[Mawr]

> and at that time the prevailing wisdom was to never buy a pre-built

That's still the case, and always will be — with a pre-built you're at the very least paying for someone to assemble it for you, so it's always going to be more expensive as a baseline.

Beyond that, the chance they've chosen good components and haven't tried to screw you over on less flashy ones like the motherboard and power supply is low.

That's not to say it's literally impossible to ever find a good deal. You very well might have. Doesn't change anything though.

[irishloop]

> with a pre-built you're at the very least paying for someone to assemble it for you, so it's always going to be more expensive as a baseline

Except isn't it possible that pre-built companies actually get better deals on hardware bought in bulk, and therefore could offset the labor costs with cheaper materials?

[nilkn]

I believe this is exactly what's going on -- they're buying parts in bulk, often months in advance, and locking in deals that a single consumer can't easily go get on the open market right now.

Hardware pricing and availabilty pre-COVID was pretty predictable and stable, which meant the consumer could extract a meaningful cost advantage if they were willing to do the relatively modest amount of work of sourcing components individually and personally assembling the build. Right now, though, some places like Microcenter appear to have a cost advantage that fundamentally relies on market and pricing instability and can only be achieved through deeper integration with the supply chain and bulk purchasing in advance -- something a retailer like Microcenter can do, but I personally cannot.