Becoming a PC gamer has always been an investment. You’re not just throwing down a few hundred on a console that's potentially destined to sit under the television accumulating dust as soon as the cycle turns, and something new can always come along and replace it. There aren’t generations of PCs, where each one is a clear iteration and improvement on the last, giving you all the information you could ever need on when to upgrade, and how. Instead, you have to educate yourself, weigh up the pros and cons of this component over that component, and figure out whether you want to risk overclocking your CPU and squeezing every drop of power out of it or just leave things as they are, knowing that you’re not unlocking the full potential of what you’ve purchased.
But if you want to get yourself a gaming PC, you've got a choice in front of you: should you build one yourself, or buy one ready-made? There are pros and cons to each - so we thought we'd lay them out.
For the purpose of this comparison, we're using the Ultima Tyrannosaur from Overclockers, and the PC I built myself three months ago, which I'm going to affectionately call Edward.
COST
This will be the first concern for anyone looking to make this kind of investment: cost. Doing things yourself cuts out the middleman, and means you could save on assembly and testing - so if you’re confident and competent, you can usually save more than a few hundred just by taking the components into your own hands But it's not always as clear-cut as that.
The Ultima 9550i Tyrannosaur MKIII is a truly powerful PC that has the same audio footprint as a clear summer’s day, and about the same temperature, too. It’s surrounded with massive fans, half of them visible through the case, and with four graphics cards working in tandem it barely breaks a sweat, even running the most graphically demanding games like The Witcher 2 or Planetside 2.
Pick it up from Overclockers and, with the specifications we’ve got here, it’ll cost you £2030.60. If you opt to build it for yourself, using all the same components, and it’ll come to £2054.91, which will actually cost you money. And for all that trouble you’re also costing yourself a two-year warranty.
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It’s hard not to find a company offering something very close to what you want with no significant extra cost.
You’re never going to be able to go toe-to-toe with the specifications that the retailers themselves are providing, as that’s exactly where they’re making their savings. Instead, building yourself a PC offers the flexibility and the freedom to customise the build in any way you want. Building with a purpose in mind could well save you money, especially if you make small compromises on performance. The PC I built myself three months ago is about 65% as powerful as the Tyrannosaur, with the same RAM, half the GPU and a slightly weaker CPU - but it's also £1000 less expensive, and still pushes modern games about as far as they will go.
Even so, though, it’s hard not to find a company offering something very close to what you want with no significant extra cost to yourself. Even with something pre-built like the Tyrannosaur, there are multiple ways you can customise the PC, ranging from which hard drives to slot into place to how many graphics cards you’d like. There are retailers out there like PC Specialist who offer even more extreme customisable options. When they’re even offering to test the thing once it's built and ensure that everything works properly.
Where building your own PC, would once have been the vastly cheaper option, then, nowadays it might not save you as much money as you'd think - especially at the upper end of the power spectrum.
POWER
There's one significant question here: do you really need that much power? Throughout the late 90s and early 00s PC gaming was all about building a ridiculous Rig, but do developers really develop for high-end PCs to the extend that they used to?
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This protracted console cycle has lead to is a stagnation in hardware requirements.
But what this protracted console cycle has lead to is a stagnation in hardware requirements. Free to play games like League of Legends, by necessity, have low system requirements so that they can reach the widest audience possible. Many of the most interesting independent games on the platform, meanwhile, don't need anything like a top-end PC to run. Even a game like the newly released Crysis 3 doesn’t hold a candle to the relative oomph that the original Crysis needed to run - it's designed for consoles, too. Back then you had to be beyond an enthusiast to run it at full settings on release, but Crysis 3 is positively tame in comparison, and will run beautifully on a much less powerful machine.
Regardless, it still pushes current hardware. My self-built PC can just about handle the game at the highest settings, but the framerate suffers. It’s here that the difference in power between it and the Tyrannosaur really comes into focus, and where the assurance of pre-built pulls ahead of the savings of DIY. Often the retailers that sell these machines will build them for specific benchmarks, such as running a game like Crysis or Battlefield 3. But do the games you want to play on PC really need the highest-end power? It's worth considering.
