Do you prefer building your own PC or buying pre-built PCs?

I still put them together. Because it's fairly easy and straightforward, even for a casual like me. I just upgraded my CPU and motherboard a week ago and put the old ones in my movie NAS, which seems to have fixed the random freezes on the NAS. It had a micro-ATX motherboard with a Ryzen 3 1200 before. Now it's vastly overpowered (for movies) with a Ryzen 5 2600X and standard ATX board.

Build my own, built an A770 ITX rig recently. Considering buying the Formd T1 case because the Q58 feel cheap.

Always build my own... ...and then celebrate each first boot to POST with "IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE! MUAHAHAHA!!!"

Just a little tradition. All part of the fun.

Have to build my own, cost too much otherwise. Spend $2,500 to build your own, or $5,000 for someone to build you a cheap knock off.

Last time i got a pre build was my first ever pc that my parents got me when i was a teen🥱If you don't build your own with all the billion youtube vids to assist you, you don't deserve to have a gaming rig, so instead, get yourself a Series S and suffer.

Last time I "built" a PC, I was playing StarCraft. I only use laptops now. I'm pretty sure a 10 year old could build one nowadays.

Nowadays im lazy when building mine, I just go on PC part picker and order my parts using that. Last time I bought a pre built PC was around 1998-2000.

Building a PC is super fun. Troubleshooting... not so much.

There's no way on god's green earth I'd ever buy a pre-built PC. You literally save nearly half the cost putting it together yourself. It's not even hard to do anymore.

Build my own, upgrade GPU and storage periodically. Just works for me. Need a fairly high end PC for my work, nice to have it double as a gaming machine, so I know exactly what I want.

Have a hardware issue, can address it much faster myself. About a month back, AIO CPU cooler failed, replaced it immediately.

At my last office job, we had some beastly pre-builds at first, but when things went wrong it was a nightmare. Ship the whole ass machine back for one component, end up waiting a month. Don't know if this is typical, but it's been my only experience and it sucked. After that we started handling issues ourselves and within the first year of that business running we went all custom builds for new hires.

Though I will say in recent years seen some pre-build prices that are very appealing. If I didn't already have a machine, might have gone for one.

I would like to remind everyone that @NathanDrakeSwag bought a pre-built Alienware. Let that sink in for a moment.

I built my first PC. It was fun to do and I learned a lot. For my second PC (the one I have now) I decided to go pre-built. I experienced lots of crashes with my second PC so I did have use of the warranty. I shipped it back to the store, they fixed the cooling on the cpu and shipped it back, all free of charge.

On the other hand would the cpu have been poorly applied had I built the PC myself? Maybe 😅!

The pre-built PC has much better cable management than the one I built. The PC I built looked like a birds nest on the inside lol.

This may depend on country/retailer but in general it’s not true. I bought mine from a retailer that sells pc parts. What they do is that they charge normal for the parts and then add a fee for assembling the pc. That is a fix fee which is about 5 % of the the cost for the parts.

Likely some custom build retailers are a better option than just straight up buying prebuilt like, say, Alienware or Dell. Where you void the warranty if you want to customize it yourself. I much rather do it myself where I know I can always find the best deals and can replace and upgrade what I need to on the spot

I'll just get whatever I can and add it clustered up to a network of computers I have now

I prefer to build it myself, but there are plenty of quality pre-built systems to buy these days that also allow for customizing. As long as the PC performs the way you want and is reliable, that is all that matters.

Think of the majority of pc gamers who don't have a gaming pc as powerful as the series x and leave a few tips and tricks to help get them if not to series x goodness,then at least the 120 FPS capabilities of the series s👍

Yeah if you pick parts from a variety of retailers you can get slightly better deals. And as you say you are more flexible if you build it yourself. Valid points!

In general I think online/forum culture is a bit too negativ towards pre-builds as they can be a fine options for people to get into PC-gaming.

Build my own. It's not very difficult.

I've never bought a prebuilt PC, eventhough I was tempted by the cheap prices compared to buying a GPU seperately.

But all the prebuilt PC's that have specs I'm interested in seem to come with RGB. I don't like RGB in the slightest.

never buying a pre built, I want to choose the parts I put in my pc

I bought a pre-built once because the spec was very high end and i had not built a PC before at the time. I knew how in theory..but when the CPU alone costs 1000 bucks at the time then it's kinda nice to let another company deal with it. I did decide to go all out stupid on the PC at the time...basically disregarded all the reviewers advice. All common sense out the window. I think the only thing i could have done to make it more powerful was to have 2X 8800GTXs in SLI. It's good to do once....well at least once.

it was fine....until the whole thing just mysteriously died around 3 years after i bough it :S. I suspect a surge from a lightening strike killed it. I don't blame the manufacturer for that one.

