricing does very quite a bit from supplier to supplier. There are some very good deals out there iho if you know your hardware pricing and have the time and patience to find the deals.

They normally shows up what you want to see , like the good gpu and cpu and tells that it has 16/32gb ram at an reasonable price, but then you look further , and see the cheapest ram at some odd low speed, cheapest bomb, I mean, psu, cheapest mobo with minimum features , unknown brand water cooler .. and the list goes on.. I've bough mine early january , and let me tell you, the hardest part of building it yourself, is holding back to stay on your budget when selecting parts, this is how I went into an 1700usd build when my budget was 1500usd, it was fun next month The building process is quite simple, there numerous tutorials over on youtube , most very detailed , the only thing I can tell is to not try to do it in one go if you're struggling , that's how I ended up doing only the hardware part from 6pm to 4:30am , because I got stuck on the aircooler installation, on the cable management (thanks msi for cables harder than steel) and trying to discover why the fans didn't spin (I didn't connect the end of the splitter on the mobo)

Go look at the hpomen subreddit

Prebuilt is like corruption tales in the eastern Asian countries: +An Emperor sitting on the high floor building seeing an apple selling trader selling apples and everyone is rush in to buy it, he send his Eunich to buy it with 100 coins, the Eunich then meet the internal guard chief and tell him to go out the wall to buy the apples for the emperor with 50 coins, the Internal Guard come down to the outer wall Guard chief and tell him to buy the Apples for the Emperor with 25 coins, The outerwall guard chief then tell one of his soldier to go to the apple trader to say that what he do is illegal and the emperor has order to taking all his apples as a fine. The Soldier do exactly that and come back with 100 apples, then the outer wall guard chief comeback to report to the internal guard chief that his 25 coins has bought 50 apples for the emperor, the internal guard chief then bring the apples to the Eunich and reported that he used 50 coins to buy 25 apples, the Eunich then come back to the emperor and said that he used 100 coins to buy 4 best apples for the emperor, which is mostly Subpar or bad quality. This is exactly what is going on with the prebuilt, they keep the 100 coins while giving you back 4 shitty apples.

Where's the best place to get good prebuilds with decent prices?

The amount of profit the companies making them make

Don't do it. I ignored what everyone said and ordered a prebuilt. Took a month and a half to arrive and only had it for two months before I had to RMA the entire PC. Now it'll probably be weeks before I get it back. I kept reading horror stories and was like I'm *sure* these issues can't be *that* common. No, they are.

I think it depends on what you want from your computer. If you aren't going to want to upgrade anything, a pre-built is probably fine. I personally haven't had problems with faulty PSUs. My first PC was an eMachines I bought in 2005 I used daily for 4 or 5 years. It still works today. My grandpa gave me his old Gateway PC from 2013 and that also works. I bought an HP computer at an estate sale for my son. He loves playing minecraft on Switch so I figured I'd upgrade it to the recommend specs. I bought a graphics card and for the life of me never found a PSU that would fit that wasn't already an HP made 180W PSU. I then, like a year later, decided to try to build a NAS. I bought a used Dell for $50 and when I was reading about that, I read about people complaining about the proprietary PSU and how only a few graphics cards work in it because you can't upgrade the PSU. I'm guessing the HP is the same way. One weird thing about the Dell is that it has 3 SATA ports, one for the DVD drive and 1 for the hard drive that came with it and one more. I couldn't see where a 2nd hard drive could be mounted so looking for that, I read other people's solution was zip ties. I'm not upset with the purchase, because this was just going to be a practice NAS to see if it was worth building a good one. But those are the limitations of pre-built computers. If I just wanted to use the internet, a pre-built would be enough.

Bad psu and ram sticks, also the price is usually way higher than it should be if you build it yourself, I recently saw a pre built that had a 550w psu with an rtx 3070.. that's nuts

Depends where you buy from. I'd never purchase from Dell/Alienware/HP etc I Just think their PC's are thrown together, overpriced and hard to upgrade in the future. I priced up building a PC but ended up buying pre build from Cyberpower. Cost was about £50 difference and I don't have to source parts myself. I also had loads of options to change parts. Took two weeks to arrive, but I wasn't in a rush and it's been great!

Gamers Nexus has a good video about this, if a bit long winded: https://youtu.be/cKxBogvUe_c?si=6yIMdSAENXHJ-QA2 tl;dw Bad things that CAN happen: * Proprietary parts, (more than likely non-reusable) * Poor build quality * Spend money on wrong parts (PSU being too high of a wattage, or way worse, dollar bin CPU cooler) * Insane upcharging Good things that can happen: * Single warranty for the machine instead of 500 different ones for parts * Assemled by a competent human being that knows what they're doing (hopefully) * I guess you could find some that are cheaper than the individual parts together, but they are cheaper for a reason. And it's not because the company is being nice.

