Build your own computer or buy from Dell? (Part Two)

In part 1, we specified a pretty decent system from Dell for £2,459.56 + VAT. In part two we will see what we can get for the same money when we choose to build our own system.

In order to build our own computer to the same (or better) specification as the Dell, we are going to need the following components:

1. A Case
2. A Power Supply
3. A Mother Board
4. A Processor
5. Cooling solution for the processor
6. Memory
7. Graphics Card
8. Hard Disk Drive
9. Optical Drive
10. Sound Card
11. Speakers
12. Monitor
13. Keyboard
14. Mouse
15. Operating System
16. Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Business
17. Kaspersky Internet Security

This is what we have come up with:

Component Description	Price Excl VAT
Coolermaster HAF-X chassis	£112.50
Corsair PSU Professional Series Gold AX850 High Performance Full Modular 850 Watt Power Supply UK Version	£122.55
Gigabyte motherboard GA-X58A-UD9 LGA1366 XL-ATX	£340.41
Intel CPU Core i7 980x Extreme Gulftown 32nm 12MB Cache Retail (3 Year Manufacturer Warranty)	£680.95
Corsair H70 High Performance CPU Watercooling Kit	£68.08
Corsair memory 6GB XMS3 1600MHz DDR3 9-9-9-24 Kit (3x2048MB) RAM (£63 each x 2 = 12GB)	£126.00
Sapphire ATI Radeon 6970 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card	£263.82
Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 1TB 7200rpm 32MB Cache 3.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Enterprise Hard Drive	£86.45
LG 10x Blu-Ray BD-R/DVD±RW Internal Writer OEM w/ Software	£72.53
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium 7.1 PCI-Express	£70.00
Altec Lansing FX3022 black speaker system	£66.93
Dell Professional P2211H 22″ LED monitor	£148.93
Microsoft Digital Media Keyboard 3000	£19.00
Microsoft Wired Intellimouse Optical 1.1 White Win32 PS2/USB	£18.00
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit OEM	£128.51
Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010 English PC Attach Key PKC Microcase	£142.19
Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 OEM UK 1x User 1x Year	£15.78
	£2,482.63
VAT at 20%	£496.53
Total	£2979.16

Note: Prices and component availability will change over time. (Last updated 4-Jan-2011 to include VAT rise to 20%).  Some components have been updated since the original article. (Monitor Upgrade, New Graphics Card, Corsair H70 instead of H50)

This is a little over budget, but only because we substituted an Intel Core i7 950 CPU with the i7 980x, which is currently the fastest processor available. , and although this processor has a nominal clock speed of 3.33MHz, you can comfortably over clock it to 4.2MHz.

This is probably one of the fastest machines you could build and the only improvement I would like is the addition of 1 or 2 SSD drives.

The point is that you can definitely build a superior product yourself for the same amount of money that you would have spent on a Dell.

Have fun.

Build your own Computer or buy from Dell? (Part One) – Options Selected for Dell Computer.

Build your own computer or buy from Dell? (Part Three) – Build Videos.

Build your own computer or buy from Dell? (Part Four) – Components for Budget Builds

June 2011 – Build your own computer using Intel core i7 (Sandy Bridge) Processors

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