Building a PC vs PC to Order

crybaby

Right went window shopping today an interesting experience to say the least five floors of nothing but PC hardware and software. You walk into a shop hand them the list of specs and they price it up for you and will build it for free as well. Now I probably could handpick from different shops the lowest price for each component but that would be fairly pointless as if you buy all together in one store you will always get a nice big discount taken off the end price. So this is what I have right now, I went to about 6 - 7 different shops and got a price list and I think i will probably go with this crowd as they were good to talk to

http://www.pansonicsthai.com

Probably would have made things easier if I had known this website two weeks ago right ?
If you see anything there that stands out as a bargain let me know and I will change, havent ordered yet and won't be ordering for another 3 - 4 weeks so everything can be changed. Right now I have the following down as my system

Intel Core2 Duo E5200 ( Ingram/Synnex ) LGA775 2,590

Asus P5KPL-AM LGA775 1,680

Western Digital 320 GB - not on website - 1,700

HIS Radeon HD4670 IceQ DDR3 512 MB 2,850

19" Acer - 3,690

LG or LITE-ON DVD-RW 22X - 800

Keyboard & Mouse - 300

Cooler Master Elite 330 - 1,250

Cooler Master 460W PSU - 1,400

Speakers - "donated" by place of work

Total Price : 17, 190

OF course what i had forgotten to add in with the previous prices and today's price is bloody 7% VAT which will bring it up to

Including VAT: 18,390 baht odd

However I am pretty much entitled to a nice discount as this is Thailand and a discount is mandatory when purchasing anything over 100 baht. I'm expecting at least a 300 baht discount if not 400 to push it down

somewhere between 18,000 - 18,100 - including VAT

So what's the verdict on the final list and if you see anything worthy of purchase on the website let me know!it is possible there is some way I could get the VAT back but it would probably be a lot of hassle. I also saw cheaper RAM at 790 for 2gig made by Kingbox at a different store don't know how good it is though? There was also a good range of power supplies at the place so can be changed if cooler master isn't decent.

Effluo

thepcgp wrote: »

Yeah, you're right Effluo, that would be a good way to go about it. Crybaby, I think you have a nice, economic but robust system there - but when you're in the PC Mall, look out for the i7 Extreme. It's about £700 in the U.K. - if you can get one cheaper, and a compatible board, and still stay within your budget, I would definitely go for it, even if you have to stinge out on other components. It's got 2 threads per core, with 4 cores, for a total of 8 threads. It has more than double the memory access performance for reduced latency, and "overspeed protection" is removed for this chip, making it easy to overclock. Sounds awesome.

It's worrying that this guy is actually in the business of giving people advice on their pc's......

There's a right pc for everyone and an i7X is not what this guys needs, even if he could afford it would be of no use to him, a complete waste of money!!!

All he wants is a nice cheap family pc for media and a small bit of gaming??
I just hope you're not in the sales department of pcgp!

thepcgp

Crybaby, that looks like a very respectable build you have there. And the price is excellent. I work it out to around €385 if you get the discount you're talking about, which is really very good.

There's some info here about claiming back your vat from Thailand. It's probably a lot easier than you think. Make sure you ask the sales assistant to complete a vat refund form, and attach the original tax invoice or receipt to that form. You will need to show the sales assistant your passport. When you are requesting the refund, the goods will need to be inspected by a customs officer prior to check-in. It's worth doing, the vat rate in Thailand is 7% so if the total including vat is 18,000 baht, so the vat amount you'd get back is about 1178 baht, or €25.

crybaby

Cheers for the help pcgp but I'm actually living here so won't be going home at any stage and I don't count as a tourist as I have a different visa and a work permit, cheers for trying to help though. There is other ways of getting it back but I would need help from some Thai people, my girlfriend is asking around at the moment about it, but my girlfriend is certain we can get at the very least a 500 baht discount anyway so i think I will be hitting my 18,000 baht budget

Solitaire

I was gonna rip that PSU but it's not that bad actually for your build - really a rebadged, cheapified and overrated AcBel E2 Natural Power 420W. Everything else is grand. Shame about the HD4770 (or lack thereof) though

crybaby

Ah I saw Cooler Master and automatically assumed it must be decent

These are some other cards I came across in the stores and on the website

Tagan 500 watt TG500-U37- 1,850

Thermal Take 450 Watt - 1,950

Enermax Tomahawk 405 watt - 1,790 / 450 watt - 2,290 baht

CM Extreme - 1,790

Asus Power Supply 450W - 1,800

DELUX Power Supply 500W DLP-34A PSU 1,050

FRD Power Supply 450W PSU 380

RAIDMAX Power Supply 430W PSU 950

RAIDMAX Power Supply 530W PSU 1,500

Tsunami Power Supply 520W PSU 700

PC Power & Cooling Power Supply 420W PSU 2,100

Nothing is finalised yet and i won't be buying it for a little while so still time left for changes. Could I cheap out on the case / PSU to improve the GFX or RAM or would that be a stupid move? What would be the better choice for the PSU?

I did come across the HD 4770 but only in one place and it was at 4,090 baht.

uberpixie

crybaby wrote: »

Could I cheap out on the case / PSU to improve the GFX or RAM or would that be a stupid move?

Case is a huge factor regarding how well the parts inside your PC are cooled and how much noise you can hear the internal parts make. Get a good case, don't get anything too cheap as your PC will be loud and run hot.



PSU: do you really want to skimp on a critical part that provide power to all of your expensive parts. NEVER skimp on the psu it always ends in tears....

crybaby

Forget that comment Solitaire and terrorformer have already informed me of the importance of a good PSU and case, i think i was suffering from a case of early morning stupidity or just some sorta craving to get the 4770

in terms of the PSU will the Coolermaster do a good job or what else should i go for?

Solitaire

I wouldn't worry too much - CoolerMaster do make some very nice budget cases and coincidentally (not like we badgered you into it ) you've selected one. Win.

The PSU is, oddly, both very hard and very easy to get right on such a tight budget. Its hard to get a really good model for such small amounts of money, but given the budget your part choices just won't really tax most PSUs anyway so you have a lot more latitude in your choices than a more demanding build. The Tomahawks aren't uber and can't touch the quality of a "real" (made by Enermax) Enermax but its still a perfectly viable low-end unit. Same goes for the AcBel - its pretty mediocre, but by hitting ~80% efficiency ever its clearly made of sterner stuff than any truly, genuinely crap PSU. Given that low, low pricetag I'd say its probably the cheapest unit that you could buy without reservation.

Oh, off-topic but I did note you mentioned RaidMax in that list up there. Here's Corsair's tribute to them.

I think the word you're looking for is "owned"