First Client Build Project!

[Pixel_Vision]

First off all, READ BEFORE YOU POST! I CLEARLY STATED LESS THAN $1000. I got $200. I had to deal with his old computer, dispose of it for him, which i donated to a shelter. Shop and choose his hardware out for him by his request. Build his PC. Drive all the way to his house, which was in Northern Californa, which i live in Southern California. THAT'S MY GAS I'M USING... Don't sit here and tell me I ripped him off. If anything I saved him a lot of money. These people must be fucking stupid or something. Anywhere else would've charged him waaay more for what services I provided my client. Don't sit here and fucking tell me I ripped him off, not in a long shot. STFU You ignorant fools...

 

So I own a computer repair business. This is my from my very first client! He basically had a really old Gateway. He's a music producer, so he uses his PC for strictly music. So he paid me for a custom build and labor. He basically doesn't know any about computers. So i helped him choose his hardware and picked out the hardware most suitable for HIS needs. So before you guys freak out and talk your shit about the hardware i chose for HIS budget and HIS needs for a computer, Let me clarify why i chose this hardware. First of all he uses his computer for strictly music software and recording. He doesn't even use internet for it, he had a certain budget of under $1000 INCLUDING the fee of my services, the hardware itself was about $670. The rest went to me for my services and pricing. So i had to go with an AMD build. he wanted a mini PC, but for the limited choices for a mini-itx build, I had to go with micro-atx. Here's the specs. I'll caption each picture. Hope you guys like it! I had fun building it, like I do with any build project!

 

Specs:

Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 Motherboard

AMD FX 4300 Black Edition Quad-Core CPU

MSI Radeon 7770 Ghz Edition

ASUS Xonar DG 5.1 Surround Sound Card

Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 Mhz 4GB RAM

EVGA Supernova Modular 750 Watt PSU

ASUS 24x DVDRW Optical Drive

Tascam US-322 External USB Amp

WD Blue 320 GB HDD

Thermaltake V3 Black Edition Mid-Tower Case

 

TOO KEEP THIS SHORT AND SWEET, I'M GONNA UPLOAD A COUPLE PICS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER!

I'll post a link to the full album on imgur!:

(Excuse the bad photography)

http://imgur.com/a/04R5l

 

My cat Rikka wanted to help me out with this build!

 

 

Let's begin shall we!

 

 

Hardware now installed.

 

 

Power supply in! Let's now connect the hardware!

 

 

We're done! lets fire her up!

 

 

In the dark!

 

The rest of the pics will be on imgur, just click the link. So overall it was a solid build, although the case did not allow ANY, and i mean ANY cable management. I did my best to tidy it up, but despite its lack of cable management, its a solid micro-atx case. However the pci brackets are made of that cheap, shitty, bendable metal, so it was hard to remove them to install the hardware, although what do you expect for a $40 case. But i did have fun building it! This was a pretty damn easy project, not my best work obviously for a basic build.

[Paralectic]

Could've saved money on the power supply to earn more money of it, but besides that it looks good.

 

Except the part where the SSD is there, .. there isn't any :-(

[ZetZet]

Micro-atx with atx case and 330$ just for the build? wow

[Rorgash]

why did you put TWO sound cards in the build? one internal and one external? sure he does music on it, but 2 different sound cards

[BloodWithIce]

The cat is the bast part imo

[WildTurtle]

I'm still amazed how you got a 50% mark up on a 700 dollar PC.

[paulsterio]

He doesn't even use internet for it, he had a certain budget of under $1000 INCLUDING the fee of my services, the hardware itself was about $670. The rest went to me for my services and pricing

 

How does one charge $330 to build a PC, sounds like you're ripping this guy off pretty badly. 

 

It'll probably take an experienced PC builder 30 minutes to assemble the PC as you have. .

[Pixel_Vision]

He doesn't even use internet for it, he had a certain budget of under $1000 INCLUDING the fee of my services, the hardware itself was about $670. The rest went to me for my services and pricing

 

How does one charge $330 to build a PC, sounds like you're ripping this guy off pretty badly. 

 

It'll probably take an experienced PC builder 30 minutes to assemble the PC as you have. .

