Dell versus Homemade budget computer

jonesy

jonesy

jonesy

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Mate of mine wants to buy a computer for his job in work, looking for no frills set up, i.e. no high end programs or games gonna be used on the computer.

Should he buy cheap from dell or get me to build one for him. ?

Any pros and cons of each option ?
 
The pre-built will probably be cheaper unless you use secondhand parts and they will provide a warranty/support as necessary. At the cheaper end of the market I'd suggest going with pre-built unless you have very specific requirements and/or love building PCs and offering support.
 
For that level of PC, it's hard to beat what you can get (literally) off the shelf for £250-300. Dual-core AMD, 2gig ddr2, card reader, decent sized HD and vista.
 
...and a TFT monitor thrown in for good measure, albeit not a jaw dropping one.
Would have thought work would provide your mate with a PC at least!
 
At the low end, the advantage of build it yourself is better component quality, all standard parts, better upgrade-ability. That comes at the price of higher cost.
The bottom line is it will cost a bit more to build it yourself but you'll get a rock solid base unit with a longer life for expansion. For internet / word processing, the pre-build is probably better value.
 
I just built a system for my sister for £200 - E5200, 2GB DDR2, 19" Monitor, DVDRW, case w/ 420w PSU, new keyboard and mouse threw in an old hard drive and old copy of XP. Boom good build. Looking at under £300 for all new parts, if you dropped the E5200 you could do it cheaper too, maybe go AMD.
 
puppetworx said:
I just built a system for my sister for £200 - E5200, 2GB DDR2, 19" Monitor, DVDRW, case w/ 420w PSU, new keyboard and mouse threw in an old hard drive and old copy of XP. Boom good build. Looking at under £300 for all new parts, if you dropped the E5200 you could do it cheaper too, maybe go AMD.
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yeah but he cant just chuck a pirate copy of xp on it like you did, so thats at least another 70quid for that.

Id say go with the dell for a low end office pc.
 
Another vote for Dell. I'm very impressed with the Vostro I got for my parents last year. C2D E4500, 2GB RAM, 500GB HD for under £180 delivered. Not a chance I could have beaten that at the time.
 
dell are only expensive when you pile on unneeded features [or if you buy a laptop]

if you stick to something basic

then you wont find cheaper

i tend to build pcs for friends who want specific stuff from second hand stuff - but dell is the easy option

i always find that if you build a pc for someone you become their tech support slave forever
 
Its all about the OS

If you dont need an OS, build one.

If you need an OS (well, not linux, thats free :)) then buy Dell. Even an OEM Vista license will set you back ~£100.
 
Yeah Im just rebuilding my mates pc and scrapping the rubbish parts for decent qual stuff, cos he carnt afford his pc always going wrong on him and getting me to fix it every few weeks.
 
you can build cheaper than any dell, remeber they dont come with graphics cards, just an intergrated card.
monitor 19" £120
2 gig £26
chip £50
board £30
hdd £ 30
dvdrw £15
case £25
psu £30
keyboard mouse £20
and there you got a pc, plus the warranty on a home built pc is longer than a dell.
 
AtreuS said:
yeah but he cant just chuck a pirate copy of xp on it like you did, so thats at least another 70quid for that.
Click to expand...

I should have been clearer - I didn't put a pirate copy on I just happened to have a genuine copy in the house never used.

Anyways that still comes in at under £300 with genuine XP or Vista, alternatively put the latest version of Kubuntu on there with OpenOffice etc and save megabucks.
 
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