for a home system, as a majority of everyone here is saying, build it yourself. it is not hard to do anymore.
I repeat: it is not hard to do anymore.
it used to be a lot more complex, but so long as you get a halfway decent guide and follow it properly you'll be fine. do yourself a favor though. come up with some basic schematics you want to fall into (hardware wise) and post it here along with your spending limit. you'd be surprised at the amount of insight you can get from the people of this forum. they can save you a great deal of change or advice for or against a certain piece of hardware...saving you a lot of headache.
if you're looking at obtaining machines for a business purpose, most people get a prefab machine for the warranty. dell is a pretty good company to do business with (on a commercial level I mean, I've heard not as nice things about their consumer support). I'd suggest against compaq systems. their desktops really aren't that great quality.
in addition to the gripes that other people have posted here, my main problem with prefabs are obtaining proper drivers for it. I highly recommend that the first thin you do when you get a prefab system is format the sucker. in my opinion, this is never done correctly in the first place and these companies load faaar too much shit in their original installs. not only that, and correct me if I'm wrong, but all installs from the factory are just ghosted images of a single machine...which is NOT the way to do it.
</rant>
I repeat: it is not hard to do anymore.
it used to be a lot more complex, but so long as you get a halfway decent guide and follow it properly you'll be fine. do yourself a favor though. come up with some basic schematics you want to fall into (hardware wise) and post it here along with your spending limit. you'd be surprised at the amount of insight you can get from the people of this forum. they can save you a great deal of change or advice for or against a certain piece of hardware...saving you a lot of headache.
if you're looking at obtaining machines for a business purpose, most people get a prefab machine for the warranty. dell is a pretty good company to do business with (on a commercial level I mean, I've heard not as nice things about their consumer support). I'd suggest against compaq systems. their desktops really aren't that great quality.
in addition to the gripes that other people have posted here, my main problem with prefabs are obtaining proper drivers for it. I highly recommend that the first thin you do when you get a prefab system is format the sucker. in my opinion, this is never done correctly in the first place and these companies load faaar too much shit in their original installs. not only that, and correct me if I'm wrong, but all installs from the factory are just ghosted images of a single machine...which is NOT the way to do it.
</rant>