Crazy cooincidence that this thread just popped up. I hadn't done any building while in law school, but I just graduated and ended up being commissioned to build 3 new high end desktops and fashion a fourth desktop from a pile of spare parts and two older machines.
I'd never built computers for other people before, and when the parts came for all the new machines I felt like a damn king. Sexy sexy video cards all laid out, three fresh mobo boxes stacked on top of one another, nine 29" monitors, and so many neat wires and such. Two of the kits were requested to be high-end gaming machines with high aesthetic appeal. I went totally nuts with a fire/ice red/blue neon theme. Neon down the front, on the inside and totally rad SATA cables.
I used to buy from Tiger Direct. I ended up getting a lot of the parts from there this time as well, a few from newegg (RAM) and some of the cables from Google shopping comparison.
TWDeac is right, it just feels good to know what you're working with. I had missed the hardcore raw power that gaming PCs bring to the table.
...made me miss Warcraft. But I've been clean for four years now...