Other than that i prefer to build myself.

@madrocketeer: I do that too! But its been a while (like 4 years) since I upgrade parts as nowaday I move a lot so I usually play on my overpriced rtx 3060 powered Laptop. Oh well atleast it doesnt look like a gaming laptop..

Built it your self. Even if Pre-built are price competitive they will never have all the parts you want and you will end up compromising on something. Even if you can't build one with the help of unlimited youtube videos, just pay a little for someone to assemble it for yourself.

This too. Don't know why there's such a fixation on RGB lighting and then the RGB parts even costs more.

i done both. Specific for my mother.

I build them, but I hate doing it and it stresses me get no enjoyment from the process.

End up building my self because it saves money and I get the exact components I want

My last comp, I bought all the parts and just had Canada Computers put it together with full cable management. I think it was like $100 IIRC.

Unlike most here in System Wars, I am not a techhead and I feel anything that is technical too mind-numbing to me, and that includes building a PC. I prefer pre-built, but I choose the PC parts I want.

Build my own.

easy and cheaper.

Never had a pre-built but saw that they got way better in recent years. Their cost isn’t as outrageous and they actually put good components besides the CPU and GPU.

Always build my own, I enjoy it.

I've been considering jumping the console bandwagon in favor of the PC. A coworker of mine suggest I just buy a pre-built PC and then start upgrading stuff from there when needed. :/

If a pre-build has all the parts you want, who cares. Get it.

If you buy your parts at Microcenter, it's easy. You just bring your part back to Microcenter with their 2/3 year warranty, and they either give you a new one or an equivalent. You get your new part within a day.

That being said, building is way better since most pre-built PCs(especially Alienware) have wretched cooling and Gamer's Nexus found them to be hitting 100C on the CPU even before hitting the max speed.

Of course building your own is better. It is cheaper, fun, and you can hand pick all the parts for best quality.

Build my own, but there are lots of great options for pre-built, or places you can select the parts and they will put it together for you.

After bending a pin in the CPU socket in my last build (which is getting increasingly easy to do) next time I might pay the store just to install the CPU, that way they will be liable if something goes wrong. cheaper than buying a new motherboard

My very first PC was a prebuilt.

Returned it and learned to build my own after that.

Have been building/upgrading ever since

Build my own. Cheaper + Better branded parts + Usually better thermals/db. Been doing it for decades.

I can troubleshoot pretty much any issue (which are rare for me these days) at this point, so this is not a concern for me.

Build 3 gaming PC for me and one for my oldest daughter but the fun part of building PC is with you and a child together. I never attempted to buy any pre-build PCs as building your own is so fun to do, you can customize how you want it and how it plays for the gamer. Building PC is so easy, just go to any Tech YouTuber and they'll show you how it's done.

With that being said, I have never build custom water loop PC as they aren't my thing but fun to watch someone build them. Building PCs are always fun so going with that obviously.

I find them both to be entertaining.

PC building is calming, busy work. Put it all together and she's up and running.

Troubleshooting issues can be a pain, but I like to solve puzzles. Here are some of the more irritating issues I've come across:

