Been lurking this thread for a long time. Waiting for updates, I got inspired to upgrade from Arcade1Up for my next home arcade machine. I don't have the amazing woodworking skills or tools cam_wmh has and was trying to stay w/ a smaller/cheaper build, so I ended up buying bartop+stand kit online and wrapping the whole thing with kitchen cabinet vinyl wrap+decals off eBay/Etsy to make a semi-custom Neo Geo MVS PC cabinet.
Parts I ended up using
-Bare MDF 24" Bartop kit and stand off Etsy (couple of local guys in FB/Kijiji also do them, but didn't have a design I liked, and they wouldn't customize)
-2 Player control deck using Sanwa Denshi JLF w/ 8-way restrictor and OSBF-30/BaoLian buttons mixed from Retroactive and Aliexpress
-Black T-Molding from Retroactive
-iPAC2 arcade encoder set to XInput from Retroactive
-Aiyama speakers/amp off Aliexpress
-24" Monitor picked up on Kijiji
-Old mini-PC picked up on Kijiji
-3 rolls of Black/Red vinyl/contact paper from Amazon
-Neo Geo/MVS/SNK decals off eBay
Was a lot more involved than putting together something like an A1U but the results turned out way sturdier w/ much better feeling parts. Put CoinOps onto the PC and everything runs amazingly now up to PS3-era games (haven't gotten the newest Technoparrot arcade games running yet tho, configuration looks like a PITA). Just gotta add a coin door and LED marquee sometime down the road.
Pictures in my den next to my Arcade1Up X-Men cab.