The appeal of it to me was that I could optimize for price and performance, and not pay a stupid extra fee/markup that basically amounted to them putting it together for me. I don’t know if the places you order parts from now have slowly sneaked a few dollars here, a few dollars there until the prices are equivalent to the old fees, but at the time it was incredibly cheaper.
Yeah admittedly building still largely has the best price to performance ratio. This is why I have never been able to bring myself to buy a gaming laptop even though I really want one. Too many compromises for too high of a price.
Depending on what the next Steam Machine is like, and how it’s priced, I still might build my own again. I would only get the former if they price it really competitively. But if it’s too much, I might hold off on buying a new system all together until something breaks with all these price raises.
The appeal of it to me was that I could optimize for price and performance, and not pay a stupid extra fee/markup that basically amounted to them putting it together for me. I don’t know if the places you order parts from now have slowly sneaked a few dollars here, a few dollars there until the prices are equivalent to the old fees, but at the time it was incredibly cheaper.
Yeah admittedly building still largely has the best price to performance ratio. This is why I have never been able to bring myself to buy a gaming laptop even though I really want one. Too many compromises for too high of a price.
Depending on what the next Steam Machine is like, and how it’s priced, I still might build my own again. I would only get the former if they price it really competitively. But if it’s too much, I might hold off on buying a new system all together until something breaks with all these price raises.