Quote Originally Posted by rounser
My experience suggests sticking with an off-the-shelf machine, and perhaps enhance it in some way (with silencing stuff for instance). At least you're guaranteed those components will cooperate from the start.

I had a mate (who knew his stuff, it was his job) build me a PC from components, shop around for the best deal on each etc. It worked, and was tailor made for my priorities, but it was unstable (bluescreening too much) and after attempts to fix it, eventually we gave up on it.

So I bought an off-the-shelf to replace it, added the memory and PCI cards from the other machine, and haven't looked back.
im thinking of sticking on this road myself actually...just looking to get as much knowledge as I can so i can hunt out the right deals :) interesting reading so far if a little overwhelming! :)

thanks