Prebuilt Gaming PC Integrator - Telegrams for Guests

No promises.

Moore's Law Is Dead

Hey guys, I was wondering are the glory days gone of the sub $600 first build that can game well, with a GPU? Another thing can we stop saying that memory is clocked at mhz when it is not, just sayin.....

Dr Forbin

Hi. Could you please stop saying GDR 6 ? ( or start saying DR 4) Thanks.

Lex Sanders

Hi Tom and Theo! Back in the mid 2000s I built and sold gaming systems and found that I had to torture test machines for 3-4 days to ensure the system was rock solid. These days I find I can torture the machine for a few hours to achieve the same results, have either of you noticed hardware getting more stable/reliable over the years or was I just being overly paranoid?

Thank you Tom for this opportunity and thank you Theo for your time and insights! What do you perceive to be the biggest challenge facing professional system builders in both the near and long term? Any crucial advise for new system builders who're looking to go into business? And when you're new, how do you reach out to a client base and convince them to take a chance on you? Lastly, do share your worst after-sales service stories! Thank you once again!

Abheek Gulati

Hi Tom and Theo, I’m curious as to trends for percent of budget that goes into each component. I’m sure GPUs as % of total cost is going up, but is that coming from other components specifically? Are memory or storage or CPUs being deprioritized?

rafa zaya

How often do you run into problems with pre-builts that were misconfigured by users due to poorly setup store pages on competitors' sites? I recently watched a video about a guy who accidentally got a Dell pre-built with an HDD as the OS drive and the nightmare it was to get a refund or parts to put in an NVMe SSD, and statistically, it seems like that should be a really common thing, especially with most consumers not staying abreast of what's going on in PC hardware.

Cleansweep

I've been mulling the idea of doing small scale custom builds locally for several years now, however the idea of needing to provide customer support to tech-illiterate buyers for things that really shouldn't be problems always put me off... What are some problems you've had to deal with and how do you make sure your business doesn't get bogged down on post-sale support?

qhfreddy

My question is about extended warranties. In your opinion, how should an optional warranty be constructed so it actually gives value to the customer, and how do you facilitate it after the point of sale?

Durmij

Dear Tom and Theo. Greetings from Switzerland. I’ve been building computers for myself and friends since the Athlon XP days and I know I probably spend more time building and tinkering than actually gaming. However it always surprised me how long it took for news to spread to the average gamer and for something to become the new norm. A “liquid cooled core i7” was still considered king when I had a ryzen 9. My closest friend accidentally bought a new 8 core 8 thread 9th gen at msrp more than a month after 10th gen launched. More recently for a friend’s budget build I chose a 10400F for 140 dollars and I got asked why I didn’t choose Ryzen at the time when they were all out of stock or overpriced! My question is did you see a sudden or noticeable shift in demand within high end gaming pc’s towards AMD components and if so was there a distinct moment when it happened?

Hell Jester

Hi Tom and Theo. This question is based on local observations where I live and is not a reflection on your store: How much time, money & effort goes into maintaining a customer-facing online store and transparent inventory system that attracts customers to your website? Does this give your a clear ROI? Or do you perhaps rely on customers using a competitor's website to research and choose PC parts and hope they will then purchase those parts from you if you are less expensive or closer to them? I was recently forced to build a new HTPC after one died and I spent all day selecting parts on website, then when I realized they no longer offered in-store pickup I went to another local store's website to order the same parts so that I could pick them up within the hour so that I could build it that evening.

Ryzza5

The steam hardware summary shows the 3090 has more representation than all of the Radeon 6000 series combined. Why do you think this is? Do you have a harder time finding Ampere or RDNA2 cards?

ishould

Why is GDDR6 Ram getting so GDDamn Expensive. Please explain it as though I were a moron. Cheers.

Tick Dickler

Hi Theo! Welcome to the show. My question for you is this: At my previous jobsite it was not too uncommon for me to see customers buy a pre-built and then bring it back in less than a month sometimes 2 because either the RAM was holding the system back or it had failed outright. How do you make you make sure that you get RAM that you are at least somewhat sure will last for customers and not add additional cost at a later date?

MelodicWarrior

Sup Tom and welcome Theo. Theo, do distributors set minimum quantity amounts when it comes to ordering GPUs? Also, to the best of your knowledge, where in the food chain do you think the biggest margins are gained on GPU sales for this overpriced current generation? Thanks for the constant consumption of content 🍻

Aguyinpa81

Tom and guest, why do you think we see poor quality builds from many SI's? Is it just that the bad ones make the news/reviews since DIY folks want to feel superior to prebuilt owners? Or is it because SI's know they can get away with lower quality?

(wertacus from the discord) How does a new product launch affect business? Do you see a steep drop in sales prior to gpu/cpu launches and what do you do to mitigate if anything?

Does he watch Steve's series on Gamer's Nexus about prebuilts and does he feel that his experience is the norm? (Reivec in discord)

Hey Tom and Theo, I have 2 questions. First one is, explain how system integrators buy graphics cards, cpu's, cases, etc from other companies in bulk and how the relationship is built. I own a small African and Caribbean store so I understand a little of this but I want to hear it from a technology stand point. Also my second question is was there ever a point that when you got a shipment of 30 series or 6000 series graphics cards that you felt they were so expensive no one will buy them. With the business I run I have gotten shipments of products, when I saw the final price and shipping cost I truly felt no one will want to buy this because it's so expensive

Kinihun25

In the retail market, we were recently seeing Nvidia aib cards marked up an average of 50% over msrp while AMD cards were marked up much more, 100% or more in some cases. Was this true of wholesale units as well? Was there any discussion with AIBs or distributors as to why this was the case?

B. Fish