I say this as a hobbyist that enjoys building and programming and the whole nerdy biz. That's a little dishonest when you're talking to your friend that plays xbox.

1 - gotta know which parts. gotta know that there is such a thing as incompatibility, gotta learn about sockets (Delay building for 2 months because everyone is hype about the 480 and it took that long to actually be able to buy it.)

2 - gotta have a family member or mentor that made you generally familiar with tools, screwdrivers, etc. so that you don't panic thinking about it

3 - don't bend any pins. Did you know that's a concern? Do you know which way to orient it? How do you know if it fits?

4 - You know how the cpu shouldn't really offer resistance and there's only 1 way it goes in? (you googled for 5 minutes before building enough confidence in an answer.) Well, RAM requries you to fucking sit on your god damn motherboard until it breaks in half under your bodyweight. Yeah, you had to google that for 10 minutes before you believed it wasn't an internet prank and you really do need to fucking get a shop clamp just to insert the RAM. (it really is criminal how much force is needed to install ram.)

5 - yay, after you figured out to remove the back plate stuff from the case, the gpu worked pretty easily. cool.

6 - pretty painless.

7 - not bad. feeling confident now.

8 - How much paste? (google) okay, pea-sized. Cool.

9 - Shit, some of these cords look the same, okay, they only fit one way. Good. phew. moment of panic, but it worked out.

10 - Ah, so I have to combine the 6+2 to make the 8. That's weird, but it's fine I guess.

11 - cool.

12 - Shit, everything is technically compatible, but I wanted to plug in 3 things, not just 2 and one of the sata connections is under my graphics card. (google for 10-20 minutes) cool, there are low-profile sata connectors. Well, i'll order one and just leave out my dvd tray.

13 - cool.

14 - install OS. Shit, my dvd doesn't work. (google and transfer files for 15 minutes) Alright, I'll install via usb. cool.

Friend just walks into a store and gets jipped, but doesn't have to deal with crap.

Edit: Here's my real issue - There's a lot of reasons to go PC, but we shouldn't ignore the trade-offs. For someone who is going to be uncomfortable doing this process or who wants an assurance/guarantee (for what is a large chunk of money for most people either way), they'll pretty much have to go prebuilt or literally follow a build guide that applies to the exact parts they actually ordered*. If they go prebuilt, most places they would think to get one from will have a shitty and overpriced offering. They basically have to already be in the know to reap the benefits. We can only really hope to continue growing our community and being helpful so that one day the generally anti-consumer console practices** will be washed away by glorious pc revolution. In the mean time, if you really look from a console user's POV, they aren't always unreasonable. If their experiences had exposed them to the right information and it all clicked and then they tribally insisted on console out of some weird fanboy/sunk-cost combo, then they are being a peasant. But that's probably not the case.

* None of them even know that's a resource to think about using.

** stuff like nvidia's pricing of FE cards or microsoft's windows 10 forced installation policies. oh wait.