DIFFICULTY
One of the scariest thoughts when you commit to buying yourself a brand new gaming PC is the idea of spending hours drowning in a sea of nuts and bolts and expensive-looking components whilst developing a mortal fear of static electricity. But to have a company put it together for you has always been the expensive option – thousands sucked from your bank account just to avoid yourself the agony of trying to thread CPU pins into their sockets without bending a single on, instantly costing yourself a few hundred.
Again, though, that’s 20th century thinking. Maybe even early 2000s. But in the past few years things have changed, and that information has been taking a while to filter down into the public consciousness.
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Components aren’t nearly as scary and ambiguous as they were in the past.
Firstly, components aren’t nearly as scary and ambiguous as they were in the past. Slotting a graphics card into your motherboard, as sexy and complicated as that might sound, has become almost as simple as inserting a USB stick into your television. There are perhaps a couple more screws involved, but as long as you know which hole goes where, you’ll be free from the fear of breaking anything. There are even clicks and locks in place, to let you know when to stop pushing. Even processors, typically the most daunting prospect of all, pretty much always come bundled on a motherboard now, so you can deftly sidestep such worries.
There’s still a slight apprehension in the back of your mind, and understandably so; if you purchase all the components individually, you’re going to be clear of the safety net of a warranty, meaning if you make any irrevocable mistake during the construction of your PC, you’re on your own, but that’s certainly less of a danger now than it was a decade ago.
In summary, then, don't be scared of building your own. It's pretty easy these days.
WHICH LOOKS BETTER?
At first glance, the Tyrannosaur has more in common with a Storm Trooper than the beige towers that litter office blocks and home studies. Harsh angles, black detailing and an overall white glean make the case more of a statement than anything. But it’s hiding an efficiency of architecture that means, despite a huge array of fans and cooling vents, it powers on while barely making a whisper. It’s the advantage of having a build so finely tuned by someone who knows more than you.
But with PCs being so modular these days, as long as the components are compatible, the case will do the rest of the work for you. It’s another cost, and another consideration, but invest a little more in some housing and you can achieve the same whisper of an audio footprint as the best companies achieve. They are, after all, using the same tools as you.
In terms of aesthetics, it’s entirely about how much you want to spend, and where your taste lies. Expensive cases are also often the most efficient in terms of cooling and ventilation, but if you’re just going to hide it under your desk, you don’t need it to be a conversation piece.
WHICH LASTS LONGER?
One of the clear cut advantages of having a company put your PC together is the warranty. Even if they haven’t built it well, you’re going to be covered if parts fail, or something hasn’t been put together right. As long as you’re smart about placing it in your room somewhere it’s not going to be choked with dust or heat, there’s no reason not to expect a long lifetime from your parts.
More importantly, with 2013 being the year we see a new generation of consoles out of Sony and Microsoft, it might seem like now would be an insane time to invest in a new PC. But if anything now is the best time to lay down some cash. With the announcement of the PS4, it’s clear that, while a big jump up from the power of the previous generation, we’re not going to see the consoles get ahead of even the current retail PCs, let alone stay ahead. With a keen eye and well under a thousand pounds you should be able to build a PC that easily matches anything the console manufacturers will put out, and that will last a good few years.
The question then becomes whether you should try and build it yourself, or let someone else do all the hard graft for you. Ten years ago, or even five, I’d have opted for the former, writing off any dangers and apprehension about dealing with components yourself just by quoting the amount of money you’d save. Today, though, things are different. There are enough options in enough places that you’ll hardly be saving yourself any money, and no matter how much knowledge you might gain by putting things together yourself, the peace of mind you’ll get from knowing your new PC is assembled with skill and care is probably worth it.
In the guts in the behemoth beside me, the wires are wrapped in cloth netting. The hardrives are stacked in a neat tower, and everything is constructed with an efficiency of space that’s almost preternatural. The question instead becomes whether you think you can emulate the same level of polish and finish that the professionals can offer.
What it’s lacking is a sense of personal investment, and that’s really why so many people get nostalgic about putting a PC together. It’s like constructing a kit car, and sauntering around town in it. You know how it works, have learned all the nuances of its personality, and understand that maybe sometimes you need to restart it a second time just to get the thing to boot. Or that the way you partitioned the E drive was kind of sloppy, and causes you no end of grief. But that’s a result of your actions, and it gives this machine you spend so much time with a character. Getting a PC to order will get you to where you want to go, but sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination.
Phill Cameron is a freelance journalist who leaves his PC fan light on every night to scare away the monsters. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
