Gareth Ogden

Customised - Do it yourself

Posted at: 30th July 2007

Building PCs has been a hobby of mine for many years, and it's something that I still enjoy immensely. The feeling of satisfaction that comes from knowing that the system on which you're owning n00bs in Counter-Strike: Source was built (and overclocked) by your own fair hands is akin to the sort of pleasure I expect artists experience when they sit back and admire their latest landscape (assuming that it's a good painting, of course).

However, while building a high-performance, quiet and professional-looking PC isn't rocket science, it requires practice, and can be an understandably daunting prospect if you've never tried it before, which is why many people still buy ready-built PCs. These PCs also have the advantage of being covered by a warranty, and are often seen as the better-value option too, since big PC builders receive bulk discounts on components, unlike solitary home-system builders. The trade-off is that you end up owning a PC that is, to all intents and purposes, the same as a system owned by hundreds or even thousands of other people. Plus, it may not offer the performance, overclockability and upgradability of a custom-built system. In short, it's hardly individual, and certainly not a custom PC.

These are the sorts of issues that often crop up in people's minds when they consider their next PC, and the question of whether to build or buy is one we're frequently asked. Naturally, since we're called Custom PC, we try to encourage people to build their own rigs and provide information in the magazine to make this process easier. However, to reply to every enquiry with the response 'yeah, just build one mate; it's dead easy, even your gran could do it' would be doing our readers a disservice. It's our journalistic responsibility to thoroughly investigate the issue by applying our extensive experience of PC testing, and also our professional judgement, to properly answer the question of whether to build or buy by clearly explaining the pros and cons.

This is exactly what we've done in this month's lead feature, 'Dell vs DIY'. As the title of the feature suggests, the PC builder we chose for this challenge is Dell, simply because Dell is the biggest PC manufacturer in the world. We set Dell a budget of £1,000, which included a 20in widescreen TFT monitor, and then gave ourselves the same budget with which to build a similar or better system, also including a 20in TFT monitor.

Dell rose to the challenge admirably and sent us an impressive PC, but could it stand up to, or even outshine, our own custom-made rig?

Before I sign off for this month I also want to mention (for those who haven't already noticed) that we've launched a brand-new website. The URL is the same (www.custompc.co.uk), but the site is completely new, with state-of-the-art blogging features powered by Wordpress MU, and plenty of unique content written by the Custom PC team. Each member of the team has his own blog and we're also allowing all our readers to have their own blogs too, including a special section for Modding Project Blogs (or Plogs, as we like to call them). And, of course, you can still view our back catalogue of reviews, Labs tests and Features.

The new site is a perfect partner to the magazine, so please take a look and join the community.

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Comments

how do you

play nfc carbon on an fx?

Comment by wegreenall at 8:28am 7th September 2007

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For hardware advice, head to the Hardware Forum on this website. People will be happy to give advice on components that meed your needs and meet your budget.

Comment by l3v1ck at 5:55am 7th September 2007

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hibernian90

i'm only 14 and saving for a pc but now i'm definitly building 1(the issue 049 taught me how:D). Any way does any1 have sum hardware tips for me?

Comment by hibernian90 at 5:35pm 5th September 2007

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ant7711

i have just built my 1 pc+its my 1st..an AMD Athlon xp 2000,Asrock k7vt4a pro motherboard 2 512 pny chips and an Nvidia ge force fx 5200.to have built it myself and to be able to play need for speed carbon on it is truely amazing..ps love readers drives ...ant7711