eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 01:19:
My standard for building PC's is now less manual but still 100% custom, I simply go to one of the small PC stores that build PC's, give them my part list and they build it and test that it works right, I just plug HDD's in then and it all works fine. The only problem with that approach is that you need some decent advise sometimes, especially when it comes to cases and GPU (length, connectors, etc.) because I max out the HDD slots in a case, I have 5 HDD drives + DVD and they produce a lot of heat. We are talking without active cooling, these drives get to 50°C and heat up everything else.

Yeah, it is probably 20% more expensive, but I value my time I do not spend on building a PC entirely by hand much more than that nowadays ;p The OS setup afterwards is a pain in the ass anyway so I might as well approach that knowing that hardware wise everything works.

I would never buy anything from DELL or any large system builder though. I want to know who specifically built my PC. And I want 100% control over what PARTS are used, exception being the RAM, as long as it works and has the specs I want, I could care less what RAM is used. (I have 16gb)