5. Video card...

First things first, AGP or PCI-E. Well what board did you get? If you're building a new computer you should have gone PCI-E unless you're building a budget computer for general use. Next question...ATI or NVidia? Up to you. Most of the time it makes hardly any difference between them, for example an ATI Radeon X850XT PE and an Nvidia 6800Ultra, because when you get cards that are that powerful, the bottleneck turns to the CPU. So the cards will be waiting for the CPU, and in return you see no difference. Either way, you will be happy with whatever card you get. You best off going on the net and reading a few reviews and see what one compares to what. Then decide on what one is better for the price.

SLI, Crossfire...Crossfire is new out, and SLI has been around for a bit now. With Crossfire and SLI, they are similar in some ways, but both need a different chipset and in return a different board. Other ways SLI and Crossfire are quite different, SLI you must have two identical cards, while with Crossfire, you get one card, and then you buy a master card that works with a bunch of different cards.

Another way the two are different is that SLI uses a bridge to link the two cards together inside the computer, while Crossfire uses a special cable that link the two card directly to one monitor. In a way it seems a bit of a weird way of doing it, but it makes perfect sense when you see how it is done.

If you decide on SLI or crossfire, remember, that having two video cards will not double your performance. In certain games it comes fairly close to doubling but in most it does not increase that much. Also remember, with the new video cards now a days, they are so powerful they can cause your CPU to bottleneck. A prime example of this is the new Nvidia 7800 GTX 512MB, in SLI mode, unless you have a very powerful CPU, you will bottleneck. When you bottleneck, your basically wasting money on these expensive cards, where you're not getting their full power.

For games now, you should have at least a X800 or a 6800. But when buying a new card for gaming your best off getting one of the newest series out. The games now are so demanding on requirements that you have to get good hardware to run the game good. The new series from Nvidia, the 7800 series is a very powerful solution and tends to be cheaper than their existing 6800 series. ATI's main high-end cards are the X1800XT, and the X1800XL. There are cards below these to fit different price categories.If your building a system for internet and emails, there is absolutly no need for a powerful gaming card, it's just a waste of money.

6. Power Supply!!

I consider this one of the most important parts of you're decision in parts. DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT skimp on the Power Supply Unit!!

If you run any high performance part, you must have a powerful enough PSU to keep your system stable. With budget systems it's not to bad, but if you run a high-end video card(s), get a high end PSU. There is nothing worse than waking up to the smell of a fried PSU, or having random freezes in a game.

If you run a SLI/Crossfire system, you should have at least a 500watt. And make sure that the 12V rail is at least 22Amps. You can go lower, but its better to have that amount. You might see a PSU with a reading for two 12v rails. These are really good, because you can have an independent 12v for your graphics. The requirerments for X1900's in CrossFire is some ridiculus 550Watts with a minium of a 38A 12v rail!

To help you decide, you're best off to go on the net and read a lots of review on PSUs.

Some great ones are:

• OCZ Powerstream ADJ series.
• PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cools
• Antec
• Enermax
• Xclio
• Fortron

They are a few, the Turbo Cool is a very good PSU, but pricey. The OCZ Powerstream is one of my favorites. Also, just because it's a high watt rated PSU, don't get tricked by that. It's like the clocks of an Intel vs. an AMD. A well made 400watt will be much better than a cheap 500.

And one other thing when it comes to its power rating, on most PSU's, the power rating you see is its MAX POWER. So if a PSU is rated for 500watts, you can almost guarantee that is only puts out 400 consistently. There are a couple that I can think of, off hand, that give their true constant power output, and these are the Turbo Cools, and all the OCZ made PSU's.

Once again, if you decide to overclock, have a very good PSU. When you overclock, you use more voltage and more power, so make sure you have a power supply that can keep up.