I'd say to build your own computer too. As said previously, the bit more you'll pay for it will pay off in the end with reliability. Also, you can go a bit under on things like HDD (500gb instead of 640) and other components to bring the price down a bit. Just don't skimp on quality. For Hard Drives, always get WD, Seagate, or maybe Samsung, but I haven't heard much about them. I always just stick with WD. For motherboards, try to stick to Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, or Asrock, which is just a subsidary of Asus. Just don't get some piece of junk brand like Jetway that gets terrible reviews. I'm not going to go through with every component right now, but you can usually tell by reviews whether it's quality or not. There are exceptions, though. I've got a motherboard by Asus that got awful reviews but it works fine. If you were to go with one of the OEM computers, get one with an Intel in it. In my experience with OEM builds, the manufacturer usually builds PCs with AMD CPUs in them to save money, and they put unreliable components in along with it. I've seen a Toshiba laptop that had two different model variations: One with an AMD Athlon ii X2 I think it was, and the other with a Pentium Dual Core. The Intel one had a WD hard drive, and the AMD had a Fujitsu hard drive. This is just with OEM manufacturers, though. If you were to build a PC with AMD, just keep in mind that AMD's been one step behind Intel since the Athlon 64 FX vs. Pentium 4 era.
