Up front confession first..I've been building my own PCs for about 20 years or so. That said, I bought this because I didn't want to start from scratch and this offered some good parts for the price. Amazon sells this for $100 less than does a major online tech store. It arrived on time and in perfect condition. I bought the add-on 3-year warrantee since it was only $10.50. It has room and plugs for 3 more hard drives. I added three SSDs to the one drive already there. I didn't feel the need to add a vid card since the onboard Intel chip seems to be doing great and this is not a gaming machine. This would do great as a stand-alone machine. I just like to tinker. The one downside, as others have noted, is the proprietary power supply. But that's what the extra warrantee is for.