Dell vs. DIY

Posted at: Monday 30th July 2007

You've got a grand for a new PC - do you buy it new? Or do you spend £1,000 on hardware and build it yourself?

Roll up, roll up for the £1,000 challenge: where do you get the best PC for a grand? We took a challenger from Dell, built our contender, and then put them head to head. A clear win for one of the contenders in each category scores 1 point, with 1 point each for a draw.

1 Choices, choices, choices

Like most PC builders, Dell's website allows you to customise your chosen PC. In each component category, you can step up or down the speed of various components, and the price will change to reflect your choices. It's obvious from the spec list which components you're getting, with model numbers and clock speeds of CPUs clearly displayed. The 'help me choose' button at the top of each category is far from the 'noob switch' you might expect. It opens explanatory pages in another browser window and, while there are simple videos, if you delve into the other tabs, Dell doesn't shy away from technical detail. The graphics card information pages even list the number of stream processors and memory bus width of GeForce 8-series cards, although it wasn't quite up to date - the GeForce 8600 was missing. The component selections that Dell offers are somewhat limited, with a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6700 being the fastest CPU on offer for a Dimension machine, and no GeForce 8800 GTS anywhere to be seen.

Choosing your own components offers the ultimate in flexibility and choice, but makes the process of designing a PC a more fragmented and time-consuming experience, as you end up juggling browser windows and peering at hundreds of online stores. This is especially the case when you're on a budget and want to secure the cheapest deal. With so much choice, deciding what to buy can be tricky, as the many emails we receive confirm. For convenience, Dell wins out, but we're loath to forgo the freedom of choice we have by selecting our own components. As such, we declare Round 1 a tie.

Winner: Tie

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2 Setup

In terms of ease of setup, this round obviously goes to the pre-built PC (provided, of course, the couriers haven't kicked it to pieces). That said, the Dell's set-up process wasn't flawless. It arrived well packaged in just two boxes, and powered up fine first time. However, it wasn't set at the correct resolution (1,680 x 1,050) for the supplied TFT, and there was a heap of software pre-installed. Although some applications were useful, the Google Toolbar borked the Vista sidebar, and McAffee kept bothering me to create an online account before it would work.

Software bloat isn't something you want to see on a new PC, but the Dell was correctly configured with the spec we wanted, including the very latest Nvidia drivers.

Building our own machine was fairly straightforward, but it also was time-consuming. The Antec Nine Hundred's layout is optimised for cooling, rather than a neat build, and the non-modular PSU didn't help in terms of tidiness. With the PSU at the base of the case, it's difficult to fit much of the cabling behind the board, and the wires from the top USB and audio ports aren't long enough to route slickly. Removing the Tuniq's AMD screws from the box and fighting with them for a few minutes before realising my mistake didn't help the process either. Antec also delayed matters by sending us a case that had illuminated fans with LEDs in two different shades of blue - not what we wanted. Still, the 1K Wonder POSTed first time around, and we encountered no hardware compatibility problems, completing the OS and driver install in less than two hours.