How much for building a PC?

[rmdl51]

Hello Guys! I need some advice, do you know how much does a shop charge to build a custom pc if you provide all the parts?
Let's say a customer gives them everything, case, MOBO, CPU, RAM, HDD, Drives, Software, etc.
How much in average does a shop charge for this kind of job?
Thx!

 

[raybay]

Usually $55 an hour in most locations. For young people, we charge $35 an hour... so it takes an hour to build and then you want them to test it for several hours... for which the test will be minimal. The more complex the build, or more rare the parts, the higher it will be.
Most shops would much prefer to use their own equipment with which they are very familiar, and trust...
You might also try a first class neighborhood or school tech who might do it for the fun of it, and a six pack.

 

[Tmagic650]

Usually $55 an hour in most locations. For young people, we charge $35 an hour... so it takes an hour to build and then you want them to test it for several hours... for which the test will be minimal. The more complex the build, or more rare the parts, the higher it will be.
Most shops would much prefer to use their own equipment with which they are very familiar, and trust...
You might also try a first class neighborhood or school tech who might do it for the fun of it, and a six pack.

I've worked for six packs I'll biuld a system for parts plus $100. I recently built a system. Part's $600 not including keyboard, mouse, or monitor. The customer paid me $700 labor! He said the system would have cost him $1300 at Best Buy. I think I got an 18 pack of beer too. I work out of my home office. I will make some service calls

 

[rmdl51]

Ok thank you all for your input, now here's the catch, I usually charge 100-150 total labor for building an average system including a basic windows Installation. I wasn't sure if it was over rated or below rated, that's why I asked, but right now I have a person who is asking for a quote to install 15 units, he got scared when I say it's around $1,500 I'm actually not sure how long it will take me to install this systems, maybe it's better to charge by hour, but I dont really know how much I will have to invest because it's kind of far from where I live, and he want me to go to his place to build everything, it's around 40 miles far. I would like to hear your advice and opinions, thank you!!

 

[zephead]

you're looking at a 3 hour job there, unless something goes wrong (DOA parts, etc)

 

[rmdl51]

3 hour job?? to do what? install 15 units, I don't think so. Maybe you mean just put the parts togheter, but what about the software.

 

[Tmagic650]

3 hour job?? to do what? install 15 units, I don't think so. Maybe you mean just put the parts togheter, but what about the software.

If the 15 systems are identical hardware wise, you can clone one completely setup hard drive to all the other systems. You could install the complete hard drive in the first system and use a program like Seagate's DiskWizard to copy the files from the C to the empty D drive... 14 times. Software licensing is another issue. Are you going to arrange to get a license for 15 copies of XP?

A more realistic time frame would be more like 3 days. I can build a complete system and install the basic OS in about 2 hours. At this rate, to would take 4 days, banking on an 8 hour work day. At a cheap $100/day, that would be $400 for the job... very cheap indeed!

 

[rmdl51]

Right! Even an experienced person I think it will take about 20-30 minutes to install everything (1 unit). So, at 20 minutes rate, it will take about 5 hours just to install everything. Then the software, if computers are fast then I believe you're right, about 2 hours a Basic OS install along with drivers and let's say no problems, The purpose is to install all computers with the same Hardware so I'm also looking for a good Cloning Utility to copy all the contents from the first install to the other 14.
I definitely will not charge $100 a day, it's very cheap, I Think I'll give him two options, I will charge $750 for the whole job, or pay me by hour at $35/h, if everything goes smooth with no problems he'll get a good deal by hour, but if not, then he will be paying more by hour that for the whole job. What do you guys think?? is it a fair price?

 

[Tmagic650]

Yes rmdl51

you are more inline with reality now. You don't want to work cheap, but you don't want to price yourself out of a job

 

[rmdl51]

Thanks a lot Tmagic650!! Thank you all for your help!!

 

[Tmagic650]

Good luck with this and let us know how it turns out. Hopefully you won't run into too many problems...

 

[zephead]

3 hours for 1 machine, i apologize for making a hasty post

 

[rmdl51]

He he, It's cool man, No Problem