I exclusively build my own systems, except for laptops where I don't have the option.
I've done it all my life, except, well.. my first system was purchased as a sort of barebones already assembled product. ; A 386 it was, ahh those were the days..
So anyway, first off, OEM. ; This is a weird situation. ; It's supposedly only for people that are building their own systems.
Okay.. and if you're not building your own system the chances are you're working with a system made by someone else, be it Dell or whoever, and you're looking to upgrade the OS to 7. ; So you're not purchasing a new license, you'd want an upgrade, surely? ; Basically I don't see why you'd not purchase an OEM if you wanted a full copy and not an upgrade.
As mentioned, supposedly the OEM license means you don't get MS support. ; But come on.. how much support are they actually going to give you anyway?
I built a system for my dad last year and used my first OEM OS. ; It was kinda weird, with some sort of fine print about having to install it using some sort of weird process.. but I ignored that and it installed just fine. ; So.. I dunno what that was about.
That was Win 7, I'm using it too. ; I'm not wholeheartedly behind it, it annoys me in some ways.. but it's been a fairly decent OS overall so long as you can accept the aggravating ways that MS decided to say "from now on, THIS is how you'll be using your PC, we're not going to let you use it the way you're used to". ; It's probably not a good idea to go into details here, but.. ; at first it's a bit weird, you have to get used to the ways they decided to force you to change.
So about system building.. the good points are that you can make it exactly according to your desires. ; If you're feeling like you might want to add a bunch of extra hard drives you could get a motherboard with a bunch of extra SATA ports. ; I like good quality sound hardware.. if I wanted I could go pick up a reasonably high end fancy schmancy audiophile sound card that's supposed to provide better quality headphone outputs. ; I tend to go for large, capacious cases that have plenty of room to add new stuff like more hard drives. ; My current one is way too heavy, it's made of steel instead of aluminum, but darned if it isn't solid.
If you're not a techie this may not be relevant. ; If you don't have exacting needs this may not be useful. ; But for me, I really, REALLY prefer having motherboards that I've picked. ; For instance, my current one is good for overclocking. ; If you're not into this you don't need to do it, I'd advise you don't attempt it if you're not feeling knowledgable about it.. but in my case I'm running an Intel Q6600 processor, an early quad core model, it's stock speed is 2.4 ghz. ; I'm running it at 3.2ghz, and I achieved that speed increase relatively painlessly. ; That's a pretty significant performance boost, and I got it nearly for free. ; Except for the higher priced enthusiast motherboard and the need for a larger, higher performance heat sink.
The bad side is that it does cost more. ; In general when I've done comparisons it seems you can usually find a full system on sale somewhere for less than it would cost to get all the parts and build it yourself. ; I suspect that's partially because those mass produced systems probably use cheaper hardware. ; But in this case DIY usually doesn't save you money.
And there's the potential to destroy your stuff. ; Ya'know.. maybe you might not ground yourself properly and you might destroy your RAM or CPU. ; Maybe you might be clumsy and bend a CPU pin. ; If you don't get the head sink attached correctly you could.. ya'know.. burn out the CPU.
I'm not trying to scare you, I'm just saying that the potentials exist. ; I am NOT careful about what I do. ; I do my system building work ON THE CARPET, using no method to ground myself other than by touching the ungrounded frame of my computer case before getting started. ; This is not what you'd call the recommended procedure, but so far I haven't damaged anything. ; It's not like you'll blow up your CPU if you look at it crosseyed. ; But it's serious business and you do have to approach it with respect. ; I think I tend not to breath when I first open up the CPU and pull it out. ; I always get a little thrill holding the brains of the system, I imagine the sort of advanced technology I'm holding in my hands. ; And then I carefully put it into the CPU socket and lock it down so it's not going anywhere and breath a sigh of relief. ; And do take care not to touch the smooth metal top of the CPU with your fingers.
Installing the heat sink can be scary, but it's really no big deal. ; The stock coolers have their good points and their bad points. ; But so far I've been reasonably pleased with them, they install fairly easily. ; The aftermarket sink I use was a bit of a pain.
And otherwise.. it's just a lot of fiddly stuff. ; You have to mount the motherboard to the case, this can involve putting standoffs in the right places.. you have to get all the wires from your case and plug them in to the right places on the motherboard. ; It's a lot of fiddly fine detail work. ; Let's just say if you have problems with near vision this could be a nightmare. ; You have to plug lots of tiny little connectors into the appropriate pins on the motherboard, and check to be sure the polarity is right for the LEDs (if it's right they'll light up, if it's wrong they don't and you just do it over, no risk of damage). ; You plug in the main power connectors, and of course you plug all your components in. ; And THEN..
You push the power button and cross your fingers. ; It scares the willies out of me every time.
I should just wrap this up now, I'm probably making it sound like an imposing task. ; I honestly can't try to judge it, I've been doing this for too long now, it's too familiar to me. ; But it's not particularly hard, it's a combination of ability to follow instructions (which might be poorly translated from another language) and manual dexterity in being able to plug difficult things in. ; I've had some real issues dealing with enormous video cards and trying to get them into tight spaces.
Oh, one more possible down side. ; Having too many choices. ; If you go to newegg and you see the bajillion different motherboard options and wonder how you'll ever decide which one to use.. yeah, that can be a problem. ; I picked mine specifically on the basis of feedback from various enthusiast forums where people were talking about their preferred systems for overclocking. ; My board had some nice features and was fairly feature rich beyond just the overclocking.
If you have no such specific needs it can be a bit bewildering. ; Even once you decide what sort of chipset you're using and filter out the options so you're looking at only the boards that work for that type of CPU there's still a lot of options.
If you end up going with an Intel i7 chipset (I'd recommend it, although I have an advantage in that a local store sells the cheapest of the i7 CPUs for significantly less than you can get it for online, I have no idea why) I can tell you what motherboard I used for the system I built last year. ; I was quite happy with it, if you want features it's quite feature rich. ; It's well laid out, with the SATA connectors placed in such a way that they're clear of large video cards. ; So far it's been reliable enough, at this point I think I can recommend it to others.
