Building a new niche

Show me the money
Li agrees with Wei’s strategy, while the margins in notebooks are tough — especially at the lower end of the market, there is still a viable market for system builders in high-end notebooks.

“Gaming notebooks just released are even priced and have similar specs to a desktop. End-users can pay anywhere between $5000 to $6000 for a desktop notebook gaming machine,” he said.

Li said system builders heading into selling notebooks need to get ready for new product lines, with commercial and industrial products being the type of products they will need to sell in the next few years.

Synnex’s Ong said at the customisation level the local builder can play a role especially if they are going into the gaming PC area.

“These resellers need to be able to tap into the Quod-core solution area because of the need for fast internal processing in the gaming arena, a normal local assembler can make a quicker win to their customer,” he said.

Games, games, games
Kevin Hartin, A/NZ channel manager at Nvidia said the motherboard maker has noticed that the local channel is holding its own on the premium end of
the market performance gaming media centre.

“Personally I think there are emerging retail opportunities in built to order. If you go and knock on the door of Dell, one of its premium gaming machines costs around $6000 to $7000. This is where the immediate opportunities for the local builder are,” he said.

Systems builders could argue against the notion that PC gaming is dying out entirely in favour of console-based gaming, such as the popular new Nintendo Wii. Many, in fact, say that they’re seeing more demand than ever for custom-built systems designed for gaming, and some systems builders not traditionally in the gaming market are now jumping in.

While the volume isn’t extremely high, there’s a very high revenue dollar for a lot of resellers as people tend to buy at the high end.

Some of the gaming machines show what’s best about systems builders, because end-users want to personalise those machines to make them attractive to customers, with a new paint job or specialised cooling features.

Hoping to add a little more fuel to the excitement over gaming, AMD has unveiled its ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card, which it says boosts performance for DirectX 10 gaming and high-definition multimedia.

Hartin believes the size of the Australian market works to a reseller’s advantage because in the US, the components channel structure had deviated to become direct sales. “Distribution had been squeezed out of the channel model and small independent resellers are becoming scarce because box builders tend to buy direct. However it’s thriving in Australia because the end-user is still going to the reseller for parts,” he said.

In the IT industry convergence has driven products to become a commodity market, yet there is still an appreciation for customised machines.
Viktoria Kulikova, national marketing manager at Altech said there is still a deep respect for the components industry.

“The picture has changed and has become specifically focused, as there are different types of customers. Some people prefer to build their own machines and source products from various places, but there’s a vast majority of customers who want to invest in an all-for-one package. Whatever their needs, they are willing to spend top dollar to get the machine of their dreams,” she said.

“They are willing to spend top dollar to get the machine of their dreams. ”

Portable super computer
First there was the portable phone, then the portable media player. Now, say hello to the portable supercomputer. Nor-Tech, a custom-systems builder based in the US, has designed and configured a portable high-performance cluster for researchers in the field of fluid dynamics.

a building hardware new niche