it's always been home built for me.
currently running
3.5ghz Q6600
4gb pc8000 @ 1ghz
ati 4850
dfi DS5 or some sort i have no idea
then an assortment of 6tb of harddrives
24" samsing and a 42" LG
that's kinda my internet and music pc, running win 7 which can be a right PITA with it's "features" which turn into piss annoying gimmicks
then for kicking back and smokin some green, i've got a little shuttle SD30G2 with dual core 4gb and some 500gb drives powering a 32" tv and 5.1 for some super mongae
i do like buying lots of expensive tech junk i don't need :d
and yes, desktop RAID is a bit of a scam, certainly there are advantages and it does offer some performance, but not of any real benefit. the only times you want to start looking at things like RAID are if you're looking for security using RAID 0 is it, mirroring your drive for backup and peace of mind, or RAID 1 i think, stripping or whatever it is, which is only truly beneficial for massive I/O heavy duty such as heavily intensive database work etc etc, or at least that's how it was last i read into it
had a pair of raptor drives in raid 1 and they sucked