Custom made, preconfigured or self-upgraded?

Custom all the way.

I hate prebuilt crap.

when you custom build something you can get it exactly like you want it. That I like. And it's often a lot cheaper.

building a PC will 99.9999% of the time will give you a much better system for your money.

If you look at most prebuilt systems, on top of the brand markup, most of the money is put into components that does not benefit you in the goal of well rounded performance. Eg for most gaming PC's that are prebuilt, they tend to be around $1200 and will have a low end videocard

but if you build a system, you can pick a good CPU, memory, and GPU thats actually based on the performance of the hardware. Ps most overpriced computers tend to use some of the cheapest memory, hard drives, motherboards, and power supplies available that meet the minimum requirements.

(most prebuilt systems do this, they get ok hardware for the specs the average novice cares about and cheaps out on parts that they don't notice, then charge a huge price premium on the system.

For example look at a $800 precomfigured system at ibuypower.com You get 4GB ddr3 1600 memory (cheap cl9 to 10 memory), a ati radeon hd 6450 (the average laptop videocard is faster), that card wont be able to run most modern games even at low settings

and if you go into their higher end systems

http://ibuypower.com/Info/erebus.aspx

you will see that at prices generally reserved for top of the line systems, you are getting low to midrange parts, (and while you can customize them somewhat to get some better parts, it only makes the system more expensive)

if you are not buying a $300-400 computer then build your own, the cheapest systems that you will find at walmart are generally subsidized to a point where if you were to build the system your self, including the preinstalled copy of windows 7, you would spend about 30-50 dollars more on the system.

If you are going for a performance system then always build it your self, on average those $ 2000 prebuilt gaming PC's can be build for less than $1000 and actually get better performance across the board.

PS prbuilt performance orientated and gaming PC's are generally far more expensive than anything offered by apple. A mac pro has a $500-600 markup over building the system your self but a gaming PC has a $1000-1200 markup if you are going really high end

I think everyone would say custom. But there HAS to be a very rewarding feeling when it comes to upgrading an oldie computer to max spec and actually being able to use it.

Right now, I have just bought my computer. But I always prefer to custom build computers.

I love to custom build mine, and this allows me to upgrade and consider upgrades. I splashed out on a very high end GPU and processor, and cut back abit on ram and only had 4gb, and no SSD, i used my current 1TB hard drive. When the next paycheck comes in i can upgrade RAM and to an SSD. Building a pc also alows you to know computers better, and more likely fix them when they go wrong, with a pre built thing fuck knows, half the time you can't even replace the parts because there specific made for the job, and buying an off the shelf will overload the PSU.

Mike

another plus for building your own is simply when you decide to upgrade you can choose which parts to upgrade.

Custom built computers are for champs.

Prebuilts are for babies.