Making a custom PC is much easier than trying to guess which computer maker offers the right combination of features to satisfy your needs. Putting a system together yourself is pretty straightforward, and the job should take less than a single afternoon so long as you have a number of key ingredients.
Understand what kind of system you are building: Are you going for an affordable media PC, an office machine, or a gaming monster? These usage models all suggest different things about the features you'll need. Focus only on the features that are important to you.
Your most important decision when buying a motherboard is the processor family you want the board to support. AMD's various Athlon 64 CPUs are compatible with Sockets 754, 939, 940, and AM2, depending on the particular Athlon 64 subfamily. The socket number, in the first three cases, simply corresponds to the number of pins found on the bottom of the processor; the AM2 socket, the latest iteration, uses 940 pins and is the first AMD socket to work with DDR2 SDRAM. Sockets 478 and LGA775 support Intel Pentium 4, Celeron and Core 2 Duo processors, the only difference being that the LGA775 design has the pins located on the motherboard CPU socket, as opposed to on the CPU itself.
Pick the chip set first, then the motherboard: The difference between chip sets can be significant, but two motherboards with the same chip set will be nearly identical in performance. First figure out which chip sets will work for your system, and then compare the different motherboards with that chip set.
Avoid SLI/CrossFire unless you absolutely need it: Enthusiasts always pay an arm and a leg for their hardware, and SLI and CrossFire technologies are for enthusiasts only. Simply buying a new video card instead of going from one card to multi-GPU is much more sensible.
Stay with DDR2 memory unless you need the extra bandwidth and performance: DDR2 is vastly cheaper than DDR3. Unless you are planning to upgrade and reuse the memory in the near future, you should buy DDR2 now and wait for DDR3 prices to drop for a future system.
Important consideration: Memory. A modern desktop PC should have at least 2GB of memory, possibly 4GB for more demanding applications (not to mention Windows Vista)
Make sure you have at least one high-performance PCI Express slot: Even if all you want right now is integrated graphics, buying a board with an extra x16 PCI-E slot costs very little, and could save you $100 down the road.
Compare limited warranties, which range from one to three years, and technical support, if any, offered by the manufacturers to individuals (as opposed to businesses).
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