Really can't stand pre-build PC's. They rarely save any money, and contain parts you would not entertain on your personal build list. The Windows key costs the shop pennies as do a lot of the corner cost cutting components bought in bulk.
I get it if you don't know anything about PC's. For example if you work with a computer and need a definitive working PC with some kind of back up if anything goes wrong, and everything ran and tested, and have no technical knowledge or skill at throwing these things together or problem solving, a pre built PC is a great idea.
But for anyone who likes to tinker, enjoys building these things, and likes things a certain way, self assembly is easier than ever these days. The internet is as always full of information to assess, and systems these days seem happy to sort out the motherboard drivers themselves, pretty much everything is plug and play as long as you do research and stick to some caveats. If anything the hardest part is using Bios to adjust fan curves until your happy with it, or under-volting. And often it's just because it's inconvenient.
You can easily buy great brands and build a more powerful gaming PC often for the price of a pre-build.
But the real benefit is simply building the PC you want with the parts you want or by re-using some parts. Many would rather build a PC that looks a certain way and can be upgraded later, or choose a specific motherboard for the looks and connectivity. It's not always about getting the best GPU and CPU in a £20 case.
Around £1150 buys you a pre-built with an AMD 7700 8 core with a budget A620 motherboard, a budget Kolink case and budget Aerocool 700w bronze PSU, 16gb of high latency memory and a 1tb NVMe with the lowest cost 9060xt 16gb. You can of course upgrade to 32gb of C40 memory and take it to around £1200
My basket at OcUK:
- 1 x OcUK Gaming Kite - AMD Ryzen 7 7700 Radeon RX 9060 XT Gaming PC (SKU: SYS-OCG-00070) = £1,149.95
- Case: 1 x Kolink Citadel Mesh RGB Micro-ATX Case - Black
- Processor: 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 7700 Eight Core 5.30GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail
- Memory: 1 x Kingston FURY Beast 16GB (2x8GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C40 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit
- Graphics Card: 1 x Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9060 XT Gaming 16GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card
- M.2 Solid State Drive: 1 x WD Blue SN5000 1TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Solid State Drive
- Operating System: 1 x Build Stock Microsoft Windows 11 Home Advanced - Systems
Total: £1,149.95 (includes delivery: £0.00)
Or you could build your own, an example below for an all black very quiet PC based on the same 9060xt GPU in the prebuild.
My basket at OcUK:
Total: £1,238.76 (includes delivery: £11.98)
Getting a prebuilt is basically costing you an extra £200 roughly and includes a Windows licence key which is worth around £9, below is pretty much the pre-built broken down if you want to build it yourself.
My basket at OcUK:
Total: £939.85 (includes delivery: £0.00)
Of course you can also get your own choice of components such as the BeQuiet/9700x list built for you by Overclockers UK. It may cost a little more and will tale a little longer if you decide your own spec then ask Customer Services at Overclockers to price you a build quote, but certainly something I would not hesitate with if I was unable or unwilling to build the PC myself, as the guarantee and piece of mind, and convenience are for many worth paying for.
Sadly I am not aware of the actual assembly cost of speccing your own PC from the ground up and having the shop build it is, the online configurator is rather basic, not sure why Overclockers cannot simply add a "shop build it" tab to the checkout as to be frank many of the custome PC options for component selection are not that great. Fixed case choices and such.
