I can certainly see doing that if it's your own money. But if I start a new job and the first thing they do is make me cobble together a laptop of spare parts so that they can save a few hundred bucks, then I'm sending out my resume later that afternoon.
I don't know. In my experience if a company won't buy me the laptop I need on day 1, it's a good sign I'm going to be spending the rest of my time there having to fight every time I need a new screen, or hard drive or mouse or just about anything else.