• Windows 10 forced updates: I absolutely hate Windows 10, I use it on my computers, but I hate it. Forced updates has broken Windows so bad that the OS itself would BSOD and become so corrupted you couldn't even load into Safe Mode. I found it best to move to Windows 10 Pro so I can completely disable updates on all my computers. Screw you MS and your forced broken ass updates.
• I got my 5900x at the end of January 2021 (new MB and RAM, too). Got everything installed and boot into Windows, but after driver updates things would crash or Windows would just lock up. Come to find out that Windows 10 was being a pain in the ass. I found out that if I had any other HDD/SSD installed other than the drive the OS was going on, Windows wouldn't install sometimes and if it did take, it would crash shortly after it launched. I had to disconnect any other storage devices to get the OS to install without issues.
• I got my 5900x up and running, the OS issue resolved. Drivers installed, do a couple of quick benches to check temps and things look good. Load up and play Divinity: Original Sin 2 - I could play a few minutes to maybe an hour before BSOD. This was the only game causing crashes. A few days later a new BIOS released with an updated AGESA 1.2.0.0 and no more BSOD. I haven't moved to a new BIOS since this one, even though other AGESA versions have been released (if it's not broke, don't fix it)
• The mystery of the dead MB: My old i5-4670k (had it for 7 years I think). At about the halfway mark of owning it, I do what I do once a year with any computer. I took the case, opened it up and pulled out all the case fans and GPU and cleaned them off. I put everything back together, but the computer wouldn't power on. Tried multiple GPUs, tried boarding the MB (set up on a cardboard box), reset CMOS, and the list goes on of things I tried, but the MB appeared to be dead (since my MB was covered under warranty still so I sent it in to get repaired). I headed out to Micro Center the next day, picked up a replacement MB (ASRock Z97 Extreme4). Got home with it, setup the MB on the box with CPU, cooler, 1 stick of RAM and the PSU. Powered on the board and....nothing. Tried multiple PSUs and so on, but the board wouldn't power. Back to Micro Center with the DOA board. Got an ASUS Z97 AR board. Brought it home, setup it with a known working PSU (pulled from a working computer) and the board powered on. Swapped PSUs with the one I was using in my system and it worked. Got everything up and running again.
• The mystery of the MB that wouldn't work with any GPU driver: Back when I got my Phenom II x4 940, I picked out the ASRock K10N780SLIx3-WiFi board (I was running SLI and wanted built in Wi-Fi). Got the MB, CPU, RAM and got everything installed. Installed Vista (this was pre Windows 7), installed MB drivers, installed video drivers and the system locks. I tried multiple GPU drivers, re-installed the OS multiple times, I tried different GPUs and even tried installing XP with different GPUs and drivers. The GPU drivers either wouldn't install or if they did, Windows would lockup within 30 seconds. I issued an exchange with Newegg, got the replacement board about a week later and zero issues after that.

As frustrating as these issues can be, I like knowing that I can figure these issues out and come to a working resolution. Same thing with all my vehicles in the past. Check engine light comes on, I troubleshoot the issue and fix it myself.

Build my own. I spend time researching and choosing the particular parts I want and how they'd suit me.

But it's not like I just keep building from scratch. Someone gave me an AMAZING offer of a decent PC for like £400 back in 2014. It was worth £700 plus in parts.

But I've been upgrading, modifying and tweaking it ever since. It's almost completely different now. Only part I'm still using is the RAM, even the case has changed. In reality it's a fresh PC build, but for some reason in my mind it's an upgrade, probably because none of the changes happened at once. It was gradual.

Pre-built SuperMighty XSX MonsterBox is the only way to go. :P

YouTube/Google making PC troubleshooting a breeze. It’s really not a knock against PC or an excuse at this point. I’ve had more trouble changing the retimer chip in the One X, or analog sticks on the Switch Lites than I ever have with a PC…

Use to built them from scratch. But now I buy a skeleton PC and put the additional HD/graphics/CPU etc... in.

I don't like upgrading unless absolutely have to now.

I always bought prebuilt PCs from Dell though wished I could build my own. My nephew has a Alienware R10 and has broke something with the hard drive a few years ago. I had to update everything like the Microsoft store and download Windows updates. Works now but for $1,000 since it was a Alienware R10 from Dell, I think it would have better to build it and maybe cheaper like the RAM and graphics card. Maybe one of these days I would like if I had $2,000 saved up.

I prefer to do it myself (like most things vs relying on some other entity to do it the way I want)

Sheeeit. I'm a few components away from just being a system integrator myself. I have to track my own inventory with resource planning software just to make sure I don't buy things I already have.

Maybe it's because I have been doing this for so long, but I rarely have issues with my builds. Component failures can and do happen, but they are rare. Having extras of each component really helps with troubleshooting as well. I wouldn't necessarily recommend someone do a build themselves unless they understand the risks and have an interest. It's unreasonable to expect anyone else to do it at the same level that I do.

I built my last PC, but my next one is going to be a pre-built. I only do light gaming so it doesn't need to be a super beast, but I use it mostly for free lance video editing so me building one and troubleshooting if I have any issues could cost me some $$$$$ if my PC is down

@pillarrocks: nowadays it feels like prebuilt is better than custom for high end. The OEM always get better deals on hardware and software. For mid tier builds, the custom route is better because OEMs usually don’t sell at the lower margin price point. But if I were going for a high end build I might just go for a prebuilt instead. Higher end retail parts are more expensive than OEM by at least 30%. In my experience the OEMs always get a fat discount. Honestly speaking it’s not fair for customers.

@neatfeatguy: Well, you've got a better outlook than me.