ShadyLurker said:
Their build service comes with the same warranty, and you get to pick your own parts. I picked a rather expensive case, but you could save money there. Otherwise I tried to follow their build guide (I did swap in a more reasonably priced cooler though). Edit: Accidentally picked a Green HDD instead of a black SSD (5400RPM vs 7200RPM) if you were to go SSD, you wouldn't need the extra speed.
For the same $1200, you can have basically the same build with an SSD if you so desire. Unless I'm missing something.
The pre-selected build isn't horribly overpriced or anything, but they've made some expensive decisions that don't really give you any benefit. The first of these is going for a Z68 motherboard instead of a cheaper P67 model (very small performance difference, if any, as long as you don't need onboard video or SSD caching). They've also used an expensive liquid cooler, that doesn't really offer any (non-visual) benefits over the much cheaper Cooler Master Hyper 212+. You didn't list a case, but I'm guessing it wasn't the greatest case ever made. You could probably drop down from the $100+ model I picked, and save $40 or so right there.
Basically, since you can pick your own components (or we could pick them, lol) there really isn't a reason to go with a pre-configured model. They'll build and test the rig either way for $50, and that comes with the same warranty.
