Consult with us first. I see too many friends and others buying from pre-builts and getting screwed. I keep current knowledge of everything hardware and can guide you in the right direction. Even if you think you know whats up, run it past me. I may still be able to save you some money and time. If you have never built your own, we can help with that as well. @Solidflip bought his PC and we used Skype to help him build the entire PC, went well. Don't pay too much for parts and don't be afraid to build it on your own. After the first time, its fun, imo.
i cant vouch enough for army/vanity on this. I actually need another build soon and ill be going to them again about it. And they will help you build it, we sat in my room for about 1 hour and 30 mins while they talked me through it, and im an idiot.
There are several people in the community that can assist in suggestions on hardware and even some software to run to help maintain fan controls on your system to keep temps down.. You dont always have to buy an entire machine !
Inspiration to never buy an apple product. But yea, these guys are great. They've helped me with tons of issues and even sent me a GPU when a couldn't afford to get a new one.
Also a good website that can help is PCpartpicker.com You can pick out things like CPU or Motherboard and it will limit the selection of other parts to those that are compatible. It will also tell you the power requirements of your build so you can get a power supply with enough Watts to drive the system. but still seek help if you have never built a system before while building a PC these days is easier than putting together an Ikea wardrobe there are still a few gotcha's in it