Parts not always
compatible and it could be a nightmare if you do have an
incompatibility of components. "No, mate - it's not the
video card that's faulty, it's your motherboard. Contact your
motherboard supplier". Be prepared to be chased from pillar
to post.
You won't get the latest BIOS for the motherboard, the
latest drivers for the devices, the latest patches for the
operating system
Extra carriage
costs. Buying parts from several different suppliers means that you will
be paying carriage several times.
Cost: Buying
parts and assembling your own PC could be more expensive than
buying a fully built system. Manufacturers of PCs benefit
substantial from economies of scale. You may find that a
pre-built PC actually costs less than the total you'd pay to
buy all it's component parts separately.
Performance. Your
PC may not perform to it's full potential if it hasn't been built
and configured correctly. You may not know which version of the
video drivers give best performance. You may not have configured
the BIOS for optimal performance. At best your PC could be
performing to 100% of it's potential. At worst it could be lower
than 50%.
You are your own
problem solver. Can't get your newly assembled PC to boot up? Now
which part is to blame? Or is it a jumper setting? Still can't
find the fault? Are you going to throw ALL the parts away?
The system
most amateur PC builders use to fault find is "modular
replacement" i.e. try another stick of RAM if you suspect
that the RAM is faulty. Unless you have enough components to
swap around you may have to find some other way to identify if
a part is faulty. Some expensive hardware/software diagnostics
perhaps?
Unexpected
costs: If
you can't solve a problem you come up with you may find that it
costs you a lot more - in both time and money - than you
originally expected.
