Is building your own PC really a recent trend?

A lot of early pcs were kits people built, and I remember pc gaming in the '90s and '00s was also heavily focused on custom built machines.

Probably the last couple decades saw custom PC building decline in market share as prebuilt solutions became mainstream, but perhaps it's seeing a resurgence now that most consumers have moved from focusing on computers to focusing on smartphones as their personal tech hub.

Now that prebuilt PCs tend to be cheap and limited, anyone who wants something better needs to build the machine from parts.

Prebuilt pcs were cheap in the '90s and '00s as well. Premium brands like AlienWare still exists for gamers.

But in the 90s laptops were insanely expensive. :-)

Not a recent trend but online communities act as a catalyst.

Custom built PCs are a niche. The vast majority of people just want to buy a box that works.

> Custom built PCs are a niche. The vast majority of people just want to buy a box that works.

That is why I wrote

"(or often rather: let a good friend build one)." :-)

Seriously: In my opinion (but others might disagree) an advantage of self-built PCs over one that some company produces is that you know exactly what components are inside (in particular you can buy components in which you trust), which makes you far less dependent on driver support by the manufacturer (i.e. you can find drivers in the internet by yourself if necessary). I often had bad experience with driver support by manufacturers (expect for a few well-respected names).

Also lots of cheap PC manufacturers install lots of crapware by default, while your self-built one is a very clean install.

In summary a self-built PC often "just works" far better than a pre-built one.

You're forgetting the most important reason to DIY: money. Where manufacturers are happy to charge you 2x the price to double your RAM or put in a non-shitty SSD, DIYing can shave off a few hundred Euro.

Just as an example, over at apple.com, the new iMac comes with 32GB of DDR4 2666MHz ECC RAM. To add 32GB (64GB total) they are charging 960€, or 2,880€ to add 96GB (128GB total).

Looking on amazon or geizhals.eu (price comparison site), 16GB ECC DDR4 2666MHz sticks cost 200-220€ x 2 = ~450€ für 32GB. That means you can save 500€ on just RAM alone.

Same applies to SSD storage. And graphics cards. And CPU. And basically anything you could want to upgrade.

> Just as an example, over at apple.com, the new iMac comes with 32GB of DDR4 2666MHz ECC RAM. To add 32GB (64GB total) they are charging 960€, or 2,880€ to add 96GB (128GB total).

Specifically Apple is well-known for their expensive pricing for better optional components (which is often necessary to pay, since for many models you cannot simply replace the component (RAM, SSD etc.) by another one on your own).

Good point. I should have used e.g. Dell or HP as an example, they do the same albeit AFAIK slightly less absurd price-hiking.

PC gaming is growing and thats where mostly the trend for self-built PCs comes from and most of the growth in PC market. It is still dwarfed by Laptop sales though. As an anecdote, today i know hardly anyone who owns a desktop PC while 10-15 years ago almost everyone had one.

The trend around me is to see the shops that used to sell PC parts closing down, while consumer stores have 80% of their PC surface full with laptops, tablets and mobile devices.

> The trend around me is to see the shops that used to sell PC parts closing down

Couldn't this be simply explained by the hypothesis that people simply buy their PC parts mostly in the internet instead of a brick and mortar shop?

It could, but I am willing to bet that is even more niche than going to a physical shop.

The kind of experts capable of understanding if they are ordering hardware that is supposed to work together instead of blowing up in some form when assembled, is quite tiny.

I'm sure it's rarer than I'd like to think, but if I managed to figure it out as a teen in the mid 90's without much in the way of internet access or budget, it's still probably easier today.

Anyone with a modern internet connection and a bit more patience than money (or at least a willingness to learn) can hop on Reddit or PC Part Picker and get a pretty good idea of what is out there and works together.

Compared to the days of making sure you had the right number and type of ISA, PCI, and AGP slots, assembling a PC from parts today is a breeze. Shopping online keeps costs low and places like Microcenter are great for buying in person.

I only haven't built one in a while because my current 5-year-old workhorse media/editing/gaming/everything PC shows no sign of needing a full upgrade any time soon. Sure I bought a new GPU after a few years when I got bitten by the experimental VR bug but other than that, it was an afternoon buying parts and snapping them together, an evening installing software, and 5+ years of "just working".

The “enthusiast” segment of the market is small. Even then you don’t have nearly the choice in vendors you used to, so people mix and match parts from the same 5 or 6 vendors who’ve been there forever.

Cryptocurrency mining has kept the enthusiast hardware market afloat, I have a feeling...

GPU prices seem to be normalizing the past week, at least here in Europe using historical price data from Geizhals[0]. If things continue we will be back to "normal" 2017 prices very shortly.

[0]: www.geizhals.eu

Examples:

1070: https://geizhals.eu/?phist=1456548

1070 TI: https://geizhals.eu/?phist=1717563

1080: https://geizhals.eu/?phist=1449277

1080 TI: https://geizhals.eu/?phist=1587606