Here's my kid building his own computer a couple of years ago. Only three years old at the time, so he needed a bit of 'supervision'.
The pic of the little Tech is awesome. I got my kids involved in pc's in the mid 80's; only 1 chose to be an IT/Business Professional, but both are incredibly proficient with IT. My Son absolutely loved the 1st mod I ever did to our pc, because it brought the games to life in a big way. I had a silly cone speaker on the mobo and the sound was terrible, then I noticed a speaker cable mod in a audio pamphlet and decided to make my own audio cable. I crushed the speaker cone off the mobo with a pair of vice grips, soldered my negative & positive leads to the mobo, ran the RCA jack out of the back of the chassis, connected it to a "y-connector" and plugged it into a Kenwood Amplifier that was connected to 2 JBL tower speakers. Wow, I couldn't believe the sound of the shotgun blast from Doom.
Here's a quick copy of the pamphlet, and yes, I did have a powerhouse 4.77 mhz clock.
I doubt that very much. Try configuring a Dell/Alienware, HP, or Apple as closely as possible to your computer. Even if the prices were the same, the decision to build vs buy is still a no-brainer. :thumbup:
When I built my rig in late 2012, compusa (before they became tdirect) was offering an Sys PC (I think that was their house brand) for $2100; i7 3930k, 32Gb RAM, Dual Crossfire Graphics, 250Gb SSD and 2 2Tb SATA drives, Windows 7 64bit and more (keyboard, mouse). Granted, that system didn't have the equivalent mobo, identical selective components, CPU cooler or case that I used, but from a performance prospective, it was very similar to what I built. In fact, if I didn't get such a great deal on my components during a Black Friday sale, my build would have been $400-$700 more, especially with the other peripherals (backlit keyboard, mouse, thumb drive).
But, I agree that there's still a cost advantage to building it yourself as opposed to Alienware, ibuypower & the like; but, that's providing that you're already up to speed on technology and don't have to factor in the cost of consulting. Quite a sharp contrast from years ago though, when building it yourself resulted in a tremendous cost savings. But, it's still thrilling to put a rig on-line that you've built yourself, plus, it's much easier to upgrade and more conducive to future expansion.
Looking forward to pics of your new rig and a follow-up on the performance as it relates to meeting your photo processing expectations. Since I didn't see a CPU cooler on your build list, I assume that you're going to use your stock cooler. I ran the stock intel cooler on my P4 for it's entire life, never had a problem and even mildly overlocked the gigabyte mobo. I don't plan to OC this one, but I may tweak on it a little. Fact is, intel doesn't supply stock coolers with the i7 3930k. Would've been nice if they did, but I guess they just figure that everyone who buys that CPU is going to clock it.
