My parents are getting me a computer as a graduation/birthday combo gift and are letting me pick it out inside of a price range (around 1,000-1,500). I was wondering if its worth building it instead of getting a prebuilt. I know it will be alot cheaper, but I've never done it before so I'm not sure how much work that involves. I have done a little work on my computer (hard drives/RAM/PSU) but I don't have any experience working with the CPU/graphics/mobo. I figure it can't be that hard, but I know that if you fuck it up its probably fucked up bad.

It was pretty easy for me, to put it together.

but all of my computers always had something wrong with them. like they were really minor, but something was wrong. and I never really got around to fixing whatever was wrong.

I built three of my computers, and.. I think.. I'm sticking with prebuilts from now on.

I don't really need a slick gaming PC anymore anyways.

I've always built just to have what I want in there. It isn't really hard at all, just a matter of plugging the right things in to the motherboard and screwing the occasional drive in.

I kind of already decided I was going to go with building before I posted this so I started looking for parts. Right now this is my list, feel free to give suggestions or point out any stupid mistakes I might have made. I'm looking at a smaller hard drive because I have a large drive in this computer I plan on switching over.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz
GeForce 8800GTS 640MB
GIGABYTE GA-N650SLI-DS4 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
NZXT Apollo ORANGE NP Orange ATX Mid Tower
Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Model KVR667D2N5K2/2G
PHILIPS Black IDE interface (ATAPI) DVD Burner
Rosewill 550W SLI Ready-ATX 12V V2.01 Power Supply
Western Digital Caviar 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s

Looks pretty good, I have my own brand biases (and I think that case is ass ugly), but it all looks like a good computer.

Replace that slow ram with this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16820231098
That burner with this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16827152079
That shitty power supply with this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16817104934
And I don't really care for the case at all, but if you like it I guess go for it. I'd recommend getting an all aluminum case though...they're lighter and they cool a lot better than steel cases.

I saved a lot of money on a case/psu combo thing.

Yeah but it's not good saving $100 if all you're buying is poo :(

Antec cases?

are they still poo?

No, antec definitely makes a good case, but their PSU quality has fallen in recent times :(

I remember antec had bomb ass psu's before.

not that I really knew what was good, everyone just said antec roxx