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Is it FINALLY More Cost Effective to Buy a Prebuilt?

JayzTwoCents

299,692 views

Price remain out of control, however Pre-Built PCs currently don't seem to be as affected as individual components... so are Pre-Bulit's the way forward through this pricing apocalypse?

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00:00 Shopping Tips and Thought Process
00:29 Desktop Shopping Tips
10:10 Laptop Shopping Tips
21:02 Jay Laptop Shopping

20 Comments

@davorcaric3944 1 month ago

1:20 You telling the parents out there that we don't need a 5090 GPU for MS Word/Excel is an outrageous level of betrayal.

@michaelblacktree 1 month ago

Jay has his glasses on. So you know we're nerding out today. 😎

@tomasmardones111 1 month ago

bought all my parts in december last year, prices were already up but holy shit now they're insane

@Chakotay2222 1 month ago

What I learned from this video, if you are in school and want good pc that your parents have to buy join 3d modeling class so you can demand workstation pc thats cost 3000+ usd

@ivi_lDgaming 1 month ago

Definitely will watch a review for that laptop

@MaximusYeet 4 weeks ago (edited)

Was gonna build my own computer but I saw a prebuilt for $1k on TerraCore PCs with an i5 13600K, an RTX 5060 and 32GBs of RAM. They plant a tree for every PC they build and when I priced those same parts out to build the system myself it was over $1400 so I bought that same PC from TerraCore PCs for about $1,080 when it was on sale. Great value good customer service and the tree things pretty cool

@Angryrider614 1 month ago (edited)

Microcenter powerspec prebuilt 9800x3d with a rtx5080 for $2500 is really hard to beat anymore lol

@colonelklink53 1 month ago

I've been building PCs for myself, friends and family for years. I build enthusiast PCs for myself. Last year, Nov. 2025, I finally decided to buy a super high-end Origin PC. I got a Founders RTX 5090, AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X870E HERO, 64 GB RAM and 2 TB and 4 TB NVME HD. The price I paid to Origin was actually less than buying the parts myself. By the way, I've been very happy with my purchase.

@zgle 1 month ago (edited)

All these insane prices remind me of when building and buying PC's, with my Father back in the 80's, were just as insanely priced.

@BaseballGuy-w9q 1 month ago

My MSI prebuilt on pc part picker was $2200 and I bought it for $1600. Can't justify building my own pc for $600

@GabrielCooper-l5s 1 month ago

Jay and associates are my favorite flavor of tech youtuber

@guccimasterd8432 1 month ago

I’m no expert. Never built my own rig. But Costco has been having clearance sales on some decent PCs to make way for the 2026 holiday stock. I got an ibuypower pc with an rtx 5070, 9800x3d, 2 tb ssd, 32 gb ram, liquid cooling for $1500.

As I bought it they were bringing in the holiday models with the SAME SPECS for $2300.

@7rich79 1 month ago

I remember prebuilt desktops in the 1990s. They had lots of weirdness about them. An IBM or Dell or HP might have slightly different RAM slots, so you had to be careful you got the right pin number ram. Some had weird caddies for hard drives rather than standard 3.5" bays. Motherboards didn't always use standard power connectors, so you could end up having to buy original power supplies to work with your motherboard.
I really, really, really hope that we're not going back to the dark ages here.

@Yeet_Freak 1 month ago (edited)

convinced my dad to finally replace his 16 year old laptop for a new computer, during this mess. We did talk about me building him something and ended up getting him a micro atx Powerspec as it was the right balance of size and upgradability since he wants to do some projects with CAD during his retirement

@HTSHermsmeyer 1 month ago

I would love to see your review of that laptop, Jay!
I'm not in the market to get one myself, but it's always good to hear what's out there and how it compares.
Thanks for the video as always!!

@Mark-Lebowitz 1 month ago (edited)

4:40, PowerSpec pre-builts - I've liked PowerSpecs for years now. Their value proposition was solid even before memory and storage prices went through the roof. Micro Center makes PowerSpecs to meet many price points, their component choices are fine, they're easy to repair and upgrade since they're built from off-the-shelf parts, and Micro Center works cheaper than I do. Unless you're a gamer who's flush with cash and has very specific desires in components, or you just want to experience the fun of building a computer yourself, PowerSpec is very hard to beat.

@mikel887 1 month ago

My nephew wanted a gaming computer and something use for college. We went to microcenter and got a prebuilt (I believe it was the $1799 model shown.) I would have said was not enough 2 years ago. However in today I tell them it's 'good enough.'

@mwalker888 1 month ago

Yes please do a review.

@eve_of_the_end 2 days ago (edited)

I was in the middle of a custom dual loop build when the pc market got swallowed by datacenters.. im torn between giving up and either just facing the fact it'll take another 2-3 years to complete it. Kinda irritates me because i always wanted to build a showcase, crazy pc that i could be proud of. But at this point i might just sell everything and forget about it..