Am I missing something?

[Louis Brown]

Whenever I've seen questions answered on TH, I notice that a lot of people tend to say that getting a custom built laptop is much cheaper than buying one direct, even when they have the same specs. I've tried this out on many different laptop building sites but I can never match the same specs or price as another one I might have seen on Amazon and the like. It maybe that I'm looking at all the wrong places but it would be helpful if someone could point me out a decent site that will build me more or less what I need. So this is what I need:

1. What is your budget? £500-£700 ($750-$1050)

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 15" to 16"

3. What screen resolution do you want? Not really sure, anything that's not considered awful.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? I'd say desktop replacement, power>portability

5. How much battery life do you need? Not really an issue

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)? Yes I'd like to play games like BF3 and SimCity on medium setting with a good FPS rate

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) Just general browsing, listening to music, document writing, multitasking is quite important

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? 500GB?

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. Anthing that isn't dodgy, maybe avoid Ebay

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? 5 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? Standard DVD ROM

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons. Acer, Dell, HP + the usual bunch. I'm not really fussed about brand also as it has a decent reputation

13. What country do you live in? UK

+If possible I'd like 4/6GB RAM and dedicated graphics if possible.

Many thanks for all contributions!

 

[ram1009]

I've never seen the posts you speak of but it makes no sense that anyone could build a single computer (or anything else) for less per unit than a company can build thousands of the same thing. I suspect there's a money motive somewhere.

 

[USAFRet]

I've never seen the posts you speak of but it makes no sense that anyone could build a single computer (or anything else) for less per unit than a company can build thousands of the same thing. I suspect there's a money motive somewhere.

With a prebuilt, you also have to factor in their assembly, warranty, profit, and other overhead costs.

Also, with a prebuilt, very often one or more parts will be lacking in the quality department. Everything else is good, but they throw in a bottom of the barrel PSU.
Building your own, you get to choose exactly the parts you want. Not what TigerDirect needs to get rid of this week.

 

[Louis Brown]

I've never seen the posts you speak of but it makes no sense that anyone could build a single computer (or anything else) for less per unit than a company can build thousands of the same thing. I suspect there's a money motive somewhere.

I've never seen the posts you speak of but it makes no sense that anyone could build a single computer (or anything else) for less per unit than a company can build thousands of the same thing. I suspect there's a money motive somewhere.

With a prebuilt, you also have to factor in their assembly, warranty, profit, and other overhead costs.

Also, with a prebuilt, very often one or more parts will be lacking in the quality department. Everything else is good, but they throw in a bottom of the barrel PSU.
Building your own, you get to choose exactly the parts you want. Not what TigerDirect needs to get rid of this week.

Right ok, do you thing US$1000 is enough to build a decent laptop?

 

[USAFRet]

I've never seen the posts you speak of but it makes no sense that anyone could build a single computer (or anything else) for less per unit than a company can build thousands of the same thing. I suspect there's a money motive somewhere.

I've never seen the posts you speak of but it makes no sense that anyone could build a single computer (or anything else) for less per unit than a company can build thousands of the same thing. I suspect there's a money motive somewhere.

With a prebuilt, you also have to factor in their assembly, warranty, profit, and other overhead costs.

Also, with a prebuilt, very often one or more parts will be lacking in the quality department. Everything else is good, but they throw in a bottom of the barrel PSU.
Building your own, you get to choose exactly the parts you want. Not what TigerDirect needs to get rid of this week.

Right ok, do you thing US$1000 is enough to build a decent laptop?

Sorry...I missed the whole 'laptop' thing...

Build a laptop? You can only choose from a few preselected parts.
Not 'build' in the same sense as you would a desktop.

Can you get a decent laptop for $1000? Sure.

 

[Louis Brown]

I've never seen the posts you speak of but it makes no sense that anyone could build a single computer (or anything else) for less per unit than a company can build thousands of the same thing. I suspect there's a money motive somewhere.

I've never seen the posts you speak of but it makes no sense that anyone could build a single computer (or anything else) for less per unit than a company can build thousands of the same thing. I suspect there's a money motive somewhere.

With a prebuilt, you also have to factor in their assembly, warranty, profit, and other overhead costs.

Also, with a prebuilt, very often one or more parts will be lacking in the quality department. Everything else is good, but they throw in a bottom of the barrel PSU.
Building your own, you get to choose exactly the parts you want. Not what TigerDirect needs to get rid of this week.

Right ok, do you thing US$1000 is enough to build a decent laptop?

Sorry...I missed the whole 'laptop' thing...

Build a laptop? You can only choose from a few preselected parts.
Not 'build' in the same sense as you would a desktop.

Can you get a decent laptop for $1000? Sure.

How does this look? >> http/www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-Ideapad-Laptop-Gunmetal-Graphics-Windows/dp/B00AXYAUL2

>i5 3230M
>8GB RAM1TB HDD
>2.5GHZ (pre-turbo)
>Nvidea GeForce GT 635M