Definitely true points, but also worth noting how much easier it is to build a reliable desktop now than just a few years ago. Their own marketing images of the thelios show how empty the case is. With everything but storage, display and power supply on the board there's little left to do beyond mounting the cpu, inserting some sticks of ram from the QVL, plugging in the power supply connectors and maybe a video card and powering up. With the exception of handling the processor everything else is well within the reach of anyone who can plug together and configure a home entertainment system imo. Five years ago, say, getting the BIOS settings right could be a little tricky but that's basically become a no-brainer too.

The hardest part has always been plugging in the annoying little speaker, light, power, reset, etc. cables into the right spots on the motherboard.

How many hours to build a PC?

Are you turning down paid work to free up time to build a PC?

I didn't track the time, but I was between four and six hours hands on over the course of a few days. I am probably a bit more fastidious than most builders. Also this doesn't count any research time or shopping time. Probably between eight and sixteen hours invested there.

Bench build with mobo on the desk and each stick of RAM individually, and one pass of memtest86.

Then full build in case. I am fiddly with cable management. Also had some extra fans to install. 3rd gen Threadrippers throw off a lot of heat.

Some BIOS config (biggest thing was adjusting RAM timings and enabling virtualization features).

Then 24 hours of Memtest86.

Install Windows (a lot of benchmarks and stress testing stuff is much easier to just download and go on Windows).

Then 24 hours of Prime95 with hardware sensor monitoring. A few other benchmarks.

Then install Ubuntu.

To be fair, I'd have done the stress testing on a purchased box as well, but that is pretty much hands off.

January was light for me in terms of scheduled work. I didn't explicitly turn something down, but I did take advantage of a gap in my normally billable period (midday on a weekday) to build the machine. If I had wanted to, I probably could have found a way to be billing during that time. I greatly value flexibility in my time.

Could I have gotten done faster? Probably. My mise en place was awful. I was building in a cramped space. I haven't built a machine in quite some time. I also took my time to read the full mobo manual as I was installing and plugging stuff in. But like I said, this is something I enjoy. I was happy to take the time to research and shop around and then build the machine.

The comment on the value of time is more illustrative than a concrete argument. It is worthwhile to consider, especially for someone that doesn't enjoy building a PC. I could have chosen to find billable work instead and devoted that toward purchasing a completed machine. I'd only be a few hundred dollars worse off if I chose to do so. To me, that's a very reasonable price to pay to avoid something undesirable.