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Clearly you haven't built any Ikea Pax closets.
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You are selecting, not creating. Like when I buy a new car: I select a motor size, an entertainment system, color and seat finish, and studded or un-studded winter tires. That doesn't make me a car constructor. Or builder. Plugging a card into a motherboard slot, along with the plugs from the power supply, doesn't make me a computer constructor/builder.
Sure enough: When I buy the car, the motor, stereo and seats are in place; they are not delivered as separate components. Buy the winter tires are. The ski rack for the roof as well. The baby seat. When I mount these, am I then a car builder? After a few year, the lead battery needs to be replaced - it was delivered as an integral part of the car. When I lift out the old one, and put the new one in its place, am I then rebuilding (or possibly even reconstructing, if the new battery is of a more modern kind) the car?
Another analogy: In the 1960s and 70s, top range SLR cameras (in the class of Nikon F) offered a multitude of viewfinders, focus screens, backs, and of course: lenses. The photographer put together what he needed for the job - all those components were field replaceable. Did it make the photographer a 'camera builder' to replace one focus screen with another one? When I switch lenses on my system camera, does that make me a camera builder? (The camera neither has a replaceable viewfinder, focus screen or back.) Where does the line run between mounting a lens and building a camera? Between plugging in a disk in the SATA socket or in the USB socket, and building a computer?
The was a period when every new computer I bought had a different bus solution, at least partially: Display cards (today: GPUs) switched buses evert year or two, and I think the card box in my basement has a complete selection of cards for every one of them. Also, there was a bewilderment of I/O-sockets: I had separate interface cards for hand scanners and flatbed scanners, tape stations, network and lots of other equipment. Of course they must match the system bus; for my next PC they might be useless. They must provide the right socket, of which there were dozens. And they had to provide the right signal on that socket; otherwise you had to mess around with adapters (which was a very common situation).
But that is many years ago. PCIe is 18 years old. I have never had any compatibility problems over those 18 years: Plug the card in, and it works.
USB2 is 22 years old. You can say a lot of negative things about USB2 (I frequently do myself), but it has replaced that mess of different plugs and cables and device-specific interface boards. The first few years (although mostly in the USB1 days) we were joking about 'Plug and Pray', but for the last fifteen years, it has been flawless Plug and Play.
Obviously, you will not buy a Canon lens for a Nikon camera. There is no such thing as an M.2 to SATA adapter (that I know of). You must have some basic knowledge of standards to select the proper components. But nowadays, interface standards are so well defined that components not working together (even though both parts follow the same standard) is extremely rare, in my experience. Actually, I cannot think of a single case the last ten years.
You may say that they 'sort of' work together, but not in an optimal way. Yes, that may be true. E.g. if you pick your external USB2 disk out of its box, the disk itself may be a SATA600 one that will work much faster if you install it with a SATA600 cable inside your tower cabinet. It would be similarly sub-optimal to buy old, slow memory chips if your mainboard can handle much faster ones. But you don't have to be a certified engineer to read the mainboard instruction booklet to select proper memory chips.
To put together a computer from a PS, a GPU, a few memory cards and possibly a disk (unless the MB comes with an M.2) by inserting them into sockets of a MB can be done without knowing the difference between a vacuum tube and a transistor. It requires no electronics competence whatsoever. Even selecting one GPU over the other, or an MB with one CPU socket over one with another socket, requires no knowledge of neither circuit design nor component technology. In my eyes, if you don't know the first thing about how the electronics work, enough for you to use that understanding in choosing one alternative over the other (both viable), then you are putting together pieces IKEA style - even if you were the one making the choice of finish and number of shelves in your cabinet.
For all I know, you may actually be highly competent with a Ph.D. in some specialized area of circuit design, knowing very well what your are doing. But anyone without such background could have done the job equally well, based on reading specs sheets and reviews published on Tom's Hardware and similar sites.
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matblue25 wrote: And there's no guarantee the parts you buy will work together - that's up to you.
Have you tried NewEgg's PC Builder thing on their website ?
From what I understand, they have some sort of big database trick to give you a little confidence that the specific components you buy will (or will not) fit with the other parts; the most obvious one being the CPU and the motherboard, but plenty of other stuff as well.
I have been seriously looking at it, but I'm still just too chicken at the moment.
Not sure where to find unbiased opinions about them.
Again, I haven't used them, and I'm asking; not telling.
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I use pcpartpicker.com. It has the most comprehensive set of filters for searching. That helps a lot. I don’t rely on it 100% but it will warn you of major incompatibilities. They have lists of complete builds for every part so you can get an idea of what other people have put together. That could help if you’re doing it for the first time. You still have to research each component. It can take a while.
I don’t use Newegg much so I can’t comment on their tool.
I usually buy the components from Amazon or BestBuy because their prices are competitive and their return policies are good.
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Exactly
The most expensive tool is a cheap tool. Gareth Branwyn
JaxCoder.com
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No seriously. Do you consider phones as a computer? My car is essentially a computer with 2 motors. Are IoT devices computers? If only laptops/desktops are computers, then I have not bought one in like 10 years.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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Seriously, are you doing software development on your car or your phone?
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Like, "Seriously, are you taking photos with your phone?"
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Yep, I do. But I don't use my dishwasher to cook dinner either 
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Computers are not only to do development. The question is not specifying anything either.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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You will never get a clear answer to what it takes to call something a computer. It is like asking how long is a rubber band.
