Which one is better and what’s the benefit in having one over the other?
Well, we all heard of the term “you get what you paid for”. When buying a pre-built system from manufacture such as Dell, HP, IBM, Gateway, etc the systems are already configured to the maxmum it can handle. A typical manufacture pre built pc usually come in a dual core, 2 gb ram, 250 gb hard drive, dvdrw drive, etc for approx in the range of $400 and above.
Then if you want to upgrade, the most it can handle is 4 gb of ram and that’s it without going into the very high end work stations where you can get a lot more from the pc, but with a good price to go with that as well. One bad thing about a pre built system is you cannot just take anything out and just replace with a third party.You have to go with OEM parts which makes sense.
Having a custom built pc is like having a custom chopper bike built where everything is custom from the beginning to what you want. Users can choose the type of systemboard, the amount of ram (based on what the board can take and what bit), 320 gb hard drive at least, dvdrw, a nice clear side panel case, etc for about $300 and above. These are just hardware alone, then you have to get the os license and whatever extra you want with it.
The greatest benefit wit ha custom built is you cna upgrade, and change anything you want at anytime without worrying about the case limitation in slots, or space on whether or not the new board can be installed, etc. Many professionals have built a custom pc with the sec of a Intel Dual Core 2.3ghz, 4gb ram, 320gb hard drive, dvdrw, 64 bit cpu, etc with os license for less than $500. Not to mention you have the capability to upgrade your ram up to 8, 12, 16, 24, 32, or 140gb ram with a 64 bit processor. That is the ultimate beauty of a 64 bit system.
The ram capacity is insane and huge that you can pretty much put the os on th eram itself and run on ram directly. Most hands on technician would prefer custom built for 3 main reasons. Fun, challenging and no limit in what you want to put in that empty pc case. The bottom line, it all comes down to what’s the budget, what you want to spend, how technical are you to get hands on, and most importanly your time frame of having an up and running pc ready on a certain time.
Custom pc takes little time to built, but it is fun for tech guys like us.
Readers, please add your comments here. Especially techs, we welcome your opinion and would be interesting to see what other techs think.
