In all of the assessments, it was passed off that the "build-it-yourself" PC was either as good or better than the store-bought one, but each time, the build-it-yourself had only Windows 7 Home, instead of Windows 8.1. You also use motherboards that may or may not have had the same or better audio and video chipsets, FSB speed, and the like -- these were not compared or divulged. Sometimes getting a comparable video card or the next-gen OS costs the extra $100-200 you purport we would save by doing it ourselves. And there is much time involved in acquiring and putting together the parts - and time is money. Sometimes it is worth paying that to save one's self the headache.
I agree, about 10 years ago, when manufacturers were giving 40 GB hard drives, 512 MB of RAM, and maybe a 1.2 GHz CPU as standard, for $750 or more, it actually made sense to buy the parts separate and put them together for less than half that, since you'd probably end up upgrading those, yourself, down the line, anyway. But now, components are such that what they are offering as standard (finally) actually meets most needs, already. To me, the difference in cost, at least in the U.S., which would have seen double the cost estimates for the components given ($20 for a wireless card, not 9 pounds; $100-200 for a motherboard, not 40 pounds) actually gives little, if any, savings these days when taking into account time, effort, and newest OS.
