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Me too, I have an ancient IBM keyboard that would cost over £100 to find an equivalent of nowadays.
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Shopping for parts, grouping components based on specs... just not worth the hassle when you can get a good machine for a $1-2k. At least that's my opinion... of course, some people just like doing it but like Naerling posted, I'd rather be working on my own work rather than trying to figure out why the RAM is causing random power-offs (for example) or why the driver isn't working on Windows 7 (another example).
[edit] I should note that if you don't have the financial means, you probably do want to shop for everything and make sure you get the most bang for your buck. I did it back in college but not as a professional who makes a decent rate, I just have too many other things going on.
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I had a great experience way back in 2008; when I assembled a system from the scrap. I collected the working SMPS, mother board, HDD, Network card etc from the junk we had in college; as I needed a machine urgently for my project.After assembling I installed the os, the drivers, visual studio, oracle etc and finally got a running PC.. 
coding my world, compiling my destiny
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I keep telling myself I'm going to spec and build something from new parts, but I cant bear to throw anything away. I love making old stuff work with random linux distos just because, and I love digging through boxes full of cables and stuff and seeing what I can do with it. I still have a 2gb ide hard drive, no idea what to do with it except possibly tru crypt it and hide it inside a machine for no other reason than I can. Perhaps its because I remember the time when everyone said "1gb! How can anyone possibly need that much storage?"
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Why throw anything away? I use my Pentium 3 with Lubuntu. Still looking for a use for my 486...
Yaakov
What one man can invent, another can discover. --Sherlock Holmes
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Nowadays you have overwhelming choice of parts. I built new PC every 2 years due to high demanding games. There are so many factors you need to consider when building a Gaming PC. It is fun when trying to achieve best performing PC in your fixed budget, at the same time trying make it silent enough to use as a development machine. 
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At home I always build my own. At work for years I built every single PC in our department however with the reduced list of "approved vendors" the cost of building has gone up significantly so I now spend about 45 minutes on every PC purchase looking for the best deal usually that means getting the base system then adding my own upgrades instead of paying 4 times the cost of the RAM upgrade or 2 to 3 times the cost for the hard drive upgrade.
John
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I have got to the stage where a name brand box will meet my needs and I can afford to buy a new machine every few years. What a bloody relief, never again will I have to rat around the innards of a dammed halftower, compare part numbers and prices and hope like hell the bloody thing will boot when I have finally assembled all the bits!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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me too 
The custom machine are usually (or used to be) noisier than brand machines. I hate moisy PC!
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fabianocruz wrote: The custom machine are usually (or used to be) noisier than brand machines
The real reason I use name brand machines. The last white box I got sounded like a plane landing, drove me nuts!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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The reason I will never buy a pre-built brand (tower) is because of unwanted crapware that gets loaded along with OS, it used to take an hour to remove it off my laptop.
The reason some systems are quiet is because they have a modified OEM BIOS which cripples performance, limits your CPU upgrade options, in favour of dB levels. (BIOS power options will usually have fixed values)
But I haven't built from new for about 8 years, I just keep replacing/upgrading parts when they lower to a price I'm willing to pay.
"It's true that hard work never killed anyone. But I figure, why take the chance." - Ronald Reagan
That's what machines are for.
Got a problem?
Sleep on it.
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is a good and comfortable chair.
<big>If I sit, I fit.<br />
If no fit, bad code is output.</big>
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I always forget to add chair to my build requirements. 
Although I'm considering giving up on sitting down to code. It causes more shoulder and lower back pain than standing. 
"It's true that hard work never killed anyone. But I figure, why take the chance." - Ronald Reagan
That's what machines are for.
Got a problem?
Sleep on it.
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dusty_dex wrote: It causes more shoulder and lower back pain than standing.
This means your chair isn't comfortable.
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It's true. But also, I've never had (or used) a chair that was able to give adequate shoulder support without being irritating.
"It's true that hard work never killed anyone. But I figure, why take the chance." - Ronald Reagan
That's what machines are for.
Got a problem?
Sleep on it.
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To buy the parts yourself to build your own pc is much more expensive. Firstly, you can't get the hardware at the same prices than the guys selling it, get it for. You can't get the specials which they get. But if money aint an issue, I would rather put up a list of things I want in my pc and have someone build it for me. (even though I won't have a problem in doing it myself)
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence."
