I'm building a new computer, need a little help though

[Minuteman1611]

OK, I'm kinda new to this whole computer technology thing. I'm building a new computer, trust me I know what I'm doing with installation and such, but I'm not really sure what to put into it. What should I look for in a good motherboard, like what specs should there be? And what about RAM? Is there a huge difference in what type of processor I get as well? Let me know cuz I'll be buying these and more soon. Thank you very much.

 

[everman]

First crucial bit of info: What do you plan to do with it? High end Graphics and gaming? Or just office apps like word processing, web browsing etc?

Either AMD or Intel solutions would be fine, amd is usually a better value though. Generally 256 - 512mb ram. and personally I reccomend installing 2 instances of the same OS, so if one gets screwed up you have the other to fall back on. no reinstalling windows at 2am

 

[YodasBrains]

Well, the best thing to get started with is just reading various guides you can find here and at other tech sites like tomshardware. You should also just browse through the various forums here and just read about the latest technology out there.

I think some of the first decisions u should make is do you want a expensive state of the art system or a more balaned cost/performance ratio. Then choosing what kinda CPU you want will help u focus ur research.

 

[mijremlap]

I'm doing the same.

I found that this site - Build Your Own PC had some tips

Establish your budget
Do some fact finding (like this forum) to get a basic understanding of your needs and issues with the hardware.

Then you can:
Choose processor AMD or Intel
Choose motherboard - find 3 top sellers and see if they
Choose case
Choose memory

Keep going from there