How much of a niche is building pcs ?

[ng4ever]

Is it less now then it was or about the same ?

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

Far more niche now:

• Laptops have been the predominant form of PC for years.
• Consoles have been dominating mainstream gaming for a while now.
• Smartphones and tablets keep getting more capable, and are also good enough for casual gaming for many people.
• Pre-builts aren't as bad as they used to be.
• It's now rare that building your own results in any savings (especially recently with GPUs and cryptomining nonsense).
• No business wants to deal with that. One supplier, no staff requirement to put them together, one contact when one takes a dump.

 

[ng4ever]

Far more niche now:

• Laptops have been the predominant form of PC for years.
• Consoles have been dominating mainstream gaming for a while now.
• Smartphones and tablets keep getting more capable, and are also good enough for casual gaming for many people.
• Pre-builts aren't as bad as they used to be.
• It's now rare that building your own results in any savings (especially recently with GPUs and cryptomining nonsense).
• No business wants to deal with that. One supplier, no staff requirement to put them together, one contact when one takes a dump.

Thanking.

Thinking of not building my next pc or any other family members pc anymore.

It just does not seem fun anymore or worth it. Sucks.

I remember when we all use to wait for benchmark results in awe years ago or even 10 years ago.

 

[GotNoRice]

I think the main advantage is not so much the initial build but what can potentially happen with that computer down the line - specifically the ability to be upgraded and repaired easily.

Computer building is best when it enables you to have a constantly evolving computer that sees continual upgrades over time. Even when you do a big upgrade, like CPU+Motherboard+Ram, you can get more out of your money by re-using your Case, PSU, SSD, GPU, etc. One medium or big upgrade every year or two and your computer essentially never gets old, while you are also able to get the most usage possible out of each individual component along the way.

Of course, you can upgrade a pre-built PC also. Some are more accommodating in that respect than others. Many OEMs like Dell love to use non-standard form-factor PSUs with proprietary connectors, non-standard motherboard form-factors, non-standard fan headers, etc. Some upgrades and repairs are still possible, but at regular intervals you will have to basically junk the system and start over. A pre-built that uses standard form-factor parts and allows for easily upgradability is a good place to start, but ultimately you're still in the same spot if/when you begin to start performing major/moderate upgrades - except that you're now upgrading a platform based on parts that someone else chose, crossing your fingers that they made good choices.

I personally prefer to have more control from the get-go, knowing in advance that certain parts such as the case and PSU might get used for 2-4 CPU+Motherboard upgrades, and making sure not to skimp in those areas.

Ultimately you'll probably have to approach it on a case-by-case basis. What do they use their PC for, and is it worth your time?

 

[Dan_D]

Far more niche now:

• Laptops have been the predominant form of PC for years.
• Consoles have been dominating mainstream gaming for a while now.
• Smartphones and tablets keep getting more capable, and are also good enough for casual gaming for many people.
• Pre-builts aren't as bad as they used to be.
• It's now rare that building your own results in any savings (especially recently with GPUs and cryptomining nonsense).
• No business wants to deal with that. One supplier, no staff requirement to put them together, one contact when one takes a dump.

• Yes, this is true.
• This isn't entirely accurate. PC gaming eclipses either Playstation or XBOX platforms, albeit not both at the same time. I do believe PC gaming was worth about 34 billion dollars to the consoles 40 billion with other devices making up the rest of a 175 billion dollar industry.
• Indeed, and these do make up a lot of the market share when you are talking about it in a purely financial analysis kind of way.
• Yes and no. While you don't see OEM's like E-Machines directly, there are now assholes on Ebay and even Amazon selling "gaming PC's" which are lease returned business desktops with GeForce cards slapped into them. These aren't necessarily bad in the same sense as an E-Machine but they are often woefully outdated, underperform and were never properly built for the task to begin with. There are videos on these things and they are atrocious. Companies like Dell, HP, etc. still cut substantial corners on their machines but do offer actual gaming lines which are better than the OEM's of old which weren't built for the task and often modified to play games within the limitations of their design.
• True, but building computers yourself wasn't always about savings. There were several reasons to do it, which I could go on about for quite some time. And if you are talking about boutique builders like Maingear or even upper end Alienware systems, you will still save quite a bit on like for like components, often even being able to eclipse some of these companies on the quality front. Many choose mainboards or other components that still save a few bucks while charging hundreds or in some cases thousands of dollars over the price of their component parts.
• This is true. Both for the customer and the builder, as it just makes sense from a logistics standpoint.

