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To answer your main question, building your own PC is absolutely still worth it. Dell computers cut corners on components (mainly memory) that make the computer significantly slower than advertised. You do have to maintain your own machine if you build it yourself, but that's not a big problem if you know what you're doing.
As far as graphics cards go, you mentioned 350 pound prices. (Sorry, my American keyboard doesn't have the character, and I'm too lazy to look up the ascii code.) I assume that's for a Radeon X800 or a GeForce 6800, the top of the line at the moment. For the first time, such an enormous price is actually justified, because the performance jump between this generation and last generation of cards is so large. If you're willing to pay top dollar (or pound, as it were) for the cards, then it's worth it. If, however, you want to save a little money, then you can go back to the last generation of cards and get a Radeon 9800 Pro for (I'm guessing here) about 170 pounds. That card will run the hell out of any new games for at least a couple years. The Radeon 9600 Pro you mentioned on the Dell system, however, is just BEGGING to be outdated. My 9500 is just getting to be unplayable on newer games, and I'll probably buy a 9800 soon.
As far as stability goes, it's not really a problem. You said you're comfortable with Win2k, and Win2k will work with any of the newer games. XP, however, is just generally speaking more compatible with everything, since it's newer. That's just how operating systems work. Win2k will work, but XP will work better
PC gaming is much more reliable now than it was even a few years ago, and it constantly gets better. I built my current machine from scratch about 2 years ago, and I've had no problems, even with the dated graphics card. And companies have really cracked down on driver problems, because the market is so much more competitive now, so 99% of problems can be fixed by downloading a 2MB file, and even that isn't often necessary.
My next question is... why Pentium? You cited two main factors in the desire to build your own maching: cost and gaming. AMD beats Intel on both of those counts, any day of the week. AMD Athlon Processors consistently outperform Pentiums for a smaller price. Rather than a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, I would recommend an AMD Athlon XP 3200 (Barton). That will save you money and get you better performance.
Sound cards are really just a matter of preference. Many gamers choose to use onboard sound with their motherboards, and unless you're a serious audiophile, that's fine. I chose to get a Sound Blaster Audigy, but that's because I use my PC as a media center as well, the the surround sound and configuration options are nice to have. It also reduces strain on the processor, but not enough to make a fuss about. (And certainly not enough to justify the price of a primo sound card if that's your only concern)
So then, I think that's all your questions. If not, feel free to ask more.
Cheers
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