PC manufacturers are not in business for charitable reasons. They require making a profit, so they are required to sell computers for more than they pay for the parts and the labor in assembling them. Considerably, actually, as they even require to support such costly operations as R&D departments, toll-free support numbers, and other stuff.

But PC manufacturers get huge discounts as they purchase parts in large quantity, right? Not actually. The world of PC parts is very efficient, with vey less margins whether one buys one unit or 100,000 units. A quantity buyer gets a discount, certainly, but it’s very small than most people think.

Mass-market PCs are cheaper not as the manufacturers get big discounts on volume purchase, but as they normally use the cheapest parts possible. Cost-cutting is a fact of life in mass-market, consumer-grade PCs. If mass-market PC manufactures can save some money on the case or the power supply, they do it every now and then, however spending some extra money more would have allowed them to make a notable better system. If compared apples to apples built system with a similar business-class IBM PC you’ll find you can make it at lower cost. On an average and all other things remaining same, one can make a midrange PC on his own with saving about 15-20 percent of what a big manufacturer charges for an similar top-quality system.