<< please vote!! >>
modified 15-Apr-13 4:48am.
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Half agree with you.
I have a good friend of mine build my pc's and yes they cost more than a pc bought in some shop. But they last longer as well.
My current pc is 5 years old (besides a small ram upgrade and a ssd is still the same as 5 years ago) and it still beats the crap out of most store pc's today.
I'v had 3 work laptops in the last year, none of them can even come close to my pc.
So yes they usually cost more (mine was 2000€ if you want to know) but in the long run I believe they are cheaper simply cause they last longer without having to upgrade everything (or buy a new one)
That and the simple fact that there isn't all sorts of useless crap in it makes me keep building them myself (well my friend builds them but ...)
I'v had store bought pc's in the past and none of them lasted me longer than 2-3 years and most of them started having troubles after 1 year (heating/cooling problems, hardware failing,...).
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That hasn't been my experience. I have bought parts from TigerDirect and it comes out a lot cheaper to build it myself.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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I also buy from TigerDirect and feel like I am getting it cheaper...however, by the time I add it all up, it comes out about the same. The real benefits for me are a totally clean system (no crapware) configured just like I want it. After 14 years, I still get a warm tingly feeling when a bunch of parts and a new OS come to life for the first boot! 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I believe this depends on if you want the base system (from Dell, HP ...) or need upgrades from that. System builders generally sell the base system with a thin margin but charge a large markup (I have seen 10X markups in the past) on RAM, video cards and storage.
John
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I agree with the comment on bloat ware pre-installed by manufacturers. I owned a couple of Sony laptops that ran like one legged donkeys. When I did a clean install of the OS they perked up. My two desktops are both home brew and they have options that are not available in pre-built boxes. For instance they both have multiple boot options in the BIOS so I can run any number of different OSs without complicated boot records or going to VMs. They both have dual quad core processors and tons of RAM so I rarely encounter performances issues (shame the drives are so slow). They also have my choice of anti-virus and my choice of document editor. Don't care about the cost. I would rather have something that does the job properly.
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Isn't this only true if you don't cut the same corners as Dell might? I mean, Dell is gonna give you a cheap, slow hard drive for almost nothing, but you would never buy that thing as a component, it's crap. Some of the stuff they throw in a Dell or Gateway is so cheap you can't even buy it by itself.
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R. Erasmus wrote: To buy the parts yourself to build your own pc is much more expensive.
Not universally true, and especially not here where I am.
R. Erasmus wrote: You can't get the specials which they get.
Like what? Pre-loaded crapware - trial versions of Norton and stuff?
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I know it's been said already, but I don't agree with you. I can build a much better PC for the same money. I may not get the hardware at the same prices they do, but they aren't selling it to you at cost. I'm betting most of that ends up in their pockets, not yours.
Of course, when you realize you can basically do whatever you want with it, it can become more expensive, but you're getting more for it. For example, I spent $150 on 16GB of "gaming" RAM, complete with cooling fans, but I could have spent a lot less, I just had a large gift card and nothing else to buy with it. My base computer was < $700, I doubt any pre-built PC in the same price range could have matched it. (I've put in considerably more since, but it was for upgrades I wanted just because I could, not because I needed them, like a liquid cooling system and a $500 graphics card).
There are other benefits as well, for example since you have a complete list of the hardware, finding drivers is easier. That might not sound like much, but it's not easy to buy a laptop with Windows 8, upgrade it to Windows 7, then find all the drivers if the laptop manufacturer doesn't already supply them on their site. With a computer you built yourself, you can go to the hardware manufacturer's site, and find everything you need, for any OS they support.
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Are you taking everything into account. ?
They're putting it into your pc. They taking the responsibility for it if they brake it. They're taking the responsibility for it if it brakes within the warrentee period, they're taking the responsibility if it gets lots in the post which happens quite often from here where I am. They're saving money at shipping large quantities. I bet you, if select all the components you want (by the name) find out all the prices of each of those components (what you can get it for) and tell them that that is what you can build it (the price of your components put together) they will better it.
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence."
<< please vote!! >>
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