Build your own PC: a buyer’s guide

Manek Dubash ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 23 Jan 2004

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Conclusions

Building our own PC was straightforward, with only the disk drive mountings causing us to change our original plan. Once plugged in, everything worked first time. We transferred data from our old system to the new one using Microsoft's Files & Settings Transfer Wizard, depositing the resulting data on the server, since most commercial solutions seem to offer little more. You can achieve the same result without a server, simply by connecting up the two machines with an Ethernet cable and manually assigning them sequential IP addresses. As long as they're not connected to anything else, it doesn't matter which addresses you use for this purpose.

The new PC’s small noise signature remained in the lower frequencies, which are far less disturbing than higher ones. Better still, it was subjectively very much quieter than the three-year-old 1GHz system it replaced, even though the new system performs much better and generates more heat. It’s worth noting that our customised cooling system made up just over 10 per cent of the total cost.

But is it cheaper to build your own PC? We specified a Dell Dimension 8300 PC as closely as possible to our self-built system, and arrived at a price of £1,504.34 compared to £1,495 (ex. VAT). The Dell PC included a one-year on-site warranty, a copy of Microsoft Works and Windows XP Professional. Note that in our price table (see next page), we’re assuming that you already have a copy of Windows and need only buy an upgrade version, and that you have all the application software you need. Also, we didn’t include any speakers in our system.

So, a PC from a major vendor costs about the same, but comes with a warranty and includes a potentially valuable software bundle. However, if you wanted a warranty, you wouldn’t be self-building, and lots of people already have all the software they need. And by building a PC similar to the one described here, you get the satisfaction of knowing that your system is unique, very quiet and precisely specified to your requirements.

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