I haven't built my own PC for a number of years and probably wouldn't consider it any more to be honest (MacBook FTW). I will however recommend this to anyone who does ask me about self-builds :)
Modern laptops have been adequate for most tasks for quite some time (T61 ftw, personally). On the other hand, if you are CPU/GPU/RAM limited (eg rendering..), then you will still greatly benefit from the additional power a desktop build will bring. And it's refreshing to see the continuing progress of stats, while laptops have seemingly stagnated (6 cores and 64GiB RAM? Nifty!).
OP, I think you have a ways to go to match the utility of pcpartpicker. But if you want a possible leg-up on them, then look into supporting workstation builds with Xeon/Cxxx/ECC (they don't really cost more than comparable "consumer" builds, and if you value stability more than overclocking, they make a lot of sense). Niches can be powerful.
mindslight|11 years ago
OP, I think you have a ways to go to match the utility of pcpartpicker. But if you want a possible leg-up on them, then look into supporting workstation builds with Xeon/Cxxx/ECC (they don't really cost more than comparable "consumer" builds, and if you value stability more than overclocking, they make a lot of sense). Niches can be powerful.