Computer building for a bit of income on the side?

MichaelAwkward said:
Yet there's clearly still demand for it if Overclockers are charging ~£200 markup on some of their prebuilt PCs.
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Computer building and overclocking are different things and require different skillsets.

It's a viable thing for OCUK to do because they've made a name for themselves doing it. Also, the people who are willing to pay for someone else to professionally overclock a system would probably go with someone like OCUK rather than a independent third party.
 
DiscoDave said:
Computer building and overclocking are different things and require different skillsets.

It's a viable thing for OCUK to do because they've made a name for themselves doing it. Also, the people who are willing to pay for someone else to professionally overclock a system would probably go with someone like OCUK rather than a independent third party.
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It wasn't overclocked.
 
Its pretty hard / impossible to build a PC for less than a similarly speced Zoostorm or other off the shelf PC

Sure, the one you build might have s better PSU, Ram and case etc, but no one gives a crap about that. And if they did give a crap about it, then chances are they are capable of building their own machine.
 
DiscoDave said:
Some people are clearly prepared to pay extra to get it done professionally. Again, it makes sense if you're getting the same company you bought your components from to also do the assembly. If anything goes wrong you have a single point of contact.
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My point was that this clearly isn't the case:

DiscoDave said:
May have been viable 20 years or so ago before the age of youtube etc.

Putting a PC together is glorified lego.
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Otherwise there would be no market for that kind of markup.
 
Rotty said:
I used to charge 60-75 quid, not worth the hassle as they want their hand holding forever after
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I was wondering about this earlier in the thread - I'd assumed that a benefit of doing it like that, charging for the assembly only not actually selling a complete system, was that you could make clear that you're distinct from a shop selling a complete system and that you're not offering support if something goes wrong in future but rather you're charging for your time(they're simply hiring you to advise on components, put together their system and install/configure an OS and/or maybe some other software for them)... if they need your help in future then you'll again be charging for your time
 
Rotty said:
I used to charge 60-75 quid, not worth the hassle as they want their hand holding forever after
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Pretty much this.

I used to build a few, but then they wanted to start looking after there own etc. I didn't mind as I couldn't really be bothered.

When Ryzen came out my brothers friend wanted me to upgrade their PC like right there and then. I work in I.T Support, so it's the last thing I wanted to do. About 5 of them tried to do the build themselves. About 12am they're ringing me up saying it's not working. He brought it round and I checked it out the next day, they'd installed the CPU upside down and bent the pins.............

I still do a few now and then when the opportunity is given, but only if I'm able to off hardware in return, I'm usually ahead of people and can get people to upgrade and move their hardware on pretty easy etc.
 
Unless you can write a cast iron guarantee set in stone that you do not offer free software support after the first month or so (hardware somewhat longer) I probably wouldn't bother.

I put together a PC for my mother (ok its my cast offs) but I'm basically 24hr tech support guy for evermore if anything goes wrong. I don't mind as its my mum but anybody else... forget it.
 
I can't see how there is any money in building custom pc's to try and make money. If you are the kind of person who hand picks components for quality and spec and you take the time building a pc properly (neatly routing cables etc) then you will be undercut by the people selling cheapo custom pc's (with a spec that sounds good but isn't) to people who don't know better. Most people who want a high end custom pc build them for themselves or buy from places such as here that are not paying retail price for parts. I'm not even going to open the can of worms that is support/warranty!

Dave
 
I only do it for people that I know well. And they all know that I build well and care for the hardware but if they **** the software its on them. Its makes me a few quid every couple of months since they are constantly upgrading to compete with each other. Done a few for friends of friends or family too but dont enjoy it as much because of the pressure of potential returns.
 
helping someone with a PC that you've never seen before never mind built can lead to you getting the blame for things going wrong with it in the future!
 
I agree with all the responses here unfortunately. I built a PC for someone when I was a teenager and not long after I'd cracked building myself. It was a nice bit of money when I was 15 (15 years ago) but as others have said, I became tech support 6 months down the line when the client's son had installed all manner of malware, porn, mp3s which were actually .exe viruses. It was a nightmare and took forever to clean (couldn't reformat as despite giving instructions, they had no back ups) . I did get paid for my time but it wasn't worth it imo.

The other big problem was that the PC ended up being really quite expensive for them because I had to buy the components at more or less a retail price. Even the oem stuff was expensive and you'd never be able to compete with a shop or the purple t-shirt land. I imagine this would be even worse now as shops will have become more competitive on price as components have become cheaper.

It might earn you a few quid here and there but I do think there are much easier ways to do that.
 
DiscoDave said:
Computer building and overclocking are different things and require different skillsets.

It's a viable thing for OCUK to do because they've made a name for themselves doing it. Also, the people who are willing to pay for someone else to professionally overclock a system would probably go with someone like OCUK rather than a independent third party.
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Well they started from nowhere as well? How else does anyone else start. Great things from small beginnings?
 
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