[Trumpcard]

Im not sure you know what pricewatch is. Its not a single company, its just a site that posts advertised prices of other companies, so I dont know how you can say pricewatchs 'support is awlful and no warranties'

Pricewatch is fine...

The warranty you get depends solely on the company you end up buying from, and I've never had any problems RMA'ing any of the parts I've picked up from companies off there.

And BTW, NEWEGG posts their prices on pricewatch, just like 1000 other companies do..

I agree though, newegg is a pretty good company... I've been pretty happy with them in the past, though their website leaves alot to be desired.

Actually, it's not cheaper to just buy the parts anymore.. Yes, dell have some integrated parts, but they disable as soon as you put a new componet in. I have a DELL PowerEdge server, 1st 'prebuilt'
computer system i've bought in 8 years, all my other machines have been hand built, and I couldnt touch the price on this full machine if I parted it together. Just the processor and motherboard alone would have cost more than the entire machine.
As soon as I popped in a new video card, the onboard integrated vid disabled.

You have to weight the pros and cons of each decision.

Prebuilt
PROS) 1 person to deal with for support.
Thanks to rebates/etc, price will be much cheaper

CONS) May be harder to upgrade.

Parted together

PROS) You can pick exactly which componets you want

CONS) Typically more expensive. You will pay shipping/tax/etc on each and every part
Support can be a nightmare as you have to keep track of each and every vendor you bought any parts from, and hope each has a decent return policy.

Upgradability these days is an illusion. Most of the time, the bus architecture changes so quickly, when you look to upgrade anything more than a video card/memory you are looking at a completely new motherboard/processor anyways, possibly memory. The new AMD chips (3000+) are already requiring a new motherboard architecture, so dont count on a machine being cheaper/easier to upgrade just because it's hand built.


Just some things to keep in mind, the decision is up to you..

As far as the price goes, you are better off buying from a large company that can afford to sell cheap. I had my own computer company for 3 years, the prices of DELLs, GATEWAYs, and eMachines came down so much that we could barely competitively build machines against them.

You have to decide which you want more, price or top performance, because you get one or the other these days.