 

I had to back his old hard drive up, along with setting up the os, install a BUNCH of other software, along with having to drive to his house and set it up for him. NOTE that i said UNDER $1000. Read before you post..

[Pixel_Vision]

I had to back his old hard drive up, along with setting up the os, install a BUNCH of other software, along with having to drive to his house and set it up for him. NOTE that i said UNDER $1000. Read before you post...

[Pixel_Vision]

why did you put TWO sound cards in the build? one internal and one external? sure he does music on it, but 2 different sound cards

One's for his speakers, the external one is for recording with his guitar and microphone.

[Pixel_Vision]

Could've saved money on the power supply to earn more money of it, but besides that it looks good.

 

Except the part where the SSD is there, .. there isn't any :-(

In case he plans on upgrading it, i gave him a 750 watt psu for more headroom... There's no need for an SSD. It's a basic build.

[Paralectic]

In case he plans on upgrading it, i gave him a 750 watt psu for more headroom... There's no need for an SSD. It's a basic build.

A basic build is better off with a non-overkill PSU and an SSD.

[maximilian4o]

I had to back his old hard drive up, along with setting up the os, install a BUNCH of other software, along with having to drive to his house and set it up for him. NOTE that i said UNDER $1000. Read before you post..

It's still quite of a ripoff you did there  <_<

[paulsterio]

I had to back his old hard drive up, along with setting up the os, install a BUNCH of other software, along with having to drive to his house and set it up for him. NOTE that i said UNDER $1000. Read before you post..

 

You're ripping this guy off fair and square. Let's say that you made $300. If it took you 6 hours (and there's no way it'd take you 6 hours) to do all that, you'd be making $50 per hour, without tax, heaps more than MOST professionals in the US would make. 

 

So yes, you are ripping this guy off. The PC you built looks fairly average. Your component selection was so-so. It would have taken any experienced builder less than 30 mins to build the PC as you did. It would then take around about one or two hours max, to backup, install the OS and other software, with most of that time being spent passively, i.e. you can do other things whilst waiting for the OS to install. 

 

There's no way you can defend charging $300 or more to build a PC for someone and set a couple of things up. Your friend doesn't know anything about computers and you're taking him for a sweet ride. If you go to a PC shop, they'll usually charge $50 to assemble a PC for you.

[SLOWION]

I'd love to build PC's for local folks

 

If I ever do now I know what I shouldn't charge lol

[imthewalrus]

I think the overall topic of building PCs for people is a bad idea because when things go toasty people get even toastier. But the build looks great, and don't charge people so much, I wouldn't even charge 50 dollars a build only takes an hour or so to do.

[ForsakenLive]

For music producing he doesn't need the Audio sound card, as there is no sound processing done in there. 

Getting him an i5 (not overclockable one), and a basic 1150 motherboard would have been the best, the sound producing software takes a big advantage of the single threaded performance you found on the Intel side. A faster chip gets him a faster job. There is no need for a dedicated GPU, HD 4000 graphics is more than enough, he can even drive several monitors to increase productivity. With a build like this, you need almost no power, a 350w branded CPU is more than enough.

The music producing software I know, tends to hog big amounts of RAM, he will probably need to upgrade at least to 8gb, and the SSD for OS and scratch disk would have speed up his work.

[Princess Anna]

The parts don't make much sense. Could of been done much better.

[TriBeard]

Yeah, for a music production rig I don't see the advantage of a FX 4400 over an 8350 or i7 something or other and a lower end video card. Music production, as far as I know, doesn't need much of a video card, and almost certainly not one that powerful. That is also a rather large markup for you. I've built a few rigs on the side over the years, and 50-100 was about all I got for me out of each build. a third or more of the cost of the computer for your fees doesn't seem like a way to keep customers coming back, but it's your business not mine. 

[TheWall]

As the others have said, you seem like a real jerk. You're taking advantage of the fact that he does not know anything about computers. You gave him a god damn 320GB HDD in a build he paid 1000 bucks for, and on top of that even for what you spent on it you could have gotten him much better parts and kept the same amount of money for your greedy ass. I've been ripped off quite a few times back when i didn't know anything about computers and it really sucked.

