BYO or manufactured?

>         It greatly varies on what kind of pre-manufactured kind of system you buy.
> Don't go buying an HP Pavilion or Compaq Presario expecting to get anything
> near a quality computer (without at the very least wipe the disks and
> reinstalling from scratch, even then with their hardware, you never quite
> know...).  I tend to find most of them use sub-par equipment until you bump
> to the server class with quite the bump in price.  I've always been a byob
> person since being burnt a few times in my newbie stages by the best buy
> specials.  Shelling out the cash for something like a Compaq Proliant server
> is a whole different ball of worms, but you will pay premium and I can build
> a comparable system for much less cost, with equal quality and stability.

>         Same thing when you build a system from separate components.  Buying
> garbage generic ram from Frys usually yields to oddball issues with sporadic
> lockups and the whole nine.  I buy all my memory from Crucial or get Corsair
> sticks and never have issues unless I mix and match.  Buy brownbox Frys
> video cards (the ones you can never quite tell who exactly made them) and
> expect the same.  Building your own box and doing some homework will usually
> land you a solid system if you buy quality components.  As Bob said, don't
> cut corners - you get what you pay for.  If nothing else, building one's own
> computers usually tends to be quite an educational experience for most,
> especially when it's the first time doing so.  If you're in anything related
> to the tech field (or intend to be), I think it should be a prerequisite if
> you haven't.