Here in the rarefied of PCF Towers we’re great
proponents of the home build DIY upgrade, but you can only go so far before
it’s advisable to throw the whole lot out and start afresh with a brand new
rig. There was a time when you could save a fortune by putting together the
components yourself. Nowadays though, you won’t be saving as much as you think.
That’s especially true if you start shopping around for the best prices;
picking your components from a variety of online retailers is soon going to add
a lot of shipping costs onto the final bill.
Recent
air-cooling can still get you incredible overclocking speeds
So putting your faith in a system
integrator (SI) to build you a full-on gaming rig is no longer simply the route
of the lazy PC gamer, and it will save you a lot of sleepless nights and
frustrated days debugging a DIY build. You still have a full range of
customization options, from CPU to GPU right through to chassis and other extra
goodies like TV tuners.
We got nine of the top system integrators
in the country to build us a gaming PC with a budget of $1500 all-in. that
includes the base unit itself, with Windows pre-installed so that you can pull
it straight out of the box, plug in and play. We’ve left peripherals out of our
tests, so none and keyboard sets. We figured most people would already have
their preferred devices from previous machines.
Small-scale
SSDs can be a cheap way to add some much needed speed to a HDD
We also really wanted to see what the
different Sis deemed the most important parts to spend their $1500 budget on.
Did they go for a flashy chassis? Did they spend as much as possible on the GPU
for an expensive SSD? In fact, what the Sis left out was an expensive SSD? In
fact, what the Sis left out was sometimes as important as what they included.
So, which SI nailed it, and which thought
what every gamer really wanted was a Blu-Ray drive? There are few things in
geek life as satisfying as unwrapping a brand new component from its box.
Opening a whole brand new PC then, with all those lovely new components sitting
happily inside, eager to please you with silky-smooth frame rates and
lightning-fast storage, is a total techgasm.
But why would you spend the money getting
someone else to put your machine together when you’ve got all the know-how to
create one yourself? Well, times have changed. It used to be as much about
saving money as it was about customizing your own personal PC build, with maybe
a little self-satisfaction at being able to say you did the whole jib yourself,
but the various system integrators out in the wild can offer you some
compelling arguments as to why they should be the ones to make your rig for
you.
Expensive
RAM is no-longer 100 per cent necessary when it comes to CPU overclocking
Let’s start by looking at the main argument
that has always been brought to bear in the system integrator vs home build
battle: price. There used to be a serious premium added onto the bill of parts
to cover the labour and bug-fixing that was a necessary part of any PC build.
These days though, PC building is more or less like putting is more or less
like putting together an expensive and rather technical Lego set – and as any
parent out there knows, modern Lego sets can get really technical. Okay, I
guess it’s pretty transparent that I’m talking about my own Star Wars Lego
collection here. Still, the fact remains that PC components are no longer the
finicky parts they once were. There are no jumpers switches any more, and you
can generally boot fresh into a Windows install without going into the BIOS at
all. Things just work now, and if they don’t, most of the time it’s a simple
case of re-seating parts (we’re looking at you, Mr GPU and Lady RAM) until they
do. Otherwise it’s just a relatively quick RMA away.
Tis
a thing of rare beauty: the affordable, awesome gaming CPU
So system integrators can no longer claim
exorbitant prices just for the pleasure of building your rig, and the sheer
amount of competition out there in this space also means they can’t afford to
price themselves out of the market. And who wins in this competitive market? We
do!
With
this level of water-cooling in your rig, you’d hope for some serious OC
performance
Made to measure
The price argument then is one we can
pretty much discount (teehee). You will still be able to search around and find
slightly cheaper components, which will total up to a little less than the
price of a full build, but generally the savings will be negligible –
especially up against the possibility of terrible frustration in trying to
figure out why your build has gone wrong. If you’re shopping around you’ll be
ordering from different retailers and the extra shipping cost on top can start
adding up. It also means that if something does go wrong you’ve actually got
someone else to blame if you go down the SI route.
But what of customization? We’re not
talking here of the custom case crowd with their Leela-from-Futurama-inspired
designs (look it up – it’s truly disturbing). Those guys ain’t ever going to a
system integrator, except for a job. What we’re really talking about is being
able to choose the exact components you want to go into your final machine.
AMD
vs Nvidia – the competition is fierce
Again, we have to competing system
integrators out there – chances are you’ll be able to find the exact
specification you’re after already on offer, pre-built and ready to go. If not,
most Sis will offer a wide range of customization options as you go through the
process of ordering your machine. If you’re not the most technically-minded of
buyers, this also takes any of the worry about picking components out of the
equation. You don’t have to be concerned about which components work with which
others if you’re pulling them from a system integrator’s pre-picked drop down
menu.
