Prefabs vs. Customs

This is the burning question that resonates with a great many tech types and people looking to break into the computer culture. Prefabs are computers that you purchase that are ready to go, like your average Dell or HP, customs are somewhere in between. They can have parts from a multitude of different manufacturers from Seagate and Western Digital for hard drives, Corsair and Patriot for the memory, and Asus and Gigabyte for the motherboard. As confusing as this seems to be, creating custom builds or purchasing prefab computers are much like any real purchase or decision you have to weigh the pros and cons of it.

Prefab laptops and desktops are what you get when you go to CompUSA, MicroCenter, HP, Origin and Dell. These are PCs that come completely assembled with the operating system already installed (in most instances anyway). Depending on the place of purchase you might have the option to "customize" the hardware and add additional software but it’s wholly behind the scenes and you can start using it immediately. The most obvious pro to this is you have nothing to do other than use it and you're generally sure that everything works as advertised, but with this ease of access generally comes a larger price point. That desktop you just brought might have not been worth the sum of its parts. Most of the time if you purchased the parts separately it might be cheaper. This leads to the notion that what you're paying for is labor and the brand name as much, if not more, than the parts themselves. Now this is not a hard fast rule as this depends largely on the manufacturer. Acer parts, for instance, might be cheaper than Dell parts, but that doesn’t mean that Acer's parts are of a lesser quality, just cheaper to make. Another major pro is that you might get those upgrades that cost you less because the brand has an agreement with a particular parts manufacturer, for instance HP and Intel. HP creates the PCs and Intel supplies HP with a discount for buying its items, like the 3rd generation Core i5 and i7, in bulk, and then they pass the savings on to you when you "customize" their stock products.

Custom builds are where PCs shine. This is where you're only limited by your imagination when it comes to building your dream PC. You want a pearl white case with red, white and blue scrolling lights, done. You want 6 hard drives and 32 GB of ram, no sweat. This can also be THE MOST frustrating endeavor that you ever undertake. Besides the fact that simply mentioning DIY, sends chills up most peoples spines, things can go wrong easily and you could be out a LOT of money depending on the build. Needless to say this can be one of the most rewarding achievements for the non-IT guys and gals and geeks alike. The core of this process is learning what is compatible with what. You want to make sure that you pay attention to little things like how much power is drawn by all of the components, that your case is large enough to house said components, that your motherboard is compatible with you processor and that said motherboard has all of the inputs you need, etc., etc. There are a lot moving parts so be prepared for a project. Under most circumstances it’s generally cheaper to make a PC that is "comparable" in power with more inexpensive parts. Luckily most of the hard work has been done for you by the custom community. There a specification classifications, how to guides and compatibility list all over the internet, you can even make a MAC compliant (Hackintosh) PC if you know what parts to use and where to look for help. As a rule of thumb, I think everyone who is thinking about do a custom build should purchase a cheaper/older PC and (literally) rip it apart and put it back together a few times to get a feel for the general location of components and which connectors go to which device.

There is also a mid-way point in this process and a subculture that even I don't touch, Barebones kits and Custom Laptops.

Barebones kits come in 2 distinct but similar flavors, complete kits and non-complete kits. Complete kits are exactly what they sound like, they have all of the components to make the PC run, short of the operating system and you put them together. Non-complete kits are generally missing vital pieces like hard drives, ram or processors. You must purchase compatible parts to complete the build. Complete kits are easier to jump right into as all the parts are known to be compatible, but non-complete kits offer more flexibility with the trade-off of doing extra work to secure parts.

Now fanatics out there will swear by custom laptops. I have never even attempted to do one and probably won't anytime soon. Laptops by very nature are portable desktops crammed into a relatively very small space. There is generally lots of soldering and shattered dreams if something goes wrong. If you’re feeling brave and have the time/money to devote then give it a shot, you can find these guys and girls all over the internet showcasing their creations.

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