Most people will be familiar with the terms "You get what you pay for" and "buy cheap, buy twice" and both of these can be applied to the purchase of a shiny new gaming computer. When it comes to Custom Gaming PCs, there are a lot of things that can be done wrong which a buyer is unlikely to pick up on, this is where this article comes in!
Multiple times a week, we are asked to price match a build from one of our competitors, 90% of the time the UKGC specced system has much higher quality components from more reputable brands such as Corsair, Asus and Samsung.
Before we get into the dissection of the spec our potential customer came to us with, it's good to know that there are three main types of businesses that sell Gaming PCs, all three are very different in the way they operate and this reflects significantly on the product that comes off the proverbial conveyer belt at the end.
The Big Box Brands - These are the types of computer manufacturers that you have seen in the big retail stores primarily, but they also sell, or are sold by 3rd parties, on websites such as eBay and Amazon. Specification, customisability and upgradability will be severely limited due to the use of proprietary components, and support will likely be in the form of poorly written online articles, or phone support where you end up talking to someone who doesn't really know much about PCs and is simply working through a flowchart.
The Cheap Online System Builder - Known within the industry as a ? kicker, these types of system builders are your independent websites or shops who really don't care about the quality of the product they kick out. If a supplier comes to them with a batch of dirt cheap, unbranded, unreliable, slow components they will be jumping right at that opportunity to put a few (thousand) extra pounds in their pocket. It is also general practice to close a company down when it gets too much and start again under a different name, meaning you might be left with a PC that has low quality components which are likely to fail, and have no way to get it resolved by the company you bought it from.
The Artisan Enthusiast System Builder - These types of PC builders are less common and much lesser known, their products are generally more expensive when you first look at it but after further research that cost is easily justified. The engineers building your PC will usually be an individual who is enthusiastic about Gaming PCs, and will likely be going home to play games on a PC that they have spent way too much money on! The components they use will be of a similar tier that enthusiasts around the globe use, as they do their research to make sure the customer gets the best product available, often specifically tailored to their needs. Here at UK Gaming Computers, we believe we are firmly in this category.
Now you're aware of the different choices of where you might buy a PC from, here is an excerpt from an email we recently received, from a potential customer querying why our i7 PCs were almost twice the price than similar looking gaming PCs she was seeing elsewhere. The redacted link is to the website of a company that puts out cheap PCs and don't offer much support, so they fall into the "The Cheap Online System Builder" category.
Dear UK Gaming Computers,
I am looking at purchasing a Gaming PC for my son who is turning 15 in September, I have asked him what he wants and he has advised that he needs an i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a 6GB Graphics Card. I have found one that seems to fit the bill for £744.99, here is the specification, and a link: (REDACTED LINK).
CPU - Intel i7 2600
Ram - 16GB
Graphics Card - 6GB GTX 1660 Super
PSU - 500w
Hard Drive Capacity - 1TB HDD + 480SSD
Motherboard - 1151
As you are a local company, I would prefer to purchase from yourself however the price difference between this model and a comparable model on your website is significant, almost £400. Are you able to price match?
Kind regards,
A Potential Customer
Now if you've spotted anything wrong with the above spec PC, great job! If not, no worries, I'll outline all of the issues with a system like this. I will compare it against the spec of our Nemesis - i7 Gaming Computer as it is the most comparable, specced up to the same level it comes out around the £1200 mark, lets see why the price difference is so significant.
CPU - Intel i7 2600
The CPU is one of the worst bits of this PC. If my memory serves me correctly, the Intel i7 2600 was a fantastic processor when it came out, beating everything that stood in it's path, what's the problem here I can already hear you asking? Well, the Intel i7 2600 is 11 and a half years old, yeah, that isn't good. If we're looking at raw performance, the i7 2600 gets a PassMark score of 5,347, whereas the Intel i7 12700 present in the Nemesis gets a score of 31,331, that is not a typo, it really is almost 6x faster.
Price is also a big difference between these two CPUs, you can pick up a refurbished i7 2600 on eBay for about £20, whereas a new Intel i7 12700 costs about £350 so this price difference almost accounts for the entire price difference between the two systems.
