I agree. I've been building my PCs for years. I think many folks are unecessarily intimidated. It's pretty easy. Especially with NewEgg, a great company (no affiliation).
Yep, I completely agree.
I really only got into pcs in 2000 with my first, which was a sony viao purchased from circuit city. It was of course loaded down with pre-bundled software which I never used. The case was much too small, mother board was basic, bare minimum, slow speed ram and so forth.
I attempted to build my second pc with limited knowledge of what I was doing. I succeeded in building a medium speed gaming pc that lasted me for a while. I had moved from agp to pci-e slots with significantly faster ram, but I failed to realize that duo core processors were better than the single that I ordered. Eventually, I upgraded the graphics card to an 8800 gt 512 mb, then also had to upgrade the power supply, because I needed a 6 pin plug to drive as well as higher wattage than the stock power supply.
Basically what I learned with my second pc was how to work inside of the case without being intimidated. I also became more familiar with graphics cards and ram.
When I realized my single core proc was a serious bottle neck as far as gaming goes, I built my third and current pc.
Its a duo core 3.0g proc, 8 g of much faster ram (although I am limited, because I still use XP), and a 9800 gtx2 with slots for two more of those if I ever want to triple SLI. I have become much more savvy with my knowledge of parts, and can easily do almost any task within the case.
If anything goes wrong now, I can pretty much diagnose and correct the situation. I feel like not only have I been able to construct a Bare Bones pc that would cost a LOT of money if it were available at a typical store, but I am also familiar with all of it, and that knowledge allows me to see how inferior name brand pcs available in stores actually are.