Quote Originally Posted by bigbird View Post
..... Working out the cost of equipment I reckon they add 100% for building the rig.....nice job if you can get the work eh
But for any business, they have a lot of costs that they have to cover beyond the cost of the components, such as either buying or renting the premises, providing office equipment, paying staff, employer's national insurance payments, buildings and other business insurances, business rates, accounting and legal costs, phone service, power and heating, and so on. And, of course, they have to allow for problems with a percentage of machines and their legal liability in relation to such.

If you pay any company to provide a ready-built PC, you're paying for the service they provide in building and that includes all those, and other, costs.

And there'll be all sorts of costs (and therefore risks) that aren't at all obvious or predictable. I remember, a few years ago, having a long discussion with Elonex's then technical director, who was having nightmares getting consistent RAM products that worked across the company's product range. Memory type A worked in motherboard make 1 but not make 2, or worked in make 1 with BIOS revision x but not in the same make with revision y. Or they'd buy a batch of memory from a given maker this month that worked fine, but next month's batch worked in some kit but not in others. He and his team were spending vast amounts of time buying and testing all sorts of memory trying to establish just what worked reliably and consistently, because if you have to get a PC back from a customer and sort out a problem like that, you almost certainly end up making a loss on that PC. And all of that type of thing adds to the overhead that has to be covered by revenue from sales.

Dunno so much about "nice job if you can get it". Personally, I rather felt he was welcome to it.