Ryan,
Just a couple of cents here and others have their pie too..
Building your own personal computer or PC has many advantages and a few disadvantages depending on the individual's point of view, interest or desire, aptitude, skill and resources available. Skill and aptitude will come with training and experience but interest has to come from within. Ask yourself, if it's something you are willing to undertake? (Well, only you can answer that...) If you are in the long-haul for this hobby including other gaming genres or life tasks (e.g. School work, social networking, video/audio entertainment, etc.) you think you'll be able to do better, faster and more efficiently than without a computer, then the more reason and motivation for you to buy or build one... Even some of us old timers who have been tinkering since Windows 98 or earlier are learning something new everytime RTMM is introducing a new offering...and the helpful RTMM team also learns from numerous troubleshooting issues its members post in here. It's a continuous learning, trial-and-error process. Practically everything in these times that need to or can be automated are now being run by computers and will continue to do so as technology is always changing. That's just inherent with what we are doing and need to do to fully enjoy our pasttime here.. But luckily, there are lots of references and video tutorials online, too.
Just for the sake of simplification, you see an apple pie baked by someone else and sold at your nearby local bakeshop, you buy and eat it and say to yourself it tastes a so-so and think it could be better.. So you do some research and read about recipes or cooking guides from the internet. You first experiment with your first baked pie at home and your dad says your doing a good job but its too sweet for his taste then your mom says its just about right in sweetness but lack depth in flavor just like those from your local bakeshop. If you don't bake your own, you have no choice but either to buy again from that bakeshop or wait for your folks to bake it (if they're not busy) or buy again from somewhere else farther with no assurance that you'll be truly satisfied, anyway. You tell them you'll do more research and will do better the next time around you'll bake as you gain more experience. If you take the time and effort to learn how to bake, you can apply your own preferred, "secret" recipe tweaks and ingredients to your own liking and others in your family if they are fans of your concoction or yet to be ...Same with buying or building a PC whether you'll be its sole user or will have to share it with others in the house though you'll need to set a higher budget
Here's a nice, detailed article about building your own PC. If you are still interested and able to finish reading the whole thing, then maybe you can finally make up your mind..Goodluck!
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2987057/computers/how-to-build-a-pc-a-step-by-step-comprehensive-guide.html