[DarrenP]

You're ripping this guy off fair and square. Let's say that you made $300. If it took you 6 hours (and there's no way it'd take you 6 hours) to do all that, you'd be making $50 per hour, without tax, heaps more than MOST professionals in the US would make. 

 

So yes, you are ripping this guy off. The PC you built looks fairly average. Your component selection was so-so. It would have taken any experienced builder less than 30 mins to build the PC as you did. It would then take around about one or two hours max, to backup, install the OS and other software, with most of that time being spent passively, i.e. you can do other things whilst waiting for the OS to install. 

 

There's no way you can defend charging $300 or more to build a PC for someone and set a couple of things up. Your friend doesn't know anything about computers and you're taking him for a sweet ride. If you go to a PC shop, they'll usually charge $50 to assemble a PC for you.

You'd be surpirsed what most computer Technicians make per hour. Most more than 50-60 an hour. 300 dollars isn't a far cry for what it would cost. OP is in the business to make money. Not to give some guy a build where he makes just over minimum wage. You all look at this from a i could build it myself stand point. OP isn't actually charging much. When you think of it to get a custom desktop you're looking 150-175 just for data backup and transfer plus setup. Plus about 100 bucks to build and taxes. That's 300 right there. OP is actually giving guy a pretty good deal. 

[TriBeard]

You'd be surpirsed what most computer Technicians make per hour. Most more than 50-60 an hour. 300 dollars isn't a far cry for what it would cost. OP is in the business to make money. Not to give some guy a build where he makes just over minimum wage. You all look at this from a i could build it myself stand point. OP isn't actually charging much. When you think of it to get a custom desktop you're looking 150-175 just for data backup and transfer plus setup. Plus about 100 bucks to build and taxes. That's 300 right there. OP is actually giving guy a pretty good deal. 

No, he's not. 

 

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-8700/pd?oc=ddcwgp1315&model_id=xps-8700

 

You can get a damn Dell with a warranty, 1TB hard drive, 8GB of ram and a haswell i7 for 949. That would perform MILES better than what the OP built this poor guy, and cost the same or even a little less as well. 

 

Or, the OP could have gone with this build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3u0ag

 

Much better all around performance, and I wouldn't even put that much of a video card in it, or maybe go with a 4670k and integrated graphics unless there was something specific this guy wanted the GPU for. He still gets about 150 or so in profit, and if he downgrades the GPU that's just more money off the top for him. People who do this professionally have to make money. I get that. But there is no reason to rip them off so much that later, when and if they know more about computers, they say to themselves "damn that guy really shafted me on that build." Build them something nice that will last, and the chances of them coming back to you in a few years when they need something better go up ten fold. 

[TheMuskr]

You'd be surpirsed what most computer Technicians make per hour. Most more than 50-60 an hour. 300 dollars isn't a far cry for what it would cost. OP is in the business to make money. Not to give some guy a build where he makes just over minimum wage. You all look at this from a i could build it myself stand point. OP isn't actually charging much. When you think of it to get a custom desktop you're looking 150-175 just for data backup and transfer plus setup. Plus about 100 bucks to build and taxes. That's 300 right there. OP is actually giving guy a pretty good deal. 

it's stretch.. A new freelance builder should not charge anywhere close to what a large shop can. We don't know if the OP wrote up paperwork to warranty his work like most shops would, which justifies a lot of the cost. 

 

Also a lot of the parts make no sense for the price range. like others have said he could have done better with some prebuilts which should never happen

[SLOWION]

No, he's not. 

 

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-8700/pd?oc=ddcwgp1315&model_id=xps-8700

 

You can get a damn Dell with a warranty, 1TB hard drive, 8GB of ram and a haswell i7 for 949. That would perform MILES better than what the OP built this poor guy, and cost the same or even a little less as well. 

 

 

That's a pretty good deal for a pre-built, non-gaming PC!

[Jumper118]

that is pretty bad does he know hes giving you $300 to build this. even people building custom loops with titans and stuff don't charge that much. also that psu is way overkill considering it could power 2 280x's and an 8350............... for $1000 it should have had a proper sized hdd, 1tb and a 120gb ssd and 8gb off ram, and a 500w psu. even then you would have made loads