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Extreme Gaming PC Advice Needed
I was hoping to pick the brains of some hardware guru's out there for the purchase of my next PC...
2011 seems like it is going to be the "Year of Gaming" with so many titles coming out it is about time I retire my old PC andI was looking for a prebuilt system (and while I know it is cheaper to build my own I would rather have the warranty associated with a prebuilt) and could use some advice from the experts... Also I am looking for some guidance on whether or not there is something that may be coming out in the near future that may be worth holding off a few more months...
The budget is $3500 - $4000 my last PC (a 2002 DELL XPS) lasted 8 years (and still going) so I figured I can treat myself and can afford to do so.
I am looking at 3 companies:
http://www.digitalstormonline.com/
The digital storm seems to be the best way to go but it comes at a higher cost (even with the 10% promotion. I am almost convinced the other 2 are the same company but the dollar goes further with them but the reviews arent nearly as good.
Does anyone have experience with any of the above mentioned companies (or possibly another I havent looked at)
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
Comments
Before I started learning , what little Ive learned about PC's, I spent many thousands, on prebuilt and custom machines.
Knowing what I now know, if I had the cash, and were going to get a pre built, I would go Digital Storm, over the other two.
They use top bin parts, and have an up grade feature, that will let you keep your machine up to date over the years to come, while protecting your warranty.
To me these along with a warranty seem boons, providing one has , and prefers, to spend the coin.
Needless to say, one could do the same for much less, if one was comfortable building their own.
Also one might look at a local builder, however where I live, they seem to know not much more than I, well not really, they know more, they just wont DO it.
Ive fixed every machine THEY built, and later said was shot. They don't even update the BIOS. None of them.
You'd get a lot more bang for your buck by getting a $2000 computer every four years than a $4000 one every eight years. Though I guess with your old computer, if you're happy, you might as well stay happy until you feel a need to upgrade.
iBuyPower and Cyber Power PC are cut rate vendors. They'll give you the option to get cheap junk (which lets them advertise low base prices), or to pay more for something better. I'm not familiar with Digital Storm, but they look like a typical boutique vendor that will have their own special sauce and charge a big premium.
Some questions, though:
Have you considered building one yourself? I could help you pick parts out, and it's a lot more customizable if you can pick parts yourself and assemble them. The main reasons to pay someone else to build a desktop are if you're terrible with computers to begin with, or if you want to have tech support available. If you could fix the problem yourself if someone else unplugged your computer, then you could assemble a computer from parts if you had the right parts.
Next, how do you feel about reliability? Is it critical to you that the computer just work right without having to hassle with it, or would you be willing to accept a crash now and then and a significantly higher risk of parts failure (likely a few years down the road) in exchange for somewhat higher performance when it does work right? This affects two main things: the obvious one is whether you overclock the processor and video card(s) or not. Additionally, too much heat in too little space can also create reliability problems, so you may want to avoid some inefficient power hogs if reliability is important. This isn't as much of a factor in a desktop for most people, but a $4000 budget can get some really high-powered stuff.
Third, do you have any brand preferences? Right now, Intel has better processors than AMD at the high end, and it looks like it will stay that way for at least the next year or so. AMD (which bought out ATI some years back) generally has better video cards than Nvidia at the moment, though Nvidia does have the fastest single GPU card by a modest margin. AMD's advantage looks to widen soon, and Nvidia doesn't have any real hope of catching up for about a year. But if you strongly prefer one company over another, you can get something nice from either side.
Fourth, how time sensitive is this? Do you need to buy something new this week? Or would waiting a month or two be no big deal to you? AMD has a new video card architecture (Northern Islands) launching next month. Intel has a new processor architecture (Sandy Bridge) launching in January. Both of those will almost surely be superior to anything on the market right now. Further out, AMD has a new processor architecture (Bulldozer) launching probably around next summer. Nvidia is still working on getting their lower end Fermi cards out, so I wouldn't expect anything new from them at the high end for a year or so.
If you had a more modern system, I'd recommend waiting for the launch of Bulldozer and either AMD or Nvidia to release some high end cards on the upcoming 28 nm HKMG process nodes, as both will probably happen around next summer. But if you've currently stuck with a computer that is already eight years old, waiting another year probably isn't the best idea.
