Who should build my next PC?

Hardware 2 Minutes

With Longh…. er, Windows Vista Beta 1 just around the corner, I need to get a new PC. I’ve got a small checklist already:

  • Dual core, either AMD or Intel 8xx, doesn’t matter
  • Fast graphics, PCI-E?
  • Native SATA support
  • Dual-layer DVD-writing

Dell’s new 9100 series would fill the bill just fine, and the prices are exceptional. Except given Dell’s complete hostility toward customers, I have no desire to support them.

So, what should I do next? I’ve got a perfectly good ATX case here that I could strip the old mobo and CPU from and build another PC from scratch. I’ve done that before. I have a lot of deadlines in the next two months, though, and I don’t really have the time to spend on a science project. Plus I need the box to just work, and build-it-yourself projects have a higher glitch ratio, in my experience.

Anyone care to recommend an independent dealer who builds a quality white box PC to order? I would probably prefer a barebones model that I can upgrade a piece at a time.

Update: Based on a comment (thanks, CandyMan53), I decided to order a box of components from Mwave.com and pay them $80 to put the system together, test it, and ship it to me. The component prices were very competitive, and I’m willing to pay $80 to have someone else go through the grief of assembling everything. As Dwight Silverman notes in another comment, he needs a full day to build, test, and troubleshoot a new PC. I wish I had a spare day lying around, but I don’t!

Mwave gets generally good reviews from ResellerRatings.com. In several of the complaints I saw on that site, there were replies from the company that put the complaints into reasonable perspective, and at least one commenter changed a negative review to a positive one after the company saw the negative feedback and made things right. Dell could learn a thing or two from that approach.

Best of all, the system I wound up with cost exactly as much as the Dell I had been looking at, with significantly better specs (bigger hard drive, twice as much RAM, a much better video card, gigabit Ethernet).

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

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Published by Ed Bott

Tech journalist. Author of 25+ books. ZDNET Contributing Editor since 2006. Contact info: https://edbott.com/contact-me/

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12 thoughts on “Who should build my next PC?”

  2. I thought I mentioned that in the post. As much as I love building my own PCs, it takes time and sometimes involves troubleshooting. I’ve got some absolutely crushing deadlines in the next month or two and can’t afford the uncertainty.

  3. Oh yeah, missed that. It takes me about day to build, set up and troubleshoot a new PC. It’s a day well spent … It’s almost like therapy for me. In fact, I spent my vacation last week installing operating systems! Par-tee!

  4. Just get over it and get a Dell. It is the easiest thing to do and it will just work. Best bang for your buck (and time). And their customer service really isn’t bad. They got a bad rap from Jarvis and the bloghooligans, but it was pretty unfair. Tons of people have had excellent experiences with their service.

  5. I have all my PCs custom-built by the shop around the corner. That way, support is just a mile down the street. They’ll even let me buy all the parts — power supply, videocard, HDs, memory, MB, case, DVD drives — and bring it to them to assemble, and I save even more money. The one thing I spend extra on is twice as much memory capacity as I think I’ll need, and that extends the life of the box up to an extra year, and makes for a good machine when I donate it to someone else.

  6. Dude, if you read this site (or go to the home page and do a search) you’ll see that I have personally experienced several examples of insanely bad Dell service. Enough that I do not want to continue doing business with the company. If you really work for Dell, you might want to pass the word that a customer who has purchased more than 20 PCs in the past two years just said goodbye.

    I can good PCs from other people. I can build my own great PC. Dell needs to step up in the customer service department.

  7. Many good experiences with mwave.com. Have them build it up (and test) with the components you want for a very small fee. Usual disclaimers – just a satisfied customer, yada yada. You’ll be responsible for maintenance and repair but isn’t that easier, cheaper and less time consuming than jumping through support’s hoops?

  8. I too have been a dedicated Dell customer. (Let’s see, there are 5 Dells in the room where I’m sitting right now, all five purchased by me.) And I too am fed up with them — in large part for their advertising tactics (supporting spyware through their affiilate programs), though also for excessively obfuscated pricing and configurations (too many channels, too many funny games if you start with model A rather than B), and little desire to support them after the way they’ve treated others (per all discussions here and elsewhere) (notwithstanding that I’ve been satisfied by the very limited support I’ve needed).

    Was contemplating buying IBM, and would do so were it not for Lenovo-induced uncertainty. But IBM PCs have been very solid recently — they’re the main supplier at my university, for whatever that’s worth. And I bet Lenovo will be on special guard to offer good quality in all respects as the spin-off progresses — they don’t want to lose all the ex-IBM goodwill, and they know they’re especially vulnerable right now.

    If buying parts, I’d probably buy from Newegg, which offers extraordinary search capabilities. But then I’ve recently seen Newegg ads running on Claria. Pretty ironic: They sell anti-spyware software, and also advertise with Claria. What a mess.

  9. I got a Shuttle X Barebones system from my local PC Club and pretty much could include or leave out any component I wanted. I’m very satisfied with their service.

  10. You welcome. I was just paying forward a friends referral a couple of years ago. Considering today’s commodity driven consumer market, you can count on bad experiences. The way to judge a vendor is on how hard they work to make them right.

  11. Any chance you could post the specs on the machine you just had them build? It’s been a long time since I had one built from scratch, but their model is interesting enough for me to consider it.

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