Building a computer: is it REALLY cheaper/better?

Don't get me wrong. I had a BLAST building my rig, I loved every second of it. But I mean, the costs did add up. More than I thought it would. Is it really cheaper to upgrade/build manually than it is to just get a computer off the shelves?

In a few years, or maybe even a few months, my custom-build computer would probably not be up to scratch anymore. Should I chuck it for a prebuilt? Or should I continuously nickle-and-dime myself, and upgrade parts? I mean, getting a pre-built usually gives you an upgrade for everything anyway, so why nickle-and-dime yourself?

And in the interests of buyers out there, if you WERE to get a prebuilt, what's a good brand? Dell? Hewlett-Packard?

I bought a pre built pc and I have put a graphics card in it and a sound card as well as some ram and I put a new power supply in it well really I did put it in but I took it to some body just to make sure that all the plugs where in the right place.

On my Mom's pc I put a dve/cd rom in hers.

So back then if I knew what I was doing like I do now I would of gone with the buld it your self deal cause the pc that I have wasn't a gaming pc at all but now that I have gone a put all this stuff in it it is a ok gaming pc not a hard core cause I'm not one of those kind of people.

If your just fater a cheap rig to just surf the Internet and so word documents a pre-built system normally works out cheaper. If your wanting to play games you can often save hundreds of pounds!

After thinking about it, I've concluded that continuing to build my PC will probably be cheaper in the long run. For instance, I won't need to replace my monitor & hard drives for a while, so there's about $750 saved right away. RAM is DDR2 800GHz, so they might be able to stay awhile without going out of season. Now onto another topic: laptops.

I wanna get a laptop. At first, I was thinking, "well, I wanna get a gaming laptop too! Because I'm a gamer and I love games." But then I saw the price of gaming laptops and my jaw hit the floor. $4,000? For a LAPTOP? :( I can't afford that! And so I got to thinking. Maybe I should just get a budget laptop. "But I can't game on it!" Maybe, but after thinking some, it seems to me that gaming on laptops is pretty silly anyway when I have a desktop ... right? I mean, I need it mostly for travel purposes to check email ... the gaming part was just for entertainment. So what do you guys suggest? Heck for the price of a high-end gaming laptop I might as well get a PSP and a DS and a low end budget laptop and still have money to spare, right? Maybe I should do that instead ... ?

After thinking about it, I've concluded that continuing to build my PC will probably be cheaper in the long run. For instance, I won't need to replace my monitor & hard drives for a while, so there's about $750 saved right away. RAM is DDR2 800GHz, so they might be able to stay awhile without going out of season. Now onto another topic: laptops.

I wanna get a laptop. At first, I was thinking, "well, I wanna get a gaming laptop too! Because I'm a gamer and I love games." But then I saw the price of gaming laptops and my jaw hit the floor. $4,000? For a LAPTOP? :( I can't afford that! And so I got to thinking. Maybe I should just get a budget laptop. "But I can't game on it!" Maybe, but after thinking some, it seems to me that gaming on laptops is pretty silly anyway when I have a desktop ... right? I mean, I need it mostly for travel purposes to check email ... the gaming part was just for entertainment. So what do you guys suggest? Heck for the price of a high-end gaming laptop I might as well get a PSP and a DS and a low end budget laptop and still have money to spare, right? Maybe I should do that instead ... ?

Opalescent

Depending on what you want in the gaming laptop, I have an HP with a 1.5ghz c2d and 256 8600m GS it runs UT3 on up to medium settings. and it was like a 1500 laptop including tax. But with nvidia cards in laptops you generally will have to get your drivers from laptopvideo2go.com(currently being rebuilt should be up in no time though) As Nvidia doesn't treat there drivers on laptops the same. And you end up having to get modded ones, which work really well surprisingly.