re: why not
I think you'd have to be pretty fair with a soldering iron as well. They aren't built to just plug things in like we do with our PCs. That reminds me of the old days when I watched a friend upgrade the memory in my 8088 from 128K to 512k. PCs have come a long ways allowing us regular folk to work on them.
Plus based on componant prices, I'd be surprised if you could build one for cheaper than you could buy one.
-Steve G.