OV9

Kind of following on from my budget upgrades thread, is it still worth choosing your components and starting from scratch, or have manufacturers cottoned on to this as even browning Argos there's a vast array of desktops which seem initially to be pretty reasonably priced.

I'm considering doing a fresh build to replace the ageing downstairs desktop. Being ddr3 based and with a btx layout there is very little I would transfer to a new one.

Dvd drive, 2tb spiny storage drive and a few sata cables is about it. New case, psu, ssd, motherboard, processor, cooler, ram, graphics card are likely.

In the past, the best thing about building your own was being able to buy a good solid base which would last many years when the higher end processors and larger memory modules drop in price.

My current one is the first one I bought, overtime from the Olympics, so back in 2012. Partly cos I had the money and mostly because I couldn't be arsed learning what went with what.
It's been good as gold, better than that, bloody awesome.
Just swapped a new graphics card in and hope to get a few more years out of it.

www.chillblast.com

Just be careful about PC from Argos and PC World - they usually have "headline" components like i5's and i7 with decent GFX cards to draw you in, but the actual components like motherboards and PSU's are utter shite and they can really drag the system down.

There's nothing to be saved by building your own anymore, those days are long gone unless you get savvy and pickup the odd second hand part. The main reason to build your own is that you can usually piecemeal it and re-use bits from your old PC and upgrade in stages, or if you want tbe very specific on components.

But if you're starting from scratch completely, I'd definitely look at bundles from Chillblast, Overclockers and PCSpecialist. You'll usually get a better warranty too.

Christ this is dangerous. Start looking at £150 graphics cards and within minutes have convinced yourself that a £700 1080ti is actually quite good value

I think I'll have to do it the hard way, plug some figures in and compare to a bundle deal, I had a quick poke around the overclockers configuratior the other day but wasn't the easiest to navigate on phone.

I guess I was guilty of getting sucked into the headline figures on a lot of high street systems, they might say what processor they've got but rarely which motherboard chipset and almost never what expansion slots they've got which makes buying an ok system for less than you could build one for and then sticking a graphics card in a bit less straightforward.

Budget creep is really easy with graphics cards, as it's quite easy to think "for another £60 I can get that feature...oh, but for another £50 I'll then get 2GB more RAM!" and it spirals from there.

A 1060 is a solid card for 1080P gaming though, can't go wrong for £200 mark. Personally, I'd avoid anything less than if you want it as a gaming PC to last a few years.

As everyone has already posted in terms of saving money, not really.

If you want something other than a standard box and enjoy the process of speccing and building something yourself then maybe.

I've shown off my Ikea gaming build from last year before, but I'm very pleased with it so will again

Reasonably powerful gaming PC that sits neatly on a shelf, water cooling kit for the CPU means it's nice and quiet most of the time despite the compromised size. Next upgrades when I've the money will probably be and NVME SSD and a water cooled GPU.