Price difference - £330.00
RAM - 16GB
This is another big problem we see with cheaper pre-built systems is the memory used, in this system here we see it's listed simply as "16GB", if only it was that simple... The RAM in the cheap system firstly is DDR3, has no speed or brand listed and does not say if it's 1 x 16GB stick, or 2 x 8GB sticks. We can assume the RAM used in this system is two cheap 8GB sticks of unbranded DDR3 running at somewhere around 1333MHz as if it was better than that, they'd likely list specific details.
A 16GB kit of slow, unbranded DDR3 can be had for about £30, and the 2x8GB kit of 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz DDR4 in the Nemesis is about £70.
Price difference - £40.00
Graphics Card - 6GB GTX 1660 Super
Not much to say here, it should really be listed as an "Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB" so the customer knows exactly what they're getting, but it's the same card on both systems, although the ones that we sell are all brand new.
PSU - 500w
This one is bad, a 500w PSU can be £20 or it can be north of £150, given the trend with this system it's safe to assume that it's on the lower end of that scale which is not a PSU you want to be anywhere near. A cheap PSU can cause significant problems, check out our PSU Buyers Guide for more info about why a cheap PSU is bad! The PSU in the Nemesis is a Corsair CV550 which costs £50, so we'll call this a price difference of £25.
A cheaper PSU is also likely going to have a much lower (or won't have at all) efficiency rating, meaning that you'll be spending more on electricity to run the PC, even if it's the same size PSU. Check out our Gaming PC Running Costs article to see how much a gaming PC can cost to run.
Price difference - £25.00
Hard Drive Capacity - 1TB HDD + 480SSD
Reliability and speed are two of the most important things when it comes to a Gaming PC, both of which are severely hindered by using a cheap, slow storage device. Even considering this, for some reason Hard Drives are one of the primary ways companies cut corners in order to squeeze a few more pennies out of your wallet. We only sell storage from Seagate, Kingston and Samsung which I am sure you've head of! A bottom of the barrel 480GB SSD will set you back about £30, and the Kingston A400 480GB that we sell sells for £45.
Price difference - £15.00
Motherboard - 1155
A very small number of people looking to buy a gaming PC are going to know what "1155" means in reference to a motherboard. LGA1155 is the socket type, and a cheap refurbished one will set you back about £25, the motherboard in the Nemesis is the Asus PRIME B660M-A D4 which costs £140.00, and is over 11 years newer much like the CPU!
The newer motherboard also supports a multitude of newer features such as DDR4 memory support, M.2 slots for ultra-fast NVME storage and support for all kinds of RGB!
Price difference - £115.00
Hidden Extras
There are also extra bits that many pre built Gaming PCs will come with, for better or for worse.
Warranty - This is one of the most important things to consider when buying a new gaming computer, you can also use the warranty information to gauge how much trust a company put in their own products. Here at UK Gaming Computers, every single PC we sell comes with our Standard 6 Year Warranty so it's safe to say we are confident any of our products are going to work perfectly!
Pre-sale support - Here at UK Gaming Computers, we pride ourselves on getting the customer the exact PC for their needs, if this means recommending a PC below their budget in order to save them some money then we will do exactly that. When buying a Gaming PC from somewhere like eBay, you don't get this luxury, all you get is the spec list and price.
Build process - You might not think the build process really makes a whole lot of difference, but it really does. A system that has been meticulously put together by an experienced engineer will be easier to upgrade, more reliable and much easier to upgrade. We like to think we are at the top of our game when it comes to the build quality of our PCs, but don't take my word for it, check out our Instagram feed.
Post-sale support - Even with the most care in the world, the worst can still happen to your PC and you'll need to speak to whoever built it so they can help get it sorted. A PC you buy on eBay won't have any support contact at all, so getting a solution to an issue can be quite a costly process as it could mean a trip to a local computer specialist. Here at UK Gaming Computers, we have email, chat and phone support all operated by the same engineers that spend their days building and testing PCs. We also have a plethora of support guides which can help guide you through many different issues to help get simple problems sorted without it costing anything!
Reputation - It's nice to know who you're handing your hundreds or thousands of pounds to in any situation, a Gaming PC is no different. Reviews are a primary way to figure out a companies reputation, websites like Review Centre, Trustpilot and Google collect reviews from customers and display them publicly for anyone to see.
Conclusion
The price difference between the cheap PC and the Nemesis - i7 Gaming Computers is £455.01, once we add up all of the price differences between the components we get to a total of £525, and that is only taking into consideration the component cost and not all of the extras that you get.
It's safe to say, when it comes to a Gaming PC, you get what you pay for.