I can only echo what skuzzy says.
I had never built a computer before, though I had been inside the guts often enough with upgrades, etc, that I felt pretty comfortable. Skuzzy recently built a system, and posted his specs in this forum...I used that as a starting point, took a step down from some of his specs, and went for it.
So this was the first system I've ever built, and it was pretty much easy to do. The guys here were very helpful with tips ahead of time, and with references to other threads and web sites. It wa ssmooth as can be...
....and this system was about 2/3 the cost of a less powerful one from dell. (Incidentally, I found it is VERY hard to do apples-to-apples comparisons with self built computers and manufactured ones because most manufacturers cut lots of corners in the places you may not know where to look, like memory latency or motherboard quality.)
I had hesitated before this since I wanted the security blanket of tech supoprt to back me up; but after some bad experiences I realized that tech support was a waste of time, and almost always worthless unless you can penetrate the defenses sheilding the 3rd level guys. They were the ones who solved the problems in 30 seconds; but it took 40 hours of phone time to reach them. And, since guys with 10th level knowledge cruise these boards....who needs tech?
Anyway -- If you have any comfort with plugging in cables and memory modules, you owe it to yourself to consider a build.
