But I wouldn't have to determine every little part (power supply, motherboard, etc). Also, it seems I can buy an I7 computer off the shelf cheaper than buying parts. But your point is valid. That is why I was asking I guess. Is there a benefit? What are the dangers?

I didn’t see a benefit in the past which is why I started building my own and I won’t go back. The only benefit you might say is that you have a warranty for the system as a whole. The downside is that you will hardly get exactly what you want or need and if, it comes at a higher price.

But I wouldn't have to determine every little part (power supply, motherboard, etc). Also, it seems I can buy an I7 computer off the shelf cheaper than buying parts.

Yes the benefit is cheapness. System cheaper than you can buy it for & as a bonus you get 2year or 3 year warranty for free. If it comes with 16gb of ram, prob only 1 stick, so can't run dual channel. This matters more for games, I think with video rendering you get about 6% real world increase in speed. PSU will be cheap which could affect adding HDD's, overclocking cpu/gpu.

The system being alot cheaper than buying parts would not be as extreme now that GPU prices are almost back to normal.

Bob-h, good point about the PSU. I would need to add a couple of drives for storage. I don't see the need to overclock for my work, but adding storage and maybe a PCI card (if need arises) are concerns. Thanks for the input.

If you were to add an internal raid rather than NAS you could have problems. With cheap PSU's it's voltage regulation that is often the problem during a constant draw & rather than your PSU dying prematurely because it's cheap it could kill your components because it's cheap. I don't know this to be fact but HDD's would likely be very sensitive to voltages as motors/stepper motors are known to be sensitive & all my HDD's that have died except 1 were external HDD enclosures with cheap crap switched mode PSU's.