Opinions on "bare-bones" systems?

[Replicon]

I'm looking into building a linux box to act as my webserver/batch job server, etc. and was wondering what you guys think of barebones systems like this (newegg) one.

Looks like you just need to get a CPU, some RAM, a HD, some optical drive and a network adapter and you're good to go! I guess I'm mostly trying to decide whether to do this or just build it from scratch. Sounds like a time/money saver, and might be worth it, assuming the motherboard/power supply aren't garbage. Any experiences/horror stories/general wisdom? Thanks!

 

[DrMrLordX]

My current system is a barebones I bought from mwave.com. My only problem with it was that mwave, at the time, had terrible RAM selection options with their barebones PCs. The RAM I did pick for my system was a dud, and I had to ship it back and order different RAM from Newegg(which worked out in my favor, since I gained access to a wider variety of RAM that way).

The PSU that shipped with the case I selected sucked, but I was prepared for that and swapped in my Antec PSU. Changing PSUs is easy.

The hard/annoying part of PC assembly was handled for me by mwave(namely CPU/HSF installation), which saved me a lot of time and frustration. I hate mounting HSFs. Now that I have my proper PSU in the system, and RAM that doesn't suck, the system is up, running, and even overclocked.

 

[alimoalem]

i feel there's more flexibility in building from scratch, even if it's compared to a barebones system where you basically only start off with a foundation. if you're looking for exactly this, looks like a pretty good deal imo