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It can be an educational experience building a computer from scratch. Building your own PC is a worthwhile project if you are a computer "enthusiast" (you should build at least one). Or if you simply want a machine you can look at and say "I made that!" then go ahead and build a PC from "scratch." However make sure you "count the cost" before you start.

Why NOT to build your own computer

If you are looking to "save lots of money" by building your own machine, I'm sorry to say that those days are long gone. The cost advantages that a big computer manufacturer (e.g. Dell, HP, Gateway, or Lenovo) has are almost impossible to beat (that is the "economy of scale" if you want an official sounding term").

Another example might help drive home the point: building your own car. It is possible for an individual to build their own car. The car they build (if they are skilled enough of course) might actually be better than a car you can buy from one of the big car makers, but it will cost the individual much more to "make" their car (on a per car comparison). The big company has factories, automated assembly lines, and gets a better price for their raw materials (because they buy a very large amount) - these factors all contribute to bring down the cost of building a car.

The same concept is true for the big computer makers. The most obvious example is the software price breaks Microsoft gives for large orders. An individual may be able to find a copy of Microsoft Windows XP for under $100 (which brings the cost of your $200 PC up to $300 btw). Add the price of a monitor (add at least another $100) and suddenly you are spending $400 for a machine without any additional productivity software, no warranty, and (more than likely) with lower quality parts than you would get from Dell or HP.

Why/How to do it anyway
Now that I've spent three paragraphs telling you why "building a computer from scratch" is a losing proposition, it must be pointed out that you can "upgrade" your machine and extend the usable life of your current machine.

I'm going to try and avoid the alphabet soup and number lists that are always associated with computer parts (they would become quickly outdated anyway...)

The parts of a computer:

Case
The "case" is the part of the computer that you actually see. There is a thriving "sub culture" of geeks (i.e. "hardcore computer enthusiasts") who "mod" their cases into all kinds of wild designs but that is a completely different subject.

CPU
The "central processing unit"

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