Prebuilt competitor PCs - ridiculous!

Soldato
Joined
7 Sep 2009
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Location
Cheshire
We all know that custom building is far cheaper, but I am truly shocked as to just how much cheaper it is. I haven't actually looked at a pre-built outside of OCuk except for the occasional dells on another site if they've been linked in the forum - and surprisingly the Dells aren't too badly priced - however, taking a gander at 'PC + spherical rock we all live on' (shop hint), I can't get around the expense some shops will slap on what should be a third of the price.

At said shop, they are selling the following system at £1300

Core 2 Quad 9550
4gb DDR2
2x 640GB HDD
512MB 9600GT
Vista Home Premium


:eek: 1300 pounds!

That would cost about 500 quid here.
 
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It's all about what they can get away with. If they're able to sell these systems at this price and operate with a profit then they don't see a problem.

The general public wouldn't be as informed about PCs as you or I and they'll happily go into these shops and buy systems like that based on "expert" advice.
 
what shocks me is when they say tings like '2 dvd drives'. they cost like £15 and people are buying their computer based on that. same as when people just look at quad core and think good. its exploiting nievety. at tbh i cant think of many other places so most peole will buy based on what they see there
 
Well it gives us more of a reason to custom build our PC's rather than buy from places like earth of PC (lol), aswell as getting the exact spec we want.

I've seen a far worse spec PC, for about £1300 like you said, which is sold for trident systems for golf courses, it includes an intel celeron CPU and 512mb RAM, didn't mention the gfx card. It does include a screen and printer, but still!!:eek:
 
Now add on overheads, a bit to cover the warranty and tech support and see how much you can sell PC's for on the highstreet, not on the internet, a physical shop.

Oh and don't forget the profit margin on top of all that, no point in doing the work to land back up with the same money you started with.

Yes it's bad value if you know your stuff but that's the whole point isn't it, they're selling and giving support to people who don't.
 
Problem is, the advice is terrible. Flogging MS Office to people by telling them they won't be able to send emails if they don't have it. Telling customers buying Linux netbooks they need Norton to protect them from viruses etc. etc.
 
telling people al free antiviruses are just trials so you know how the interface works and what they will detect. they dont acturaly get rid of viruses. that made me laugh. the one good thing is you can report these lies and get massive discounts. not as much as if you built it yourself but my uncle got £300 odd of his because he complained about a pushy member of staff.
 
When I built mine 3 years ago, it cost me a fair bit. Including monitor and all around 2.7k if I remember right. Saw more or less the exact same rig in a magazine (with I think an overclocked cpu) selling for 7k! I was shocked as to how overpriced it was. Especially since I thought my custom build was over priced :p
 
When I built mine 3 years ago, it cost me a fair bit. Including monitor and all around 2.7k if I remember right. Saw more or less the exact same rig in a magazine (with I think an overclocked cpu) selling for 7k! I was shocked as to how overpriced it was. Especially since I thought my custom build was over priced :p

This is another problem with the technology market. Prices move so fast just about the next few days prices change. Another annoying point for customers / home users.
 
funnily enough i think i know where thats from as i saw it earlier today while searching something else, assuming its the same one it does have SLI'd 9600gt and a (disgusting) case, but its still horribly overpriced, i feel sorry for the general consumer sometimes :(
 
funnily enough i think i know where thats from as i saw it earlier today while searching something else, assuming its the same one it does have SLI'd 9600gt and a (disgusting) case, but its still horribly overpriced, i feel sorry for the general consumer sometimes :(

not SLId
 
Just have to say, what is even crazier is the same shop is selling an i7-920, 6gb ddr3, ati 4850 pre-built for 900 pounds.

How the hell does that work?!
 
Just have to say, what is even crazier is the same shop is selling an i7-920, 6gb ddr3, ati 4850 pre-built for 900 pounds.

How the hell does that work?!

They're not ripping the public on that one. Must email and tell them to jack the price.

Maybe Acer prawned them when it sold them the quad due to the flashy case and Packard Bell gave them a better deal for the i7 rig.

Or perhaps the quad was priced when the processor was new and the i7 was built and priced at today's prices.
 
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