Been building my own boxes for 20 years or so, but still buy laptops when I need a new one! I love the build process and after having built about 15 or so boxes for me and others in that time, the most time consuming part for me is picking out all of the components ;~)) Due for a new build as my current main box is from 2015. Still running great, but want some things in a new box that are not possible on my current one. Specifically, I want 3 M.2 drive slots on the motherboard and will be putting 2TB M.2 drives in each of those slots. SSD's are great, but the M.2 drives are OMG when it comes to speed! I am also getting long in the tooth on my RAID array and the drives in there. At 7 years old, I am skating on thin ice with these mechanical drives! At least in the RAID 5 array, if one does go bad, I can recover, but time to get that stuff updated before the problems happen (do have external backups of the critical data though)!! Now I just need the spare cash to do this! Work has been cut for me by over 70% in the past 18 months, so don't know how soon I will be able to get to this project! Plus, if I do get some disposable income, I should probably buy another guitar, right?
Anyway, fun stuff (for me anyway) and if anyone wants any advice, I am happy to throw in my two cents. And don't be intimidated by it, it is not that difficult. Motherboard, power supply, RAM, hard drive (SSD or M.2 only), a box to put it all in and an OS is all it takes. Sure, you might want a video card, audio card, other expansion cards, etc. but for a basic box, that is about it as most MB's have video/audio built in.
ASUS is my go to MB and I have also had their Android phones, routers, disk drives and more, love their stuff (but HATE Acer which people often confuse it with)!