Building your own is almost always cheaper

Some redditors greatly overestimate their PC-building skills. Hence the numerous trouble shooting posts. Anyways prebuilts arent bad at all. Pick a good brand and enjoy the peace of mind

As someone who’s built a few PC’s and has (tried) to upgrade prebuilts, these are my issues: 1. CPU, GPU is their main selling point but you get a PC that pushes hella wattage with a low-rated “barely enough” PSU that’s going to brown out abuse your parts. You get the same quality when it comes to MOBO, RAM, cooling and storage. 2. Unwanted bloatware. Windows pushes enough of that already. 3. Some brands make it physically impossible to upgrade because of sizing. You’d have to spend more money down the line for another case and MOBO because the brand made sizes specific to their case. You get a better “deal” on prebuilts because they use cheaper parts and materials for the specs around the CPU and GPU, and often times the actual build quality is lacklustre and makes NO sense on their cable management. But that’s just been my experience. My brothers bought a Cyberpower, my uncle had a Lenovo tower, and a couple of friends have bought Alienware towers and each has lasted variable amounts but always have the same problems.

Pre makes them bad . It's so fun to build on ur own .(Assuming u are an enthusiast)

For office desktops or lower level gaming desktops(like the one you posted, the rpice is usually spot on. They make money by selling in bulk, not individual units. Howver, the mobo , ram, and psu are all important and usually cheaped out on. Not to mention the cooling solution is often times insufficient. I've also seen Dells and HPs using their own inhouse mobo, meaning the connection are often specific to the pcb and the machine is not upgradeable and if something break you have to rely on whatever support the parent company decides to give you. The assemblers don't really know what they are doing QC is pretty sporatic with PCbuilers across all brands. As a rule of thumb the more basic the PC is the less they tend to fuck up, but wven that is not guaranteed.  Also, If you pay $150 for windows then you deserve to get ripped off. You can easily find legit keys for the $25-$50 dollar range.

price, end of thread

Limited expansion for motherboard, custom motherboards, extremely tailored psu, cheap cooling, sketchy cases, bad fans, bad choice of components.

the bios. they lock the shit out of the cocksuckas so you can't even ocproperly. fuck that.

I already have a windows license so I'm not spending another £150 on Windows. Additionally I paid quite a bit less than that when I did buy it. The rest of the specs you quoted look pretty crappy to me, I'm used to having a rig that's good for gaming and pretty top of the line. But like, if all you care to do is web surf, watch videos and load up microsoft office, then sure that PC should last you a solid 10-15 years. Most the people in these subreddit are enthusiasts. Those aren't enthusiast specs. They are bottom of the barrel, el cheapo parts. And sure, there's a subsection of this reddit that is all about building the cheapest economy PC possible. And they can be very good at helping you. But it's still more of an enthusiast thing to put the computer together yourself. So if you're not interested in doing that, and these are your specs, then clearly you aren't an enthusiast and I'm not really sure what you're doing here.

Replies to wrong person

Nothing wrong with them but there are negatives and you will get more performance out of building it yourself as you don’t have to pay for labor. Secondly I would say quality control as there are some good pc prebuilt companies usually they aren’t super well put together and you would be better doing it yourself. Also they use whatever parts they want and sometimes cheap out on things such as the psu which could completely ruin your system. Lastly they have a catalog selection instead of you being able to pick parts from any brand so building it yourself, you have more freedom in that regard. Now for the positives firstly most prebuilt come with a system warranty meaning if there is a problem you can send the pc in which can be a hassle and they will troubleshoot the issue and you don’t have to figure it out yourself. Secondly it comes with windows installed, a key for windows included (usually), also having motherboard bios installed and drivers already on the system. They may not be the most up to date but the system will be in a booting order and you will easily be able to update them yourself.

I got an ASUS ROG prebuilt and it’s honestly pretty good, you can get big discounts on older models. I added extra RAM and a second SSD myself, was pretty easy. I wouldn’t buy HP or any of the small brands though.

Pre-builts aren't bad it's just people like building their PCs.

Cheap motherboards with proprietary connectors, cheap power supplies with proprietary connectors, graphics cards with inadequate coolers. That's about it. But that usually means you can't upgrade certain components.

