HaHa... My own fault really, but all of my components were good value -it is just that I could not resist the urge to upgrade on the way ( on the bigger and better route, HD, RAM, Vid/Sound, proc, etc) The final indignity was the £137 for an OEM Win XP, for which MS give no support at all, unless you pay them another few hundred quid. The machine turned from a major upgrade into something of a Rolls Royce. At least, the PC will stay viable for a long time yet and that must be factored into the cost as well.
Still not convinced that there are savings to be made by building your own from scratch though. A serious upgrade of an existing machine maybe, but there are some very, very cheap machines out there now, with an element of after sales support and no problems with conflicts or those other occasional, but time consuming problems that crop up if you roll your own.
Conan