PC Building

[BloodOmen]

Ok so lately i've been looking for legit ways to get a little extra income and I came on the idea of building/selling cheap but useable family pc's just looking for some input.


How much realisticly would you pay for a pc with these specs (note this is just the tower, no monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers or OS supplied)

Cheap parts baring in mind for obv reasons.

2.0ghz Dual Core (AMD)
2gig DDR ram
8500GT
250gb HD
DVD Writer

Basic specs there... rough price peoples.

 

[tris-]

what is meant by a family pc?

 

[BloodOmen]

what is meant by a family pc?

Sort of pc the whole family can use like... no special extra like uber leet water cooling/stupid looking case etc.


Just a normal pc in short with no l337 kiddie extras

 

[Helme]

You'll need to supply them with an pre-installed OEM OS which adds alot to the cost aswell as most people who buy "family PC's" will often want some sort of Office package aswell as a monitor, speakers mouse and keyboard. Don't forget that some kind of support will be expected, overall it's way more trouble on your side than its worth tbh. If you plan on making extra money on the side with a computer hobbey doing what I do is probably much better, support/upgrading - it also has way less risk.


Edit; making my just woken up drivel more easy to read -

These are things that people expect when they buy a 'family pc'.
*OEM operation system(preferbly Vista nowdays)
*Office package(Open Office is a cheap option, free )
*Monitor, speakers, mouse, keyboard and in some cases a printer/scanner - lots of extra costs
*Warranty, what happens if they break it - you'll stand for the repairs?
*General support, who will help them with problems?
*Other software, ie. small games, helpful programs preinstalled(WinRar, Winamp etc.)

Overall it's way more trouble than you'll get out of it, upgrading/supporting is way less risky and with about the same reward - aslong as you charge abit less than the companies who offers it you'll get costumers.

 

[BloodOmen]

You'll need to supply them with an pre-installed OEM OS which adds alot to the cost aswell as most people who buy "family PC's" will often want some sort of Office package aswell as a monitor, speakers mouse and keyboard. Don't forget that some kind of support will be expected, overall it's way more trouble on your side than its worth tbh. If you plan on making extra money on the side with a computer hobbey doing what I do is probably much better, support/upgrading - it also has way less risk.


Edit; making my just woken up drivel more easy to read -

These are things that people expect when they buy a 'family pc'.
*OEM operation system(preferbly Vista nowdays)
*Office package(Open Office is a cheap option, free )
*Monitor, speakers, mouse, keyboard and in some cases a printer/scanner - lots of extra costs
*Warranty, what happens if they break it - you'll stand for the repairs?
*General support, who will help them with problems?
*Other software, ie. small games, helpful programs preinstalled(WinRar, Winamp etc.)

Overall it's way more trouble than you'll get out of it, upgrading/supporting is way less risky and with about the same reward - aslong as you charge abit less than the companies who offers it you'll get costumers.

Valid point ok i'll add some extras to it, the cost of it for me to build was £204 that was a full tower basicly with no mouse/keyboard etc.


Edi: taking into consideration what u just said about support and such i'd probably just go for sales on ebay then I guess with the tower alone although I don't mind giving help i'm not going to sit there 24 hours a day answering the phone to "Hi my pc doesn't work!".."Have you plugged it in?"... "oh right.. works now" harsh as it is would just be a borderline thing saying something along the lines of "So many days for money back" nowt else.

 

[Raven]

2.0ghz Dual Core (AMD)

Bin that for a start

 

[BloodOmen]

Bin that for a start

Why? as I said its purely for the cheap factor and you'll find intel processors are considerably more expensive than AMD.

 

[- English -]

well your up against PC world for start

looking at that box, you can probably pick it up for 1-2 hundred quid, sell for maybe 200?

pc world sell pcs with 8500gts in for 800 ish, but that includes monitor etc

 

[Golena]

The problem with building "family PC's" is that the people that generally want them are families who need a PC but don't really have much clue about them.

That means they are unlikely to simply buy them off e-bay. People who buy computing bits off e-bay tend to be those who know what they are doing, and so arn't going to pay a great deal for you to put a motherboard in a case for them.

The market is in taking people who need a PC and "supporting" them with it. That means giving them a full system they can plop on their desk pre-installed with all the software they need and potentially support when it goes wrong. What they basically want is the service that PC World gives them, but from someone who isn't quite as much of a muppet as the guy behind the counter there.
Why would someone who doesn't know how to put a computer together buy a tower from you, then go and try and get all the extra bits he needs from somewhere else? Probably from PC World, when he can just buy a package deal and take it back when he has issues. It's probably also going to work out cheaper for him since he won't get a decent deal on all the accessories unless he gets them bundled with a PC.

