Actually, while Compaq, HP, Sony, and others have shortchanged their buyers on power supplies throughout their history, plus the various non-standard sizes they use cause problems, Dell has generally offered more power supply quality than the rest, though quite admittedly, equally non-standard wiring in many cases.

Getting back to the heart of the question, either a white box system or a self-built one offers better value because it's priced lower than anything with a brand name, and in both of those cases, you get your own choice of parts, not the seller's choice. There was a time when Dell's service was so good that they could be recommended on that basis alone. That stopped being true a long while back.

Kiwi_1

Just to be clear, "self-built" means buying each component separately, not going to Dell's or Alienware's website and choosing "configure", am I right?