Buying a new PC is something that some people dread, and makes some people rejoice.  In today's market there is such a wide variety of choice as far as computers go.  You can literally pickup a brand new computer for just a couple hundred dollars, as well as easily spend several thousand dollars on a high-end system.  However, people taking the time to build their own PC seems to be as popular as ever.

With just a handful of components you can easily put together a very powerful system for much less than buying its equivalent at retail.  With prices of items such as processors and RAM at very low prices, I think it's an option anyone who has some "mechanical" ability should consider. 

The last retail PC I purchased (aside from laptops) was around the time Windows XP was released.  I went and bought a nice new Compaq with a whopping 15" LCD and CD burner.  After a few months it just couldn't handle some of the games I wanted to play, so I picked up a new video card and popped it in the AGP slot, and I think that is where the idea for me to build my computers from now on started.

Since then I have built a couple of PC's, with the latest just being a few months ago after the previous system decided it didn't want to work with me anymore.  Luckily I was able to salvage a few parts such as the DVD burner which saved me a few dollars, and I was able to build a nice Core 2 Duo system for just a few hundred dollars.  The best thing is the old PC still has some working parts, and once I pickup a new motherboard/CPU I will be able to pass that computer on to my kids to replace their aging desktop.

So my question to the community is......do you buy or build your PC's?