Fifth, how much storage space do you need? People who pirate lots of movies may need a couple of terabytes of storage. Personally, I've got under 60 GB of storage space in use, and could easily get that under 40 GB if I cared to. If you have no idea how much you need, then look at how much you have in use right now on your hard drive(s), double it, and you've got a decent estimate.
Sixth, would a really noisy computer bother you? Do you not care about noise so long as it stays reasonable? Or do you really want something quiet?
Seventh, are you keeping any peripherals? Or do you need brand new everything (monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, surge protector, etc.)? If you've got an old keyboard or speakers or whatever that you love, then keep them.
I'd also suggest taking a look at http://www.falcon-nw.com/
They have pretty strong gaming pc's for good prices. Start with the Talon PC and upgrade it.
Currently Playing: LoL,EVE, Rift
Future Games: WH40K:DM, Tera Planetside2
Past Games Ive tried:
WoW, FE, AoC, WAR, LotRO, Tabula Rasa,GW, and Many F2P games.
If you're certain that you want to go the pre-built route, I won't bore you with the advantages of building it yourself. If you're looking for maximum performance, a few things you should look out for when speccing a system out:
1) An SSD (solid state disk) for a OS/gaming drive, with a larger regular hard disk for general storage. Improves your boot-up and game loading times. The SSD should be identified so that you can tell what brand it is, and can look up what controller is inside it.
2) Minimum 4GB of RAM. 6-8GB is fine, but isn't likely to offer advantages for gaming purposes for quite some time yet.
3) A named power supply. There are some very good quality PSU's available, none of them are made by the pre-built system companies, so there's no reason to hide the brand being used unless there's something to hide.
4) With that sort of budget, multi-GPU is pretty much a given, but don't feel pressured. There aren't many games that a single high-end GPU won't run right now, and you'd almost be better off getting a single high-end card now, and upgrading in a few months.
As far as upcoming hardware, there's a bunch of stuff in the pipeline - both Intel and AMD have new processor architecture's coming out, AMD's got an imminent refresh/refinement in the works for their graphics cards, and there's rumours about a more powerful version Nvidia's GTX480 card. There's also a new batch of better and cheaper flash memory that will likely be finding it's way into SSD's.
But a lot of this involves waiting until the new year, so that will require some patience. Current CPU's are plenty for today's games, SSD's aren't likely to show any groundbreaking performance compared to what they can already do, and some reports are suggesting that AMD's new cards are going to start with the midrange, not the highend. So it's a question of minimal (practical) performance gains and a fair bit of patience.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
I'd reiterate that early next year would be a good time to buy your system.
If you are buying a pre-built for the warranty and service, I'm not sure if any of those companies are worth it.
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
"An SSD (solid state disk) for a OS/gaming drive, with a larger regular hard disk for general storage."
Whether that makes sense depends on how much storage space you need, which is why I asked earlier. For someone who needs 1 TB in total, sure. For someone who needs 100 GB in total, there's no sense in buying a hard drive if you're not going to put anything on it.
Also, none of the sites listed in the original post have the SSDs that one should be looking for right now. They all have Intel and Corsair SSDs, and some have Kingston and A-Data, but those aren't the brands to look for. Right now, the two best controllers are the SandForce and the Marvell ones. The Corsair Force series has the SandForce controller, but they ship with pre-release firmware and haven't been good at offering firmware updates in the past. SSDs have had enough firmware problems (often long since fixed in subsequent updates) that that's playing with fire. If a processor or video card dies, it's replaceable, but losing an SSD could mean that everything you had installed and saved vanishes, too.
"there's rumours about a more powerful version Nvidia's GTX480 card."
I don't find that credible. Nvidia would have to do a base layer respin of the chip, which takes several months, and there's no real hope of the end product being good when the basic architecture isn't competitive with what AMD launched two years ago, and for that matter, isn't really any better than what Nvidia itself launched four years ago. I'd think that they'd want to cut their losses and focus on the next generation rather than sink millions more into a lost cause and steal development resources needed to catch up next year.
Nvidia might do a press edition GTX 485 or some such, like ATI did with the Radeon X800 XTX-PE some years ago, but it won't be a real, commercially available card.
"There's also a new batch of better and cheaper flash memory that will likely be finding it's way into SSD's."
Also Lyndonville coming early next year, and Jet Stream probably sometime around then, too. I'd expect SandForce to have something new sooner or later, too, but their first controller isn't that old yet.
"and some reports are suggesting that AMD's new cards are going to start with the midrange, not the highend."
