[BrianG]

Those prebuilts do skimp on some things. Usually, harddrive capacityis fine, and CPU and memory components are great for office apps (word processing, spreadsheets, development), email, and surfing, etc - the main things people do with PCs. But the OEM mobos are usually watered down versions of aftermarket versions from the same company (very little to no BIOS customization), memory is not as robust (don't take more aggressive settings), use either integrated graphics (which used the slower system memory) or a weak graphics card, and have a puny power supply barely sufficient for the system as-is, let alone any future upgrades. But really, as long as the prebuilts have an available PCIe x16 slot for a better graphics card (and the integrated graphics is defeatable in BIOS), you can get the card you want and slap it in. Then, get a better power supply to handle all that load without sweating and you have a decent performing system for less than a totally custom built box. And if something goes wrong, just remove the added card and put the old PS back in and have it fixed under warranty. This is the route I plan on going next time around.

My current main box (Athlon64 2.2GHz socket 754, 1GB DDR, dual SATA 35GB 10krpm WD Raptor drives in RAID0) currently works fine for what I do, but I would like to play some of the newer games (mostly driving/racing) at decent framerates.