this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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TBF there's quite a lot of time that goes into researching the right parts and the right shops to buy from, which depending on the person might be considerably less enjoyable than gaming and also requires more mental presence than many games.
Doesn't need to be. Pick a budget and your priorities, then bang together a shopping list on pcpartpicker. There's plenty of easy guides and which processor is best for each budget range. Yeah if you're trying to min/max it can take some time, but I just get the cheapest of every component (except SSD) and it's been great.
I always build my own PC. It's only relatively easy if you're used to the process, and even then it's still substantially more difficult than gaming, because mistakes actually have consequences and many parts can't just be sent back after you tried installing them.
You can just copy someone else's build on PCPartPicker. There are so many to choose from.
Sure, if you are certain you found one that is current with current availability and pricing and where none of the specific parts have shot up in price relative to their alternatives. I have literally build a dozen PCs over the last 20 years and it would still take me time to make sure I had an optimal build at a reasonable price, even if using someone else's build.
That's because you're trying to achieve "optimal", which is not a requirement if saving time is your concern.
No, but it is if maintaining affordability is, which is what the rest of us were talking about.
Great, and what do they do when they can't order a specific part?
That is right, they will still have to do research.
And afterwards they will have to pay someone else to put it together.
Or they can skip all that difficulty and pay slightly more for a box that just works 100% of the time.
To the average gamer, they don't understand anything of the hardware and will have to look up every spec to see if they are important or not.
Then they get a bunch of conflicting information, especially when it comes to Linux distros and which one would be the best for them.
And after an entire week of research, will end up with a bunch of parts that are still not compatible and a thrown away money because they bought stuff they didn't need or couldn't use.
Why are you insisting they add an entire other hobby just so they can get a slightly better deal?
Maybe it's how my brain works, but I'd have way more research to do about a pre-built than building myself one. I'd be worried about warranty and customer service, the build quality, are they using low quality components, and wondering where they are cutting corners.
The Linux distro analogy is a good one though. That's probably one of the reasons why I still haven't dipped my toes into Linux is that there's not an obvious way to go, and everything I read about it assumes this baseline of understanding that I sometimes have and sometimes don't.
Compatibility is not a real issue imo if you use the tools available to plan the build, such as pcpartpicker. There's only a couple compatibility things and they aren't too complicated. After you pick a CPU and GPU, it's pretty simple to get compatible MB and RAM, big enough power supply, and an SSD. There doesn't need to be anything more to it.
I don't really consider building a pc to be a hobby. It's really nowhere near as much work as people who haven't done it think, and it really isn't something you keep doing after it's done. There's not maintenance or things to play with all the time, at least no more than with a pre-built.
Maybe a downside is that tech support is up to you, or you have to pay for it. But you'll be able to go to a local spot of your choosing and will probably still spend less than you would on a pre-built.