Barts (Radeon HD 6770) will probably come out before Cayman (Radeon HD 6870), but it won't be a big gap. AMD has drawn an enormous competitive advantage from modular architectures over the past two generations, and it would be shocking to see them stop now. Juniper was actually ready before Cypress in the Evergreen generation, but AMD held off on launching Juniper because they wanted to make a big bang with Cypress first. That's why Cypress was out of stock for so long, while Juniper had a hard launch.
There's no such reason to wait this time. AMD has a big hole in their lineup around $200, and they probably want to fill that with Barts, rather than leaving Nvidia to dominate that market segment with the GeForce GTX 460. The high end is less urgent, both because AMD already fares well there and because not many people buy $400+ cards anyway.
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Really, though, when to upgrade depends on when you need it. If you're playing games today that need better performance, then don't wait. If your computer works just fine for the games you play now, but you're thinking you'll need something better for a game that will launch in six months, then you can wait four months or so to upgrade. My guess is that with an eight year old system, you'll be in the former situation, not the latter.
I recently picked up a Maingear PC and am VERY happy with it and their service.
http://www.maingear.com/
Guys!
Serious thanks for all who responded! I appreciate all the feedback and I would probably be best suited to hold off another few months based on some of the new tech coming out.
A few things I am pretty sure about:
Intel chip
Overclocking
Liquid cooling
Quiet
I have had both ATI and Nvidia over the years so either one is fine.
I know I can build my own and probably save about 10-15% (maybe more) off the price but also read nightmares about dealing with DOA MB's and having to deal with RMA's (although reliable companies turn things around very quickly) I would rather be able to have the machine built and tested and then shipped to be w/o have to play PC lego trial and error.
Anyone have any advice in terms of components? I know SSD's are the way to go but can also be added later as price and technology improves. I am however a little confused as most I have seens are SATA II when SATA III is available but this may be my amateur confusion with these things.
Would anyone be able to recommend a good MB? I know that ASUS Rampage III is all the rage right now but that doesn't mean there isn't something better. Also the "Sandy Bridge" chipset was mentioned... does this mean that this chip will not be compatible with current MB's?
Thanks again for the responses!
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
Buying from a boutique vendor doesn't just mean you pay an extra 10%. More like an extra 50% or so. While parts that you buy off a site like New Egg can be dead on arrival, so can assembled systems. In particular, parts can be damaged during shipping even if they worked perfectly before they were shipped. I'd argue that there's a much greater risk of shipping damage for an assembled system than most individual parts, as the assembled system can have some large and heavy heatsinks hanging off of PCBs, while individual parts won't have that.
If you're going to go with liquid cooling, there's still the question of what you're going to liquid cool. The processor is the most common thing to liquid cool. Video cards draw the largest benefit from liquid cooling, as they put out the most heat. Liquid cooling video cards is far more expensive, though, in part because it's far more difficult than liquid cooling a processor. Liquid cooling a pair of video cards probably adds around $500 to the cost of the machine. Some people also liquid cool chipsets, memory, or hard drives, but that's just silly, and arguably even counterproductive in the case of hard drives, which actually work better in temperatures significantly above room temperature.
Don't be fooled by fake discounts from OEMs. If a part costs $100 to buy separately, they'll do things like have a nominal price of $200, but say they're giving you a 25% discount and only charging you $150. That's still not a great deal considering how much cheaper it would have been elsewhere. A lot of them always have some purportedly extra special discounts running, and often saying that they'll end within days. That's just to try to pressure you into overpaying for something right then.
The difference between SATA 2 and SATA 3 only matters if you have a part that is both compatible with SATA 3 and also can go faster than SATA 2 allows. At the moment, that means sequential reads on the Crucial RealSSD C300 (which doesn't benefit at all from SATA 3 speeds on writes, even). There are some hard drives that are compatible with SATA 3, but that doesn't matter, and such hard drives should actually be plugged into a SATA 2 port if the motherboard has both SATA 2 and SATA 3, as the SATA 3 port will steal PCI Express lanes.
If you're overclocking, there are really three different degrees of overclocking. One is a modest overclock, from people who want greater speed and are willing to risk a little extra risk of parts dying, but not a huge extra risk. Buying a modern processor and clocking it at 3.6 GHz with perhaps a mild voltage bump (if necessary) is an example of this. People who want a mild overclock should buy a factory overclocked video card, and not mess with it themselves.
