His cyberspace deck is the pride of every cyber guru. It shows much of his personality. There is the self built stuff of a little gangster. Beautifully decorated gear of gangs. Or the shiny new stuff of many corporate pros. Naturally the power of your deck is a very important factor of a successful mission.

It is also the one part of a hacker's equipment that is in extreme danger of getting harmed - besides his sanity of course. Inexperienced hackers often find themselves in a position that the repair of their deck is more expensive then the gain of a run - a very unfortunate situation. Only being topped on the rare case that a deck wents up in flames and is totally lost. If that happens, prepare to sell your soul for a new one.

There are two main sources of decks. Either you buy one (for a couple of months worth of income) or you learn how to build one yourself. Obviously the building of decks is nothing you can do in an afternoon. If it were, corps like Cobalt or the famous ACD would not be making big bucks by selling 'standard' gear.
In fact most of the guys that claim to be working on custom hardware just use slightly modified corp stuff, often plugged together of parts recovered from damaged decks. And even that usually only works for smaller ones, like a Mosquito or a ZX1000 compatible one. Sophisticated stuff is just impossible to do without really deep knowledge.