Outside the big companies all the extra money in PC stuff is about support. The equipment has naff all markup on it anymore, especially as your not getting it wholesale but retail to begin with. What people do need and are willing to pay with is help using it once it's on their desk at home, and that's the bit you seem to be refusing to provide.

Sorry to be harsh, I just can't see where the business opportunity for you here is.

 

[BloodOmen]

well your up against PC world for start

looking at that box, you can probably pick it up for 1-2 hundred quid, sell for maybe 200?

pc world sell pcs with 8500gts in for 800 ish, but that includes monitor etc

Aye if i added what u get from pc world aswell would prob cost around £400-500 or so (thats monitor/os/other software/mouse + keyboard etc) as it stands with just the box + vista its £257.xx.

 

[BloodOmen]

Changed it slightly.. added alot and the cost added up also.... now comes with-



3.0ghz Dual Core
4gig DD2 ram
8600 GT 1gig version (changed the 8500GT out, costs an extra £30 and a decent upgrade)
250gb HD
Vista
Mouse+Keyboard
22" widescreen TFT
DVD-Writer
Anti Virus software etc.

£536 total cost tho ><


Now! how much would you pay for that one? (ofcourse not knowing it costs £536 to build)


Edit: just realised didn't add speakers >< add an extra £20-30 on that for some cheap speakers.

 

[Helme]

I'm not really sure, when my mother bought a new complete PC a few years ago she paid around 1100e, this was for a computer with just utter shit(she didn't consult me about it). That said, for £550 you can get an top-game PC without anything else, so I guess it's pretty okay.

 

[BloodOmen]

I'm not really sure, when my mother bought a new complete PC a few years ago she paid around 1100e, this was for a computer with just utter shit(she didn't consult me about it). That said, for £550 you can get an top-game PC without anything else, so I guess it's pretty okay.

Aye main parts that cost the most in a pc are Graphics Card/CPU rest isnt so so bad if you don't count mouse/keys.

Graphics is by far the most expensive part tho talking £300 for a top end card on release (if not a little more) You can get a great Quad-core CPU atm for around £150 (2.4ghz Quad-Core has a big fat cache on it aswell)

Other parts that can amp up money are:

Water-cooler (not needed if you don't overclock tbh) can cost a few hundred £ tho if you buy a good one
Case - good gaming cases cost anywhere upto £80-150
Mouse - good gaming mice usually around £40-60
Keyboard - anywhere upto £70 for a top of the line gaming keyboard
PSU (if you've got alot of things in ur pc that eats power ur gonna need a good PSU) and they cost alot, i've only got a 650 Hiper PSU in my current pc - cost around £70-80 or so, damn good psu tho)

Ram isn't so bad.. prices on ram at the moment is extremely cheap imo (talking like £40-50 for 2gig of good ram) hard-drives depends what you want, raptor hd's (10000rpm) generally cost alot of money.. think around £150 for a 160 gig raptor drive (may be wrong but its around that) where as your standard HD is only 7200 RPM, the raptor drives make a huge difference imo.

other things that cost bits and bobs are the mod side of things like LEDS etc etc etc thats just eye candy tho has nowt to do with how well ur machine performs.

Monitors are reletively cheap, you can get a nice 22" monitor (5ms response time) for around £140 which is good - max res of 1680x1200 or so.


Thing with pc's from shops like PC World they impress you with "oh its got such and such cpu in it and a big hd and alot of ram" what they neglect to tell you is that the ram is low end PC shit and the graphics cards are rather undsirable.


PC I have atm cost around £500 to build (just the tower) runs any game out at present full whack (not including AA on some games)

 

[Golena]

Now! how much would you pay for that one? (ofcourse not knowing it costs £536 to build)

£755 inc VAT and Delivery. from the very first site I clicked on.
That comes with a years full hardware warranty, are you offering the same?

Also which version of Vista did you put on it?

 

[BloodOmen]

£755 inc VAT and Delivery. from the very first site I clicked on.
That comes with a years full hardware warranty, are you offering the same?

Also which version of Vista did you put on it?

just be vista home basic (cheapest) although could prob give people the choice of what (end of the day its them paying for it) the extra would be added on etc and a sfo the full hardware warranty this is whats confusing me... I'd offer some sort of warranty I guess but not being a major shop i doubt I could offer years and years... end of the day i'm 1 bloke building pc's from his house.

 

[Golena]

just be vista home basic (cheapest) although could prob give people the choice of what (end of the day its them paying for it) the extra would be added on etc and a sfo the full hardware warranty this is whats confusing me... I'd offer some sort of warranty I guess but not being a major shop i doubt I could offer years and years... end of the day i'm 1 bloke building pc's from his house.

The reason I mentioned it is that if your putting on the cheapest version then 4gig of ram is a waste because it probably won't be able to use all of it. Reduce it to 2 gig or stick a more expensive version of vista on there.