Next is stronger overclocks, intended to push parts as far as they can go for daily use. This usually involves increasing the voltage by enough that the processor and video card are pretty likely to fail. If you're lucky, maybe you get a few years out of them, and if not, maybe they die in a few months. Pushing a Core i7 to 4.2 GHz and 1.45 V would be an example of this. So would clocking an AMD card at 1 GHz or pushing a GF100 card (GeForce GTX 465 and higher) to 800 GHz, either of which would probably take significant extra voltage. If a card isn't designed with extra power connectors, that would mean running power connectors out of spec, which can be dangerous in its own right.
The third degree of overclocking is to try to set some sort of benchmarking record. This often uses exotic cooling systems such as liquid nitrogen, and pushes parts far beyond what is reasonable for daily use. I don't think that this is what you had in mind.
As I see it, you've got three real choices on when to buy. One is to buy now and not wait. A second is to wait for AMD's upcoming "Cayman" chip, probably branded as Radeon HD 6870, and buy that when it launches. That's probably coming around November. It's possible that "Cayman" is the wrong chip, as AMD isn't talking publicly about it, and pre-release rumors are a mix of leaked information, leaked misinformation, hoaxes, and educated guesses. Regardless, I mean the top single-GPU chip in AMD's upcoming Northern Islands generation, which they're rumored to officially announce in mid-October. The third option is to wait for Sandy Bridge to launch in January. I wouldn't recommend waiting longer than that, as it would probably be another six months or so before anything that matters launches after that. Bulldozer may or may not outperform Sandy Bridge, and the 28 nm video cards could easily be greatly delayed until fall or even 2012.
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What you should buy:
Processor:
If you're going to wait for Sandy Bridge, then you probably want a Core i7 2600K. The K means it's unlocked so you can overclock it. Intel is apparently implementing various things for Sandy Bridge to make it so you can't buy a cheap processor and give it a huge overclock, so if you want a big overclock, you'll have to buy their top bin. I'd expect Intel to charge somewhere in the $300-$400 range for it.
If you're not going to wait for Sandy Bridge, then you probably want a Core i7 950. Ordinarily, I'd recommend a Core i7 870 over the 950, as it is a slightly better processor, but the turbo boost advantages disappear if you're overclocking, and on a $4000 budget, you're going to get multiple video cards, and need the extra PCI Express lanes.
Motherboard:
If you're going to wait for Sandy Bridge, then you'll want a motherboard with an LGA 1155 socket (not 1156) and a P67 chipset. If you're buying something now, you need an LGA 1366 socket and an X58 chipset. Gigabyte and Asus are the big names in motherboards. MSI and EVGA have some good stuff, too, though rumors say that EVGA's motherboard division got hired away by Sapphire.
If you want a name of a particular motherboard, then a particular OEM probably won't offer it. Do make sure that you get something with plenty of power phases to allow overclocking headroom, and two PCI Express x16 slots, as essentially all X58 motherboards have. Pick a motherboard that has two PCI Express slots wired for x16 bandwidth three slots apart, not merely two, unless you're liquid cooling the video cards. Having one video card block the fan of the other can be a problem.
Video card:
If you're going to wait for Northern Islands, then get two of their top single GPU cards in CrossFire. It's likely that the cards will be marketed as Radeon HD 6870. Presumably when AMD officially announces the architecture, they'll say which chip is which, so you don't get the wrong one. Rumors say Cayman is the top one.
If you're not going to wait, then you have a decision to make. A GeForce GTX 480 is a little bit faster than a Radeon HD 5870. However, it also uses more than 100 W more power at load. No GTX 480 on the market has more power connectors than merely one 6-pin one 8-pin, so the amount of power that can safely be delivered to the card is about what it will use out of the box at stock speeds. Overclocking that much further could be dangerous, and there's a decent case that the reference GeForce GTX 480 already has a pretty big "factory" overclock.
If you do get two reference GeForce GTX 480s in SLI, then you pretty much have to liquid cool them, or else they'll be very noisy and run way too hot. The Zotac Amp edition can keep the temperatures safe while air cooled. My guess is that the Sparkle Calibre series and MSI Twin Frozr II can do so as well, but I don't know. Regardless, two cards at 300 W each is going to be noisy if they're air cooled.