 

[Zepher]

In the late 90's a friend of mine was using a local built PC and wanted to a get a newer one.
Dell happened to have a deal on a P4 3Ghz or so ( I can't recall the exact specs) that was cheaper than I could build one.
She had it for around 2 years when the PC stopped working. She called me up and I told her it was probably the PSU and that it's still under warranty so I had her call Dell.
She was on the phone for over 2 hours with support diagnosing the PC and came to the conclusion that the PSU was probably faulty and then scheduled a tech to come and fix it.
Tech comes the next day with the wrong PSU so has to get another one shipped to him. He came 2 days later and got the PC up and running.

When it was time to get another PC, she had me build it even though it would cost more, but she didn't want to have to deal with Dell support again.
I built her one other machine before she retired from Photography and started to just use a laptop and tablet for her internet and email and occasional photo work.

One of my best friends has had me build or upgrade his PC for him since the 90's. I remember when he got his first PC, his brother and friend put it together for him.
My friend wanted me to come over and do it but his brother insisted that they could do it so he let them.
I get a call from my friend letting me know that his brother and friend put the PC together and it won't power on and they have been trying to get it working for the past hour or so and asked me to come take a look at it.
I get there, look at the motherboard, move a jumper from Wake-On Lan and fired up the PC. From then on, he only lets me work on his PC.

 

[vegeta535]

Building is still a great thing. Sure you might not save much over pre builds but you know what is in your system. A lot of pre builds that are on the cheaper side cut corners all over with proprietary part. For a quality pre build you are going to pay a premium.

 

[LukeTbk]

Is it less now then it was or about the same ?

Depends when we are talking about, my uneducated feeling and purely guessing.

It is less niche than in many area of the past for individual to do it, Internet and already having an machine before buying a new one made looking at how to much easier than building your own machine in the 80s and early 90s (era with jumpers on motherboard and hard drive setting with master-slave, that was arguably harder to do and with less how to video available around).

One difference is in the 90s-early 2000s it was common for local shop to build PC for clients, that must have almost completely disappear into something niche, replaced by online shopping for pre-built, either the Dell-HP or some specialized national level shop a la Falcon Northwest an other.

But individual building their own PC, I could see this being more common now than say in 1998, in absolute term.

 

[NIZMOZ]

Everyone and their Mom now build PCs.

 

[lopoetve]

Thanking.

Thinking of not building my next pc or any other family members pc anymore.

It just does not seem fun anymore or worth it. Sucks.

I remember when we all use to wait for benchmark results in awe years ago or even 10 years ago.

Commoditization of the industry. Average PC now is a motherboard (almost any of them are good enough), CPU (almost any of them are good enough), RAM (pick up any generic kit and you're probably fine), and a GPU (preference). Sound is built in. IO cards are built in. Case - meh, pick one at random and you're probably fine enough. We get fancy and have fun, but for generic builds? They're all good enough. That's a GOOD thing. No fighting with drivers, no fighting with autoexec.bat and config.sys and loadhigh, and this mouse uses more conventional memory, etc. Overclocking is pushing a bloody BUTTON now (hell, default settings on my Zenith II pull a 4.5ghz stable OC on my 3960X - you have to turn that OFF). It's all fast software now. Part of why RGB has taken off, I suspect - it's one of the few things you can really customize (cool designs - ish?). The rest is all standardized. And it's all good ~enough~.

When I did my year of builds, I put artificial limitations in - I needed to build 8 systems. I could use a chipset ONCE (one exception due to a killer deal), and a brand no more than thrice. End result was Asus x399, Asus TRX40, Gigabyte x570, Gigabyte x299, MSI Z490, MSI x99, MSI B450, and Gigabyte Z490 (picked for the gaming system carefully - and the 10700k was the best gaming CPU, so it duplicates chipset/gen with the MSI z490 which has a 10900K as a server which was the killer deal right after 11th gen came out). One custom loop water, three air, two AIO, one stock HSF, and one soon to be AIO that is on a hyper 212 for the moment.

 

[TheSlySyl]

People were impressed in highschool that I knew how to build PCs and asked me for help and paid me to build and repair them.
20 years later, people are still impressed that I know how to build PCs, ask me for help and pay me to build and repair them. I charge a lot more now.

I think it's always been niche.