I have built most of my personal workstations, so I can speak for building your own. I love the granular approach to it - I get to pick an choose across vendors

I have built most of my personal workstations, so I can speak for building your own. I love the granular approach to it - I get to pick an choose across vendors and choose my favorites. Something to take into consideration: building your own *may* be cheaper, but it's not always. Of course this is valid for workstations - for servers to do target practice I can't stress enough as buying second hand servers is the best options in most cases: you can find servers that were the "hot s**t" 5-6 years ago, for 300-600$.