I've built my own PC's since I first bought my own, Athlon XP 1700+, with amazing GeForce 4200, and 256 megs of ram, which I later updated to a whopping 512!
Right now I've got:
Processor: Intel Q9300, quadcore
GPU: GeForce 8800, 614mb. Old one was a 512 model, but it died, so I bought my roommate's.
RAM: 4 gigs
Mobo: I had a P5K, but it died, so now I've got a P5QLD.
It's two years old, but no real reason to upgrade, as it's still performs better than consoles, and most games are made for consoles, sadly enough.
Building the PC can be fun or frustrating, depending pretty much entirely on the case you've got, and whether or not your heat sink is connected to the motherboard with some goddamn flimsy-ass plastic niblets, that come off if you look at them the wrong way, but I digress.
I'd encourage people to build their own, all of my mates build their computers themselves, and some of them aren't really tech savvy at all. It comes a lot cheaper, you gain an understanding of the actual machine, I've never heard of anyone actually breaking the equipment, and you'll appreciate the thing more, once you YOURSELF have put it together.
