undertheweather,
It is truly a rewarding experience building your first computer. It seems like a complicated job, but it is not as hard as it sounds. 10 years ago it was quite a task putting a computer together, but now there has been so much attention put to making computers easy to work on, that it is pretty easy to put a very high performance computer together.
When you build your first computer, figure it will take you 3 to 4 hours to assemble it. If you were doing it for a living or as a hobby, the build time drops to about 30 minutes.
If you would like to try building your own computer, let us know what you want to do with it. We can give you a list of hardware that will fill your needs and not break your wallet.
Take Care,
Richard