I guess that most people would say that if all they see are effects that could have been made in this or that way, a programmed CPU being only one alternative, then they don't consider it a computer. Your (previous) car essentially ran in the same manner before it got microprocessors to monitor and control everything. You turn the dial on your radio: Nowadays, the dial sends interrupts to a CPU. In the old days, it would turn an adjustable capacitor to set the frequency, or a potentiometer to set the loudness. The sound coming out of the speakers is very much the same; you see the knob as operating the radio, not as operating a computer.
We had cellular phones long before they had microprocessors; we had the fully automatic, cellular NTM network from 1981. (A manual, non-cellular mobile phone network existed from 1966.) Pushbutton phones became common from around 1980. So even though GSM is a fully 'computerized' phone, a user hardly notices it; it works the same way as the old, non-computerized phone.
You can say similar things about all sorts of equipment with embedded electronics (and that covers about all but safety pins nowadays). Maybe there are some revealing clues, such as the touch panel on my baking oven, telling me that there is a CPU somewhere in there. Yet I am using it the same way as my old, all mechanical baking oven.
On the borderline is various electronic games. A number of games (say, Flipper) was originally mechanical; then you certainly didn't interact with a computer. When you interact the same way with a digital Flipper-clone, I find it hard to say that you are "using a computer" (any more than when you drive your car). Many modern games have been all-digital since birth. Are they computers? I would say no; you interact with them as a game, not as a computer.
But as a game developer, you relate to CPU, GPU, RAM and interrupts from the game console. Then you are certainly a computer user - even when you run the game in a debugger.
If you are aware of the primary components of the computer - the CPU, memory and such - then you are using a computer. If you are just aware of what they do for you, then I do not see it as a computer, but as a car, a game, a baking oven, a cash register, a stereo system ...
Feel free to disagree!
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I totally agree.
I also thought the reply was odd since this is a forum "for those who code".
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The survey doesn't say whether 1=lowest or 1=highest rating.
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Yes, I noticed that and I've assumed 1 lowest, 5 highest
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Guessed so. Hopefully, the others did, too!
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I remember from my childhood a case where a low value was a high rating. For the last 30 years, I cannot think of one such rating case. 'Lower is better' is limited to physical measurements, such as timings and resource consumption.
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Does one splash or economize on this purchase?
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Think it depends a lot on your use. One of my team is a gamer and has a (to me) crazy box. He'll spend more on a GPU than I spend on the whole system 
I try to hit middle ground, figuring Windows version in the best I can. Win11 caught me off guard on a couple of boxes with a lot of life left, but don't meet specs.
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I just replaced a 9 year old laptop with a new one. I can't see much difference in performance. I don't game, so there isn't a need for crazy performance. I've rendered video with the new one and it isn't significantly better.
Hogan
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Been like that for ages I reckon. The OS and programs seem to have an appetite for horsepower that grows almost as fast as said horsepower is made available.
Using WordPerfect or Lotus123 on a 386 in the 90s was in many instances, far more satisfying and responsive than using Office on anything new.
On one hand, I've been excited to see the growth of portable, battery-powered computing as I imagined the strides that would be taken towards efficiency. On the other hand, the number of brain-dead frameworks, languages and approaches to making stuff leaves me silently dying inside.
The weight of the average HTML page is horrifying - Take this page for instance. 186kb transferred up until the point I wrote the number. Each effin keystroke transfers another 1kb. The current number is now 250kb. My shite wasted on their cheap-ass programmers... (Now 282kb) 
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To a point, that is true. But users don't expect to see a Lotus123 screen today. Sure, there are purists who would use it, but not much of a market. Anyone who has been doing this for a long time is "sloppier". Not in terms of bad coding, but life's a lot different than when you worked in a 32k (or less) space.
For web pages, I doubt many people are really paying attention. The CSS frameworks, scripts, and graphics add more weight than the real content does by far. But design a heavy content page for a client and expect to get beat up. Badly.
From my POV, the new boxes are a bit faster. Enough to warrant a new one? Nope, but I don't do game or video intensive stuff.
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Jira is a huge offender. At one point I saw 21MB page to load a ticket. I blame JavaScript development for this
Hogan
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Usually less expensive to add things like storage and RAM. I want to be able to add RAM up to 128 GB (current is 64) and multiple drives (currently have 6, 2 NVME, 3 SSD, and 1 spinny-go-round). Most of my work is done in virtual machines, nobody in their right mind would test my stuff on a real system.
Current backups go to computer running TrueNAS. Powered off when not doing B/R.
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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I plan to improve the core (CPU, RAM, MoBo, PSU) every 5 years, the GPU every 2 or 3 (I game), peripherals (SSD, HDD) as needed. The whole setup should cost about 1000 - 1200 €.
So far the core lasted 6 years and counting, same for the GPU (1050 Ti, I am half blind so I play at 1080 and I have no shame in turning down the graphic setting to eke out some more years of usage). I spent a bit o peripherals since I understimated the SSD size at the beginning.
GCS/GE d--(d) s-/+ a C+++ U+++ P-- L+@ E-- W+++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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den2k88 wrote: I spent a bit on peripherals since I underestimated the SSD size at the beginning.
You can never have too much storage, but not all of it needs to be internal. For development machines, I have between 512GB - 2TB of internal disk space, and a NAS for anything for which I do not require access "on the road".
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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