Alternatively, you could go with a pair of Radeon HD 5870s in CrossFire. Here, you could liquid cool them and easily overclock them at least to 900 MHz and probably 950 MHz. Alternatively, you could go with a premium cooler and air cool them, and they'll stay pretty quiet. The Sapphire Vapor-X, MSI Lightning II, Asus ROG Matrix, or Gigabyte Super Overclock should all be fine here. PowerColor and HIS have their own attempts at a premium factory overclock, but I'd avoid those. If you buy from an OEM, they probably won't let you pick out a premium cooler, so if they're air cooled, they'll be the cheapest air cooled cards they can find, which could get noisy and/or run hot.
Memory:
If you're not waiting for Sandy Bridge, then you should get 6 GB of DDR3 memory clocked at either 1333 MHz or 1600 MHz. It should come in a kit with three modules of 2 GB each.
If you are waiting for Sandy Bridge, then that will probably have two memory channels, in which case, the appropriate thing would be a kit with two modules of either 2 GB or 4 GB each, depending on whether you want 4 GB or 8 GB of memory in total. They should probably be clocked at at least 1600 MHz, though it's not yet known how much Sandy Bridge will benefit from extra memory bandwidth. If you use the graphics integrated into the die, more memory bandwidth would probably help, but you won't. Or at least you shouldn't. Intel integrated graphics are horrible, which is why you're getting discrete video cards.
Storage:
If you're buying something now, then you should get a 120 GB SSD based on the SandForce controller. OCZ Agility 2 or Vertex 2, G.Skill Phoenix or Phoenix Pro, and Mushkin Callisto are the things to look for. I'd recommend a SandForce SSD over the Crucial RealSSD C300 if you don't have SATA 3 easily available--meaning, without having to steal the PCI Express lanes that your video cards will need. AMD's 800 chipsets have SATA 3 built in, and I'd expect Intel's 6 series chipsets to do so as well, though the latter aren't yet officially announced, so we don't know. If getting buying a system that does have SATA 3 in the chipset, I'd recommend the Crucial RealSSD C300, with 128 GB of capacity. (Crucial's RealSSD C300 can work with SATA 2 as well, but when limited to SATA 2 speeds, is slower than the SandForce controller.)
If you wait a while before purchasing, Intel's Lyndonville controller or Indilinx's Jet Stream controller may be out by the time you make your purchase. In that case, whether to get those or something already on the market depends on how well they perform. That's pretty unpredictable, as the SSD market has had many stories of brand new products coming out that were supposed to be high end, but got destroyed by older products already on the market. New SSD controllers aren't worth waiting for, but if they happen to be out and you can get faster performance or slower performance (well, relatively slower, but still very fast) for the same price, you might as well pick faster.
And you really should get an SSD when you get the computer. Saying you can just get a hard drive now and get an SSD later is like saying you'll just get integrated graphics now and can get a discrete card sometime later. Maybe you do that on a small budget, but spending more than about $1200 without getting an SSD is ridiculous. Don't spend $4000 to buy a computer that is painfully slow.
I'm recommending the SSDs around 120 GB because the smaller ones lose a lot of speed. One big factor that makes SSDs so much faster than USB flash drives is that they can read from and write to many NAND flash chips in parallel. But they can only do that if there are many NAND flash chips there.
If you need more than 100 GB of storage or so, then you should also get a hard drive of whatever capacity you need. A computer will be quieter without a hard drive, but they really aren't that noisy. You can tell how loud the hard drive in your current computer is, for example. (It's the humming noise.)
Power supply:
You're going to need a ton of power, and it's critical that you get a very good power supply to protect your investment. If you're going with multiple high end video cards and then overclocking as well, you probably should look at a power supply rated at at least 1000 W or so. The Corsair AX1200, Antec TruePower Quattro 1200 (TPQ-1200), or Enermax Revolution 1050 or are all high quality power supplies that can safely deliver the power you'll need. Don't go with a generic high wattage power supply that won't tell you what it is. And if a company won't tell you what power supplies they use, then don't buy from them. Period.
Optical drive:
You should get a combo drive that can both read and write both DVDs and CDs. They're really cheap, anyway. There's no sense in getting a blu-ray drive unless you're going to watch blu-ray movies on it.
Operating system:
You should get Windows 7 Home Premium
Uninterruptible power supply:
You should at least consider getting a UPS to smooth out power inputs. A power supply drawing too much wattage from the wall can mess with voltages, too. How important this is depends some on where you live and how stable the electricity there is.
