There are a few exceptions. If you get a mid-range pre-built, especially with sale prices, you can actually save some money and round it out with your own parts

There are a few exceptions. If you get a mid-range pre-built, especially with sale prices, you can actually save some money and round it out with your own parts to make a nicer, more complete unit. It requires some real comparison shopping for sure, and it's probably isn't worth doing unless you're staring at a hell of a deal but that does happen. The weird thing is how pre-builts seem to tier the products at. You can get Pre-builts with good CPU/GPU combos but absurdly low RAM/Storage quantities. They like to tier at 16GB RAM/500GB SSDs and then go up from there for hundreds of dollars without a change of the CPU/GPU and that really confuses me. It's a shame there is little to no physical retail for this stuff anymore as it used to be easier to find a fire sale on a pre-built that needs to move because of how brick and mortar works. That said, it truly is easy to do it yourself and that has its own satisfaction.