[HunterXHunter]

Originally Posted by jawert1

I usually start my builds by looking at motherboards, I generally run Asus, Tyan or Gigabyte, although lately I wouldn't recommend Gigabyte - too many USB issues. It depends on if you want to run a Pentium processor or an AMD one, I've used both for heavyduty gaming, and both have run well - the AMD better, and now that they've strengthened the chip itself, they're less prone to heat and fracture issues. The mobo and processor are critical, you have to have a combination that work together, and often times you can go midrange on the processor (high end board tho), save yourself some immediate cash and be able to put in a faster processor later. After that, look at what vid card you want, AGP or PCI-E - personally I tend to use PCI-E cards, but that's just my preference. Always get a card with 256MB of RAM or higher, 128MB is ok, but a lot of newer games simply won't run as well on them. 1GB of RAM always, and the type of motherboard you go with will dictate what type of RAM you use. Most boards have good onboard sound, tho many ppl will swap that out but it isn't crucial that you do so, just good practice if you're doing any kind of movie editing, music creation, etc. Hope this helps

That pretty much sums it up. Although I would definitely recommend Asus! Also get a fast SATA (serial ATA) harddrive, because your harddrive is the slowest component in your PC of often limits you to how fast your PC runs and responds. So even if you have the newest, craziest CPUs with a million GB of RAM, if you have a slow HDD, your PC is still going to be slow :sad:

ATI video cards are more for video/video editing type applications, while nVidia are more for gaming. And I also agree, get at least 1GB of RAM!