Case:
If you're air cooling the video cards, then you want a big case with lots of fans. Cooler Master's HAF series is well-regarded, as is Antec's nine hundred and twelve hundred. If you're liquid cooling the video cards, then you don't need much airflow, but you do need a place to put the radiator from the liquid cooling loop. I don't know how to set up liquid cooling, though.
Peripherals:
This depends on whether you're going to keep what you have or get something new. I brought this up earlier and you didn't answer.
Quizz, thanks for such a very informative response! I guess the first thing I should do is price out things on a site like newegg and compare versus digitalstorm and then evaluate whether it is cost effective to build or buy.
I do have a G15 Keyboard as well as a G9 mouse that I plan on keeping. My monitor needs an upgrade as well as speakers but I was not including those items as part of the budget anyhow.
Since my dinosaur is still plugging along I suppose my best option is to wait until the newer chipsets are available. I know the longer I wait the cheaper the SSD's seem to get as well but thats an add on item anyhow as well. I want to keep the "core" as up to date as possible.
I do not plan on any real extreme overclocking, I have never done so in the past but a mild over clock in the 10-15% range seems reasonable without worrying about keeping my computer in cryogenic storage. I do like the option of liquid cooling, hell if it works on modern automobiles why not a computer... I have looked intot he options as far as processor and also graphics card cooling which are the primary cookers in the machine.
Lastly if you happen to be in the NYC/Long Island area I can pay you to put the machine together since you appear to be both knowledgeable and competent. I guess I am figuring on Q1 next year.
Thanks.
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
Digital storm or Falcon NW is the way i would go if i had that budget and wanted a prebuilt.
I bought one from Ibuypower a few years ago and wouldnt do so again. I usually build my own but that time decided just to buy one.
Personally with that budget I would build one. Much better value IMO.But if you must buy one look at Falcon NW.
you can get nice overclocked pre-built systems (including custom water cooling options) from places like http://www.overclockers.co.uk/. Looking at the prices, there is not much difference from building the system yourself (at least in the UK anyway). Surely there are sites in the USA doing similar systems?
One drawback of Sandy Bridge that I should warn you about is that there won't be high end chipsets for the initial processors that Intel launches. If you pair two video cards with one, you'll have to run them both at PCI Express x8 bandwidth. In some games, that won't matter at all, but in others, it could drop your frame rates by 10% or so.
Just to throw out another name on companies that will build a computer for you, AVA Direct has by far the most parts options I've seen, so you could buy from them without having to give up on buying essentially whatever you want. Prices look cheaper than a lot of boutique vendors, too. I can't vouch for anything else about the company, though, as I've never bought from them.
I have done it all i guess:) built my own systems, bought prebuilt, and even had a local shop put them together from parts i bought.
Pre built with a good warranty are for sure the easiest. Any thing happens and you just pick up the phone and usually within a couple days either have a tech come out or ship it back to get fixed, depending on how much you want to spend for warranty.
Prebuilt with that type of warranty is also by far the most expensive route.
I always say to check the shops in your local area. Spend a bit of time in some and get to know how they operate. If you are lucky enough to have a decent shop that has been around for a while and intends to stay around, that is the best option. Just buy the exact parts you want in the system and get them all together and drop them off at the shop. Most will build the system for under 200 bucks, burn it in and make sure it all works as intended. Some may even work with you to order the parts you want for you for a bit more cash.
That would be almost as good as building it yourself, but not having to worry about any mishaps. And having a local shop to do any repairs that come along will be almost as good as the pre built warranty.
At the end it is just how much control you want to have on the exact parts that go into the system, and how much you are willing to pay for your time to get the parts and so on. Any pre built though, will have some restrictions on what parts go into them. But if you are flexible on that, and paying premium, then they are the way to go.
Many people simply do not want the hassle or worry of building their own computer, and that is OK.
If you are concerned about purchasing your own parts and building it yourself or having a local shop do it, look at warranties.
DO NOT buy OEM CPUs, they have no warranties. OEM DVDs and hard drives are ok. Just check with manufacturers for warranty information before purchasing. Also, simply because company X has a 5 year warranty and company Y has a 3 year warranty does not mean company X builds a better product.
Once you make a list of components stop by here and post what you have in mind and ask for further guidance.
Intel Core i7 7700K, MB is Gigabyte Z270X-UD5
SSD x2, 4TB WD Black HHD, 32GB RAM, MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning LE video card