Oh my, you guys are taking the car thing way too far. It was a figure of speech. The point is, nothing is hard if you already know how to do it well. Of course building a PC isn't hard for many of us.

panzarDo you think that 70 yo granny will know how to build a pc for her grandchild? ^^

Would 70 yo granny even know what a gaming pc is though?

How much bloatware will it contain? Pinata time!
:D

hatOh my, you guys are taking the car thing way too far. It was a figure of speech. The point is, nothing is hard if you already know how to do it well. Of course building a PC isn't hard for many of us.

It was a bad analogy period, because cars aren't meant to be assembled DIY, while PCs often are.

What skillset is required to assemble PC components together? Read the manual(s) and put pieces where they fit, making sure all is tightened properly. Components are designed, so that average Joe can do that with enough free time.

What skillset is required to assemble car pieces together to build a functioning car from scratch? Are there people in the world who can do that? Sure. Is Average Joe capable of doing so? Not even close.

That being said this:

"if'n ya wanna play, den ya gotzta pay !"

This includes both the cost of a properly configured rig, as well as the time you need to invest in learning how to build & maintain it....

If you aren't willing to commit to both of these, then you have absolutely ZERO business even owning or being allowed to use a computer in the 1st place.. :cry:

is silly too.

The entry level PC gaming market is about to be crucified by the upcoming consoles.

I do not see anything bad about this, if you can build your own go ahead do it. This is just a service they are doing and many take it. Because they know everything works when it arrives. Many times i have had issues with PSU and MB not working and ran out of money to buy a new one. This wasnin thenpast, lately everything works when you but it. But it can happen.

biffzinkerWould 70 yo granny even know what a gaming pc is though?

Yes, if she was asked to buy one, and asked for such in store :)

$699 for an i3 9th gen & a GTX1650 non Super is asking a little bit too much. Heck, even a PC shop could build a better system that has better airflow, better overall quality parts for less money & still beat this cookie-cutter of a pre-built system.

Forgot to mention it earlier but this is the price bracket where every penny counts - it's budget for a reason - so all the more incentive to build your box yourself if it means you can save another $100.

Fry178you do realize there are lots of ppl on this planet that either make more money/hour, and/or will use the "saved" time not doing things like building a pc, doing oil change themselves?
why would i waste about 1h (purchase parts, jack up car etc) to that, if i can pay someone 30-50$ to do it for me, while i work for 1h, making +100$.

Bad example: If I go to the dealership (or local car shop), get an Uber to my work, then uber-back to the dealership after hours to pickup my car, it would have cost more time / effort than just me doing the oil change / tire rotation in my garage. Its only 20-minutes to change oil and rotate tires. I get my shirt and pants dirty while doing so, but I make sure to wear bad clothes, and shower afterwards.

Besides, last time I sent my car to a local car shop (close to work), they overtorqued my tires to the point where I had to replace a my wheel-locks. And no, I wasn't going to give that shop more of my money for their mistake. Ended up costing me 4 hours to get a freaking oil-change + tire rotation instead of just the 20-minutes I do by myself. The money is peanuts, but the time costs are real when other people screw up your car. I'd probably spend the extra money and go to the dealership if I was ever to get someone else to touch my car again.

And by default, they pour in low-quality conventional oil. You gotta upgrade to synthetic oil (and in many cases, its synthetic-blend instead of pure synthetic). Asking them to ensure a proper full synthetic oil change vs a synthetic blend (etc. etc.) is a hassle compared to just buying synthetic oil and pouring it in myself.

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Its a similar issue with building a PC for me. I want a decent SSD with NVMe, a decent graphics card, an efficient power supply that can handle upgrades to future computers, etc. etc. By the time I'm done researching what parts I want, its faster if I build the PC myself than buying a premade one.

Premades are great for people who don't want to put in the effort into researching parts. But I'm a technology-nerd, I'm very interested in those details.

only in america are ppl told to come in for tire rotation (and most charge them money).

A front-wheel drive will have more tire-wear on the front tires. Brakes also shift the weight of the car forward (due to momentum), wearing out the front tires slightly more. Finally, American highways are designed with far more right-turns than left turns (the shear number of cloverleafs around here is outstanding). As such, the left-tires (the "outside" tire on a right-turn) wears out slightly more than the right tires.

Without rotating tires, your front left tire will die thousands of miles before your rear right tire under typical American (ie: highway driving with too many right-turns) scenarios.

I'd imagine that European roads are more balanced with maybe fewer highways? I don't really know. But American roads pretty much take a toll on the front-left tire, far more than other tires.

Nephilim666The entry level PC gaming market is about to be crucified by the upcoming consoles.

It's already being crucified by entry level gaming laptops, thanks to the hideous shortage of power supplies and decent low-cost peripherals at the moment.

For €589 (before tax) you can get something like a Lenovo gaming 3i 15.6" gaming laptop with a GTX 1650/10th-gen i5/8GB/512GB SSD - and that includes an AMVA display, keyboard, speakers, webcam, mic, and OS.

Let's say you can get a really cheap monitor, keyboard, mouse, headset, and grey-market OS for €90+15+10+15+10=€140. Take that away from the €589 and you have €450 left to build a gaming PC, and the PSU is going to be almost €100 of that (thanks, COVID!). Those prices aren't high end items, they're the 'nasty flea-market chinese crap on Amazon' prices. The nice stuff will set you back double, give or take.

I'm not advocating that laptops are better than desktops, but it's not hard to see why your average person might see a gaming laptop that will be running games within 20 minutes of unboxing as a superior experience to paying at least as much for some ultra-budget, chinese-brand junk and it not even being ready to go out of the box. It's certainly possible to build a passable gaming PC for €589 but you do need to value your time at zero, and you do need hardware-buying experience of where to find the good deals and which corners you can/can't cut.

Micro Center or any PC shops has better deals than all of the system integrator price of cookie-cutter pre-built systems IMO.