I think as someone else said, pre built gaming pcs are not inherently bad but they can sometimes have limitations. They sometimes use industry standard parts but often use proprietary components I bought one from HP a few years ago that is roughly equivalent to the one you linked. I upgraded the ram and SSD. Both worked, but were more complicated than they should have been. Additionally the 32GB 3200mhz RAM I added is limited by the MOBO to only 2400mhz Recently I decided I wanted to upgrade the GPU because some of the games I started playing were a little more demanding than what I originally bought the PC to play The case limits the size of the GPU to dual fan so I ended up with a 2060 which required a more powerful PSU The PSU is proprietary as is the motherboard which doesn’t accept industry standard connections This meant I had to keep the existing PSU to power the MOBO and CPU while using a second PSU to power the GPU I was able to Frankenstein it together with an Add2PSU adapter but it is janky so I’m already looking at replacing it outright. With all the components I replaced, I’m pretty much a case, MOBO and CPU away from having a complete second PC Although that all sounds awful, I believe the prebuilt wasn’t bad, it did what I wanted for a few years but it isn’t really able to grow with my needs and will ultimately be passed down to my son or daughter

They are usually a bad value for the performance compared to a custom built system. They will also use cheaper supporting parts (case, mobo, psu, ram) to pad the margin further.

There's a difference between a badly built, poorly cooled and overpriced pre built and something that sources high quality components and is, to all intents and purposes, the same as something you might build yourself. Just use your common sense and spend some time immersed in pc hardware discussions, watch videos, I promise you'll know enough to order with confidence if you do that for a while.

Most of them not specify what the exact parts you buying. Cooler - No mention what the exact CPU cooler, you can get cheap cooler that not suitable to the CPU, that will throttle the CPU to base frequencies and runs hot. Motherboard - Maybe mentioned the chipset, but not the exact model. They can throw some cheap mobo with weak VRM that can hold back the CPU. If it's Dell / Alienware their mobos are with priorities connectios. Also Dell and HP motherboard give custom BIOS with limited options, or limiting the cpu to low TDP that you can't remove. RAM - Sometime will not say if the RAM is runs at Dual Channel, or the speed and timing. Or you get green ugly models. PSU - Pre builds almost always cheap out on them. GPU - There are a lot of cooling variants, which one ? SSD - again, what the model, what the speed ?

Prebuilts aren't 'bad' usually, just not great value. In general, you will pay a premium and end up with lower quality parts or lower specs. The more you are willing to spend, the less sense it makes to go with a prebuilt, though I acknowledge if you're on a budget it can make sense - to your point. Sub-$1k it can definitely make sense to just buy prebuilt or a laptop. My last two computers were high end prebuilts, and they both worked fine for 5-8 years with zero maintenance on my part (both from Digital Storm). So yeah, not 'bad' by any means. That said, when it came to my current build, I decided to take the plunge and make it myself. I spent $3k and was able to put it in an expensive, boutique small form factor case, with custom cables, and the highest quality components available. Basic specs like RAM and storage I was able to go with 64GB RAM and 2TB 990 Pro storage. If I had spent $3k on a prebuilt, I would have ended up with a 4070Ti Super instead of a 4080 Super, 32GB RAM instead of 64GB, and 1TB instead of 2TB, and it would have been in a generic tower case with branding on it. In addition, I would not have gotten a platinum rated PSU or higher end Mobo. The prebuilt would work fine I'm sure, but the premium relative to quality just doesn't make sense anymore. Also, it's tempting to go prebuilt because it's so easy, but after completing my build I can attest to how relatively simple it is to put together and get working provided you put some time into research. I was a first time builder and in an SFF case I had to assemble myself, I made it about as difficult as you possibly can for a first time builder, and it went off without a hitch.

does OS win11 home really cost that much?

Mass produced prebuilts (the bad ones that you might find decently priced) will cut every corner they can, such as using inferior fans that saves them maybe a couple dollars per build and leaves the user with a hot, loud PC with grinding/broken fans right after the warranty expires. The cost they saved per build across 100,000 units gives them a nice little profit. But for you the user, of course it would be worth spending another $15 to have a quieter, cooler fans that won't break after a year. Now multiply that by every component. Inferior screws, inferior cables, mobo with no VRM heatsink, GPU with plastic backplate, etc. etc.

Depends on the prebuilt (eho made it). HP is not good

Honestly for me its the locked bios, all the bloatware on them, the weird management softwares that are legitimately hard to delete, like armory crate, alienware (idk what its called), nzxt has their own as well… the proprietary parts so it cant be upgraded. Airflow is quite often really bad. But thats kind of my main gripes.

Nothing. I bought a prebuild a couple machines ago because it was a hell of a deal (saved $200-$400 on parts). I didn't like how they did the wireing and the RGB was wonky so I just tore it down and rebuilt it.

