There is a whole network of information that supports this gearhead culture - trusted editorial voices like Tom's, component retailers like CNET Shopper, and glamour sites devoted to lurid tales of extreme overclocking. (Overclocked CPUs are juiced up to run faster than they are supposed to. They also run hotter, which has given rise to a plethora of exotic refrigeration devices and folkloric experiments with liquid nitrogen.)
All this makes it harder to be a computer manufacturer. Because if you're Dell, now it's possible for people to run your configuration through a price comparison and find out exactly what that combination of parts costs, and whether there are less-expensive options. It brings a greater degree of transparency to the transaction, even if that person has no plans to build his own computer.
There are two arguments that computer manufacturers use to justify their value in this context. One is that putting together computers is messy and difficult - kids, don't try this at home. But kids (and adults) have been cracking open their computers for several years now to replace video and sound cards, hard drives and CD-RWs for burning all those MP3s they downloaded from Napster. So the "Wizard of Oz" argument is breaking down. A mist of technophobia still shrouds the CPU itself, but that's the last obstacle - it's only a matter of time before people figure out that replacing a CPU is easier than assembling Ikea furniture. There's only one way to insert these components. The cables are all color-coded. These days, it's more or less dorkproof. Your mom's not going to do it. But your teenager will. And with the economy slowing, people are more likely to upgrade for 200 bucks than replace a $2,000 computer. It's hard to argue with four-figure cash savings.
The second argument that bolsters the Compaqs and Gateways of the world is the idea that they support their products, that you get a warranty and it means something. The problem with that argument is that a) customer support is generally lousy, and b) most technical problems are not hardware problems. They're software problems, for which the computer manufacturer is not responsible. Installing Windows on a newly built system is a snap next to upgrading Windows on an existing machine, and for help with that you're at the mercy of Microsoft.
When it comes to drivers for video and sound cards, people who build their own systems may have a slight advantage, because the gearhead sites are more alert to glitches and faster to prescribe solutions. Last year, the editor of Tom's Hardware was the first to discover a flaw in the 1.13GHz Pentium III chip that eventually resulted in a recall.