 

[Helme]

Another thing you could probably earn some money on is just offering costum built PCs for people who knows what they want, but don't know how to put it together - or knows what they want to use it for but doesn't know what they'll need to do that(I know ALOT of friends in this position, they know what they want the computer for but no idea what to get for best price/performance).

 

[BloodOmen]

Aye nice advice guys thx taken into consideration.

 

[Hawkwind]

what is meant by a family pc?

Porn is hidden using file/folder lock under password control.

 

[crispy]

Imo instead of the 8500GT buy a motherboard with the 780g chipset - built in graphics which should run quite nicely. Alot of reviewers praising this board. Will cut your cost down a bit.

 

[Hawkwind]

Imo instead of the 8500GT buy a motherboard with the 780g chipset - built in graphics which should run quite nicely. Alot of reviewers praising this board. Will cut your cost down a bit.

Is that the new Intel chipset reviewer are going nuts over?

 

[Helme]

I think you should just go with an 8600GT card instead, with the 9 series out and especially the price/performance ratio on 9600 the 8000 cards are dropping very fast in price. Infact, the only 8000 cards worth getting anymore imo are 8600GT and 8800GTS 512mb.

I have very bad experience with onboard cards, almost no games supports them anymore - even laptop cards are put under "it might work, but we don't support it".

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

I could start with what hardware to go for, and the software and all that, but I won't.

Know what you're getting yourself into. If you don't mind the things coming with the sales, then, by all means go ahead, but you're not just selling pc's.

First, if your suppliers will be slow with delivery, and they will, you will get the crap and whine for it.
Second, if something breaks, and something will, you will get the crap and whine for it.
Third, if Microsoft fucks up with some update, and they will, you will get the crap and whine for it.
Fourth, if some other software program breaks, which will happen, you will get the crap and whine for it.
Fifth, if the /customer/ breaks something, software or hardware, and they will, you will get the crap and whine for it.
Sixth, You will get whining for no reason at all.

Take all the time you'll be working on that, include that in the price of the computer, and then you'll still have to be able to compete with the likes of Dell and Computerworld, or you'll have to have a unique business point, like extremely good service or something.

Okay, on to the hardware...
For a cheapo, I'd go for an amd-based onboard gfx system, something like:

MOBO: MSI K9A2GM-FD
CPU:  AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+
MEM:  Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4DHX
HD:   Seagate ST3500630AS (500GB, 16MB Cache, 7200rpm)
CD:   Lite-On LH-20A1P (DVD+/-RW DVD-RAM etc...)
Card: AC Ryan ACR-CR51004 Cardreader (all cards, w/ 2x usb, 1x esata)
Case: Antec Minuet - EC (w/ 350W PSU)

Something like that.

 

[crispy]

Is that the new Intel chipset reviewer are going nuts over?

No, AMD chipset, with a half decent video card built in (ATI).

Theres also a HD decoder chip on there, pretty sweet imo

 

[Bahumat]

Make sure you put a pr0n option for all those people with no internet....what are they gonna watch?

 

[soze]

If you are going to build to order make sure you create recovery CDs with Ghost or something and then keep a copy, a friend who builds pc's is being taken to small claims court because the family he sold one too lost the disks.

 

[Binky the Bomb]

Ok so lately i've been looking for legit ways to get a little extra income and I came on the idea of building/selling cheap but useable family pc's just looking for some input.


How much realisticly would you pay for a pc with these specs (note this is just the tower, no monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers or OS supplied)

Cheap parts baring in mind for obv reasons.

2.0ghz Dual Core (AMD)
2gig DDR ram
8500GT
250gb HD
DVD Writer

Basic specs there... rough price peoples.

Honestly bud, people are looking to spend £500 max on a 'family' pc.
Ei System 108 Desktop PC and TFT Monitor. Thats about what people are looking for in a family unit, roughly, as its the min spec required for most digital camcorders (strange but true). Sure, what your offering is a little better, but the word your looking for is 'Little'. Unless you have a copy of Vista and some way of providing activation codes, I'd suggest against it.

What your offering, I'd say about £500 WITH an OS and monitor. If not, then I'd try something else.

 

[GReaper]

Don't bother trying to compete for full family systems, you'll never compete compared to the vendors. One of the things you certainly don't want is some clueless customer constantly asking you to fix the machine for free because they end up with tons of spyware, making you constantly reinstall the machine.

Go for more custom solutions which they won't be offering. Maybe they've already got a decent monitor, speakers, etc and just want the base unit, where as other places might want to sell them yet another complete PC which they don't need. You could offer them extras with it to increase the price a bit, like recommending an external USB hard drive for vital backups could easily add on an extra £100 revenue.