"...nobody with the intelligence to put together a top quality computer could be as dumb as these posts suggest..."
Putting together a computer these days takes little more skill than your average assembly line worker. The freakin' cables are even color-coded.
While it may take a certain degree of experience and research to seperate the cream from the cruft, it still doesn't require a CompSci degree to know that if you stick to Intel and ASUS motherboards, you generally can't go wrong.
(There are exceptions, of course, such as Intel's 820 chipset MTH issue)
Back when building machines was actually profitable (5+ years ago) on a per unit level, I assembled some sweet systems. Of course, I actually took the time to read and understand the white papers from the companies about every component, known interactions with other common components, read the API for the firmware, etc. etc. etc. to make sure any box I sold really was as solid as anything available. I researched everything down to the power supply MTBF, air flow inside the case...even the types of screws that were used. This was long before sites like Tom's Hardware, Sharky, HardOCP and the like popularized such practices.
In those 5 years, and having sold hundreds of systems, there has been exactly 1 system failure, and that is because the building it was in took a direct lightning strike. Yes it was on a UPS but those things don't do much against direct hits. Fried the UPS, as well.
The point is, the practice of 'building' computers is actually nothing more than assembly these days. If you can work a set of legos, you can assemble a computer.
My box building skills are now merely a subset of what I do for a job, though it is still fun to watch people freak when I reprogram a failed TX Northbridge from some forgotten dust-covered DNS server instead of just replacing the box.
Ahhhhh... the gool ol' days.
"...and for the record - Dell is not crap."
Oddly enough, they actually aren't. I've torn them down to the component level dozens of times, and for the most part, on a component-for-component basis, they are the best mass produced boxes out there. The now defunct Digital Corporation used to make the best workstations I'd ever seen, outside of a high-quality hand-built box.
When people ask me to recommend a desktop computer, I always tell them to get a Dell. For laptops, it's IBM.
