Buying a custom built, OS-less PC online?

December 30, 2004 2:17 PM

I grimace to think of the possibility that this has been asked before, but I can't find it. I would like to buy a custom built, OS-less PC online. What are the best/most reputable dealers?
posted by selfnoise to shopping (13 comments total)

If you just want to select different processors, hard drives, video cards, etc from a list, and get an assembled system, I really like Dell.

Their Small Business Online Store has the "N series", which come without an operating system.

I bought 420SC with a 2.4GHz P4, 256MB of RAM (I added more later. Dell is expensive for RAM), and a 160GB SATA HD for $319 just before xmas.
posted by Laen at 3:00 PM on December 30, 2004

There's a zillion small shops that do this. In the Bay Area, Central Computer is pretty good. In Boston I bought a machine from PCs for Everyone a few years back that was good.

But thanks to my new machine, I'm now a huge fan of EndPCNoise. They build very quiet machines. More in my own blog entry.
posted by Nelson at 3:15 PM on December 30, 2004

Check out Reseller Ratings. I personally recommend Envision Computer Solutions for outstanding service and pretty good prices. And there's always NewEgg...
posted by onalark at 4:11 PM on December 30, 2004

I like mwave. Good prices, wide selection. We built my dad a computer from there this Christmas, and the price/quality for what we got was awesome. The 2ghz P4, Asus motherboard, 512mb RAM, CD burner, 80 gb HDD machine, in a cute silver minibox, set us back $425. The case/mb/cpu/RAM bundle was part of a barebones set and the burner & hard disk were installed by my brother in law. Everything arrived well packaged, on time, and no complaints here about the service. And, yay again on the price for such a decent machine.

My only bones to pick: If you pick out all the pieces and have Mwave put it all together for you, I think it will set you back something like $80 for assembly, which in my opinion is kind of pricey, and way too much to pay if you happen to have any geek friends who might be persuaded to build it for you in half an afternoon for a sixpack. Also, I don't totally love thier page navigation, and I think they could have a better interface for the build-your-own scenario. On the plus side, though, the level of information about the components they sell is very thorough, and no amount of fancy web tricks could beat that, I think.
posted by contessa at 5:04 PM on December 30, 2004

selfnoise: The best strategy is to open up the yellow pages and look under PC hardware or peripherals, then pick the company with the most typically Asian-Trying-to-Fit-In-By-Picking-a-Good-Sounding-English name.

For instance, "Lucky Computer" or "Star Computers". I realize how this sounds, but basically what you're looking for is a Taiwanese peripheral dealer. They tend to be the absolute rock-bottom in price -- so rock-bottom that they'll charge you less if you pay in cash. Their profit margains are about as good as any reputable on-line discount dealer (newegg, etc.).

When a friend asked me to build a system for her, I begrudgingly agreed, then followed these steps and found some inocuous retailer out on I-93 (in MA) near the CostCo. Anyway, I went in, knew what I wanted, was very upfront about wanting to buy all the components from them providing they would give me a good deal. They not only gave me a good deal, they offered to put the sytem together for me, free of charge. This was a friggin' godsend, because it meant that if any of the RAM was DOA, they could simply swap it out immediately.

A lot of places will offer services like this. They understand it's in both of your best interests to get the entire system from one dealer, and they naturally want to be that dealer.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:45 PM on December 30, 2004

Pricewatch has a listing for PCs without an OS. Each dealer is rated by their customers.
posted by airguitar at 5:49 PM on December 30, 2004

I'm answering you on my custom built, OS-less computer (well, it was OS-less when I bought it), so maybe that gives some weight to the argument. I bought all my parts at NewEgg. I did all my research first at Tom's Hardware.

NewEgg was consistently the lowest prices, but also consistently the best deal on delivery, customer service, etc etc. They had everything I wanted, no matter how obscure and each product was accompanied by lots of user reviews that were very technical. From that point on (about four years ago), I have purchased every computer related product I needed from New Egg. Delivery is incredibly fast, everything was always in stock, everything arrived packed very well, and they offer great warrantees.

For reference - Soyo P4S Dragon Motherboard, Pentium 4, Western Digital 120 G Harddrive, 512 MB RAM, View Sonic monitor. All told with all the components it was about 1100 bucks - and for that I got a system that was much faster, had much more memory, and a bigger monitor than if I had gone with an out of the box system.
posted by spicynuts at 5:54 PM on December 30, 2004

Custom-built by you, from parts, or custom-built for you, by the vendor?
posted by smackfu at 6:14 PM on December 30, 2004

Cautionary note on NewEgg's quality. I just bought an IDE DVDRW drive that shipped defective and was poorly packaged (causing the defective arrival??). I'm in the midst of returning the drive and looking forward to getting one that works. The process has been relatively painless so far and I hope this is just an aberration. I've bought previously from NewEgg and they have been great on price and timely when shipping in the past FWIW.
posted by Fezboy! at 7:21 PM on December 30, 2004

Custom built BY ME from parts. That's half the fun. Why let a vendor have all that fun. It's ridiculously simple.
posted by spicynuts at 9:31 PM on December 30, 2004

I use ArsTechnica's branded dealtime thingy (same sort of thing as pricegrabber), and have been happy with the places it's directed me. Often that's NewEgg, but I've bought from a handful of other places also, some of them apparently quite small operations, and have so far not had any bad experiences.
posted by hattifattener at 1:47 AM on December 31, 2004

dnuk built me a very nice, reliable machine some years ago and were helpful/understanding when i had a problem out of warranty and half way round the world.
posted by andrew cooke at 4:25 AM on December 31, 2004

gnd, in contrast, sucked big time - suggested a system, couldn't build it, and then started shouting abuse down the phone...
posted by andrew cooke at 4:30 AM on December 31, 2004