I’d like to add my experiences as another data point. I used to buy Dell computers a long time ago. At that time it was true that a Dell was only about $100 to $200 more expensive that a home built using similar components. Then Dell changed and the became not as good a value compared to home built, especially if you wanted a high performance system. This was especially true when the basically began forcing you to include some version of MS Office on each new computer (whereas with a home built you could save that money by just installing your old version of Office). So I started building my own computers and I’ve done at least three so far (I’m old and my mind wanders so maybe it was 4).
The first two were nightmares. There were literally dozens of problems that caused many days of debugging to fix. Some examples include: having to buy three different sound cards to get one that worked properly, having the MB use the RAMs SPD even though it couldn’t support that speed, having to upgrade to XP when 98 was unstable on a new MB, massive trouble getting SB drivers to install, many other SW problems, modem problems, wireless card problems… etc. etc. etc.
Now the latest build (a month ago) was easy and nearly flawless. The MB recognized the E8400 (some don’t and must be flashed) and properly defaulted almost everything, including the RAM timing. But even with this system I managed to mess up. First, I installed the memory card reader in the case before installing Windows. So, of course, the memory card slots became C:, D:, E:, and F: and the hard drive became G:. XP got installed on G:. Then the graphics card software failed to install. After several attempts it turns out that it MUST be installed on C:. So, complete reinstall of XP with the card reader disconnected so the HD is C:. Then the WiFi card would not work properly. It kept ignoring my own strong WiFi signal and connecting, at random, to neighbor’s networks (whose signal is near zero). Turns out you have to turn off XP’s Wireless Zero Control service (which appears to be designed to give you zero control over your wireless network
). That caused me to go through two WiFi cards before I got the sequence down and the drivers installed. Then there was the Radeon 4850 video card problem: the BIOS defaults the fan speed to minimum. My card was running idle at 82C ! You have to install their fan control software and up the fan speed (the video drivers won’t do it). This only runs when Windows boots, so if you do a long MEMTEST86 the video card sits there cooking itself (although it’s rated for 125C apparently).
My point: things can go wrong when you build computers yourself. So it behooves one to check not only parts prices on Newegg, but also a comparable system price on Dell and ask yourself if the extra cost for the Dell is worth not having to risk dealing with problems.
