Building vs. Buying Desktop

Question

How much money would I actually save building my own desktop vs. buying one? I am leaning towards just buying one from someone.
What is the popular opinion as far as who to buy a desktop from?
I am looking for a decent machine that I can smoothly edit DSLR footage on and take advantage of PP (mercury engine, etc), AE, decent graphics card, ram, and hard drive configuration.... I am also looking for the best bang for my buck! (poor college student)
Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi,
thanks for the reply. i have always tried to be as transparent as possible.
Eric left out a good chunk of what what happens with labor. i think people have this idea we slap a bunch of parts together and ship it. here is a good look at how a system is processed and the labor behind it.
if we could do what most box builders do (remove the testing/installing/support etc) our labor would be much less.
in order of how it happens
Sales Rep (often the same guy who QA's)
Order processing
Parts pulled and put into the line up
System builder, on average a builder builds 7-10 systems a week (we have 3 full time plus others who can jump in) sytem is burned in tested/benchmarked
QA this is where hardware and software are installed system is checked for integrity, tweaks etc burned in again, benchmarked actual footage ingested/edited looped back
Shipping/receiving
Support
Repair (rare but it happens) about 12-20 a yr out of about1200ish
Building upkeep  (cleaning etc)
now to answer your post.
Marketing budget: lol there is none. word of mouth is by far the best advertising a person can have. i have never liked advertising nor seen it work very well. add to that we are not "marketing" people. we are computer geeks.
i spent a small fortune a few yrs ago running full page ads in a video editing mag. $3000 for the back page and $2000 for inside. i did it for 11 months i think maybe 10. it was the one and only time i ever did print addvertising and i wont ever do it again. the number of sales didnt even pay for the advertising. At best if was an exrecise in branding? (or bleeding money)
we come up really well in google searches (real not paid for) been down that road as well. used to spend $1000+ a month on google ads until i realized we were showing up in real searches at or close to the top along with the paid ones..
yet so few people find us.
The other side to this is i dont really want to grow this company too fast or for that matter too big. Big means you start to lose sight of whats inportant (the client) and enjoying your job.
Years ago i knew every clients name and often something about them, now orders come accross my desk (yes i see every one) and i have no clue who they are, what they do etc. its nice to grow but i do like that personal touch.
Our website is basically our advertisement. I am pretty much the one who does all that (you can see i am not the best at it) and i dont like doing "marketing glitz" (drool factor if you will)
i do have some very smart employees who are far better at graphics/photoshop/AE than i am thank goodness.. but have yet to really get them working at it.
on the front page there is a link "why Us?" http://www.adkvideoediting.com/whybuy.cfm
seems you missed it like like most do. i can tell as when i inform a client we will install your Decklink card and Adobe software (that you already own) for free they usually are shocked.
we have agonized over the main front page for yrs and how to present.. untold make overs since 98, had flash got rid of flash etc etc.
its hard to market to the beginner, to the higher end clients plus Govt/EDU and still show we sell more than just computers.. not sure we will ever find the right balance.
i do think of our competition for NLE systems we do have the best site and its easy to navigate.
no one has the system configurators we have with the options we have.
i have talked to a few marketing people and no one gets what we do! not enough to convice me to spend $
Credit card Fees: yeah its just part of doing biz. the average is 4% anymore. you know all those rewards cards you have (i got em too) well guess who pays for your rewards. it aint the bank!
95% of our individual or small corp clients pay by CC. the vast majority of Govt/EDU large corp pay by check/ACH and takes forever to pay up!
thus why the CC fees are not a straight 4% or higher. BTW card present vs internet/phone order sales the CC fees are double. we rarely have someone here in person.
more on marketing. we bought out a competitor for audio over 3 yrs ago. on that site he sold a product (very few options) vs our very advanced and often very overwhelming system configurators.
it was interesting to see how that site reached people that adk pro audio could not. we have now since shut it down. but there were definately 2 types of clients
one who wants to be told buy this and others who want options..
we have often talked about a dual site where you simply are asked do you want to configure a system or buy a pre built..
in fact at one point we offered that,  there was a buy button (basic default config) and the customize button.
very rarely did we get an order with the simple buy button..
one of the things i have been after Eric about for yrs is writing pages of why this over that and how to do this..
why more memory is needed for AE, etc,etc
(like he has any spare time).
as to the why is 32gig so much more, aside from the OP asking i dont think we get that often. it has to do with memory compaitiblity with X79 and 8 gig sticks that work are not cheap..
we use the same 8 gig sticks on the Z77. trying to not stock 2 types of memory..
sadly your post has touched upeon something that has driven us crazy for a long time.
Scott
ADK