I tried to build a $500 rig to beat this $350 Machenike Ryzen 7 8745HS Mini PC - and I was unsuccessful

I tried to build a $550 rig to beat this $379 Machenike Ryzen 7 8745HS Mini PC - and I was unsuccessful I went on PCPartpicker to find a faster workstation for less but I simply couldn’t I am an avid bargain PC hunter. When I see a pre-built PC on sale, my first thought is usually: “Is it cheaper to buy this or build it myself?” So when I saw the Machenike Mini PC drop to $379 at Amazon (down from $400), I took it as a challenge. I headed over to PCPartPicker to assemble a rig that could surpass the Machenike’s specs for the same price-or less. That spec sheet is a tough one to match: AMD Ryzen 7 8745HS (Passmark: ~29,000), 16GB DDR5 , and a 512GB SSD . I thought it would be easy. I was very wrong. The reality check I didn’t just fail to match the price; I couldn’t even get close. By the time I added all the components, my “I’m-so-gonna-beat-Machenike” basket had hit almost $570 . (excluding the price of the OS license) That is nearly 50% more than the price of the prebuilt mini PC-and that was without adding the cost of a Windows license. Check out the breakdown of my best attempt to build a Machenike rival: Why this is an anomaly The math here makes for some depressing reading for hardcore DIYers. The CPU and the memory cost almost as much as the pre-built itself. The price of the RAM alone accounted for about 25% of my hypothetical DIY build . That's due to the massive DDR shortage crisis that's hitting the global market right now. Remember, my prebuilt doesn’t come with a unified warranty. A DIY build would still require me to diagnose any potential problems myself, and that excludes the opportunity cost of my own assembly time. At $379, Amazon isn’t just selling a mere computer. They are charging you for the CPU and memory, then giving you the case, heatsink, fan, SSD, OS, and motherboard for free . Oh, and some serious peace of mind and a few hundred minutes of your life back. My verdict I chose the Ryzen 5 9600X for my comparison because, at the time of writing, it was only about $22 more than the older 7600X and marginally faster than the 8745HS, at least on Passmark's synthetic multicore benchmark. But honestly, even swapping parts for older generations (like the 7600X) or scouring the used market wouldn’t change the outcome enough to beat $379. If you’re a builder, this will come as an epiphany: the current component market inflation might suddenly make DIY attractive only to the affluent. For the rest of us, buying this pre-built isn’t "giving up"-it’s the only sensible move that won’t hurt your pocket. The CPU Choice: Technically, I compared a desktop CPU (9600X) against a mobile CPU (8745HS). While the 9600X is faster, it was the cheapest current-gen option available to even attempt a comparison. The "Marginally...

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