Help on whether to buy or build my first rig - long read

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Hi there, now first off I'd like to say I've ordered a new pre-built rig but is still well within cancelling time and construction won't start for a few days yet. So basically my question is this, would it be worth ordering all the parts from OCUK and building the rig myself to save money and how difficult would it be for a first timer to build an entire rig?
I ask because I've been studying these forums for the past few days with the intention of overclocking my system and to add water cooling at a later date when I could afford to upgrade and I began to wonder if it would be better to just start from the ground up.

If you believe it would be better to join the bandwagon and build the system ground up I have a budget of around £3,400 and would be looking for an I7 high end gaming system (965 Extreme originally but by reading these forums I think a 920 overclocks to the same extent and would save money, right?).
Other parts I like the look of would be a Lian-Li Armorsuit PC-P80B (as it would be easier to watercool than the Atec 1200 due to the larger size), Velociraptor 300Gb hardrive(or maybe two of them for the added space?), a GTX series (or dual) GPU and the Razor Trantuala/Deathadder keyboard/mouse combo.
What I allready have is a destroyer mousemat and a logitech speaker system with subwoofer so would need pretty much everything else (including 22-24 inch high resolution monitor). An optional extra would be if the watercooling could fit into the budget but thats optional and I could easily wait until a later date when I can afford a little extra.

Sorry for the long read there and I hope you managed to bare through. I'm eagerly awaiting your advice as a community on what to do. Thanks in advance. :)

Update:

I just done a check with the live help on the site and it turns out the pc is allready in the process of being built and the email notifications are just delayed. Unfortuantely this means I won't be able to do the build myself which I was quite excited about.
Allthough if I start saving up now I think I can do a rebuild in the Lian-Li case in around two months which will give me some extra time studying everything on this site before I get hands on and start the watercooling project about the same time.
Thanks to everyone that replied to this thread and you've definitely got me set on doing a rebuilt later on and I'll set up a build log when I do.
 
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would definitely build yourself, far more enjoyment, and its simple to do , long as you dont rush things.

your thoughts on parts are pretty spot on, likes of the i7 920 processor, nvdia 295 graphics card, decent 24" monitor etc.

maybe ssd for system drive and likes of the samsung f1 1tb for storage.

dont tat about with water cooling but sure someone will be along shortly to fill you in on whats needed.
 
would definitely build yourself, far more enjoyment, and its simple to do , long as you dont rush things.

your thoughts on parts are pretty spot on, likes of the i7 920 processor, nvdia 295 graphics card, decent 24" monitor etc.

maybe ssd for system drive and likes of the samsung f1 1tb for storage.

dont tat about with water cooling but sure someone will be along shortly to fill you in on whats needed.

Yeah, I think it would be really enjoyable to build it myself asuming all goes well. A 295 would be better in most cases than a dual 285 for gaming then? To be honest I really doubt storage size itself will bother me so much as the speed of the hardrive will. To put things into context my current pc which I've owned for about 4 years or so only has 300Gb storage and I'm currently only using 205Gb.
Okay, thanks for the prompt reply and good advice there. :)
 
if you are planning on adding water cooling at a later stage then I would say its definately worth building the system yourself now. Take the time to learn how everything goes together etc. Learning that stuff now will cause you less of a headache when it comes to adding the cooling later.
 
I just done a check with the live help on the site and it turns out the pc is allready in the process of being built and the email notifications are just delayed. Unfortuantely this means I won't be able to do the build myself which I was quite excited about.
Allthough if I start saving up now I think I can do a rebuild in the Lian-Li case in around two months which will give me some extra time studying everything on this site before I get hands on and start the watercooling project about the same time.
Thanks to everyone that replied to this thread and you've definitely got me set on doing a rebuilt later on and I'll set up a build log when I do. :)
 
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