I think that the gaming PC industry and building your own system is a lost art.
I'm not sure if it's because we might start playing less games as we get older or if it's because some of the major games of past have stopped making PC versions, that most peple have moved on to dedicated gaming consules. To some extent, it used to be that you would skip the game consule becaue the PC could double as both your computer for school or work, as well as your gaming system.
As for building your own, I see that as really have slowed down. I remember when it seems like each new generation of CPU allowed you do something that you couldn't before. You had to upgrade your CPU because of something such as MMX or the program wouldn't work. Now, especially since the game PC market isn't as big as before, you can often just grab any computer made in the last 10 years and still do everything with it, perhaps just with the program running a bit slower.
Those prebuilt comptuers often had some of the crappiest parts inside them, espcially the ones built simply to be sold based on low price. Houston Technlogy motherboards, Cyrix processors, fake cache chips, Phantom Winmodems, Zoltrix sound cards, D-Link ethernet cards, tower caes that acted as sharp razor to cut your hands up while assembling (and didn't even include card slot covers meaning that you had to collect and save any extras), power supplies that would go "pop" while in use and go up in smoke were things that you could expect from many.
Back in the day, it was dual Pentium 1GHz processors wtih 1GB of RAM in an Asus board that I was rocking. The dual processors didn't really do much because back then, not many of the programs could take advantage of it. It was more bragging rights than anything else.
