Barebones or from scratch?

[DeadCat]

I'm building a low cost system and am wondering if it would be better to get a barebones system or to start form scratch?

Any advise is appreciated.

DC

 

[Chipset]

Starting from scratch would give you more choice over the parts that go into the system.

 

[NaughtyusMaximus]

My suggestion for low cost is to go with a barebones system. If you want to customize, you're probably looking at something that is tailored more to a specific purpose, and will probably end up costing more money.

 

[AndyCunningham]

I'd go for selecting all pieces by hand - a barebones system isn't likely to save you any money I wouldn't think, and you'd be limited to the options given to you by whoever built the barebones system.

 

[eplebnista]

IMO, I'd also go with picking out all the pieces and starting from scratch.

My $.02,
eplebnista

 

[joecool]

i'd go with from scratch - most of the barebones systems i've seen don't have the best components. with price competition so fierce right now you can build a great system for pretty cheap - & frequently the high quality components are only a few dollars (if any) more than the crap!

 

[vi edit]

Depends on the barebones package

I was just shopping around and checked out the "barebones" packages over at gamepc and they were outrageously priced.

I just bought an MSI Nforce board w/ integrated video, sound, and NIC, plus a retail Athlon XP 1600 CPU, a 300 Sparkle PS, and half a gig of DDR ram for under $500 shipped to my door.

All I need to do is add a HD, floppy, CDROM, and Case for another $200 and that's a dang nice system for under $700.

How much $$ are you thinking on spending?

 

[todpod]

Check out www.mwave.com, you can peice toghter the bare bones system that you want, that's what I did. They let you choose from a big selection of case, mb cpus and stuff check it out.