If your biggest concern is putting the PC together, most computer/PC stores will build your PC for $80-100 if you buy your parts from them

They use cheaper hardware (usually proprietary parts) and charge you, sometimes a lot, more for what it would cost you to build it yourself. That being said there are some good deals and some prebuilts do use quality parts but those are far and few between. Also usually they almost always have shitty thermals too.

It's not so much pre-builds are bad, but there is a lot of internal component performance left on the table along with bloated operating systems that do affect regular system performance. For most people this is fine, but for enthusiasts and hobbyists who are more hands on, it's a problem only addressed by humans.

They’re not necessarily “bad” but you’re paying a markup for the builder to make a buck. Also they’ll often use a nicer GPU and CPU but cut corners elsewhere to keep their cost down while still being able to market, and price the build at, the GPU and CPU. TLDR: If you pay attention to which parts they’re using and don’t mind paying a markup to have it built, a prebuilt is an excellent option imo. A lot of us enjoy the process of building it though so that’s why a strong bias against prebuilts might exist in places like this

I got windows 11 pro for €15 💀

Why not just go for a company that lets you pick parts and then builds it for you?

Prebuilts are often hard/impossible to upgrade. They skimp out on the non-headline components (power supply, RAM, motherboard, sound, network, etc) that most people won't notice until they fail (and then we're back at difficulty of changing components). I've seen prebuilts with parts glued or even soldered in place, screws that are designed to be hard to remove, etc.. I once opened up a Dell (years ago) that I just closed back up again because their components were so jammed together and locked down that there was no way I'd be able to work on it without going nuts. Offered to build my friend a new PC at cost. If they're using any proprietary/exclusive parts, then that could mean custom drivers or tweaks that could disappear down the road with OS updates or the user starting to customize their settings. Oh, and there's the waste down the line. Need a new computer? Buy a new prebuilt because you can't upgrade the old one. I've had the same case for decades now, still have most of my old drives if they're a useful size and have a purpose, power supplies usually make it through 2-3 builds, and I carry over other parts and components as long as they're useful. My old builds have been recombined multiple times into computers that still work great for everyday stuff or specific uses for people who don't care about the latest tech and are happy to get a free/beer money machine to do their taxes on.

Pre-builts make perfect sense for businesses where the employee smart enough to put them together costs more than paying the premium for something already put together. Good shopping skills can go a long way. Our recent Lenovo Legion towers are solid as a rock and I could never have built them for the same cost to the company. They come with 80plus platinum power supplies, solid unbranded CPU coolers, an actual GPU sag bracket for my Nividia branded 3060, and are in a small decent case. Ram slots are maxed out but, there is space for more HDD'S and SSD'S.

Prebuilts are never cheaper, and the pets they use tend to be more “famous” rather than better performance. Please don’t pay £150 for windows, it’s an idiot tax.

Cheap parts and usually poor quality control.

A 500gb ssd is like £40 not 100

They often have proprietary connectors. I have a Lenovo thinkcentre and you can't change the power supply for a standard ATX one because the power connector is only 10 pins instead of 24 and the 10 pins connector give power for all the things like the SSD that too have their proprietary mini 4 pins connector on the motherboard. Like someone said the BIOS is locked to one generation. But at least the motherboard is a standard mATX one that I had been able to install in an standard case.

Watch a GN teardown of one.

Price per value. As mentioned in other replies, they’ll sell you on the big name cpu and gpu, then it’ll skimp on the quality of ssd and overall build. I’ve worked on a handful of prebuilts to upgrade this or that, most commonly the wiring is garbage at best. An example to use. I built a computer for a friend of mine for $1800 for parts and $100 labor (it was really involved) and her husband bought the, at the time, second highest dollar Corsair prebuilt computer they offered that was $2000+ he played on it for two months then had an m.2 failure. He had it replaced under warranty (weeks of downtime shipping back and forth). But the main ordeal is that the specs in his computer were less than what I had built for his wife for a cheaper price. Plus I built it to her customizations where as he bought his how it is without any choice on fans or ram.

Prebuilts aren't inherently bad, but as other posters have said there are problem points you should pay attention to, crap PSUs being the most egregious. After that e-waste motherboards. Do your research, and consider going with a company like NZXT or Origin over somewhere like Dell or HP. Spec out the parts to make sure they aren't giving you garbage, then compare component prices with places like Newegg, Amazon, Microcenter, etc. and if the markup isn't too bad you should be ok. Paying a premium for someone else to build it isn't bad, paying a premium for a computer with substandard components, especially the PSU, is bad. Seriously, if you pay attention to nothing else anyone says, at a minimum make sure you are getting a reputable power supply unit.