IMO it's best to make your own set in order to tweak the optimal performance/for a given price. This way you don't get scr*wed by the retailer who wants to squeeze in some lowsy/obsolete components.
I was lucky to upgrade (finally!) my system by buying parts in my friend's newly opened store - I got a discount for designing a logo for him.
Reinstalling the system was a pain - my old PC used to be just like a Mac - tweaked and optimized for my likes, running without major reinstall for few years! No kidding - I forgot how to install this Micro$oft sh*t
Apart from forgetting my old skills there was another problem - the new stuff is quite "up-to-date", but I didn't want to move from Win98SE to WinXP for all the tresures in the world! Yes, I'm just insane, all my buddies were telling me I'm crazy to do this, yes I know - I loose some performance, like HyperThreading technology... but I'm not ready yet - I'm pretty conservative, I like evolution, but not revolution... So tweaking the new stuff to old OS took me 2 days... :/I will move to the new sys someday (promise
), but I need free time and lots of patience/peace - and I don't have much of the latter recently... :/And as for now everything is running smoothly