Newbie - hardware advice

OK, i have decided that i want to build a computer myself this time, rather than being ripped off by PC World or the like. So i've been researching components, and planning things out. I intend to get a Athlon 64 CPU (not definite on the speed yet, but probably 3000 or 3200). I have also decided on a ATI Radeon X800 XL graphics card. With regards to a harddrive, i would love to have a 10000rpm one, but that's more money than i can justify, so i'll get a cheapish 7200rpm one, probably 120GB. And for RAM, 2x 512, keeping the option for more at a later date open.

As a complete newbie to this, i'd welcome a little advice. Firstly, upon motherboards. I don't know a lot about them, and the descriptions are tending to confuse me. Obviously i need one that will work with the components i'm planning. The CPU and graphics card i've chosen i believe have a FSB of 400mhz (correct me if i'm wrong), and so so should the motherboard?, and obviously the graphics card requires PCI-E support. I'm looking to stay at the cheap end of things, money-wise, if at all possible, and i'd be grateful if anyone can either reccommend me a particular board, or at least tell me exactly what features i'm looking for in order to support the components.

The motherboard is what i'm most stuck on at the moment, but advice on which CPU exactly, whether the graphics card is a good choice (and what brand using that chip i should buy), recommendations for harddrives and RAM, etc etc, would be most welcome. Just remembering i'm trying not to get excessive with the spending (except for the g-card, i know, that's quite expensive).

I'm not exactly intending to overclock the system, so don't worry about support for that. But i figured that if anyone would be able to give me good advice on this, they would be here. If this really, really isn't appropriate to this forum, then please direct me somewhere else, and i'll C+P this across.

Thanks for any help in advance.

I built a PC for a friend a few days ago, and it consisted of this:

Fortron AX500a (500w power supply)
DFI nF4 Ultra-D
Venice 3000+ (proceeded to overclock it to ~2.4ghz at stock voltage)
eVGA 7800GT, but you can easily bump it down to an X800XL and save some money
1x 1024mb of PQI PC3200, 2-3-2-6 (you won't have dual channel, but it leaves a very wide upgrade path)
2x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822145082 (80GB 7200rpm, run them in Raid-0)
Freezer64 (heatsink)
+ your choice of optical drives

What exactly is your budget? That comes to about $1000, and can run any game out there at any resolution.

Well, i'm actually english, and signed up here rather than .co.uk because they wouldn't allow me to register with either of my e-mail addresses. But anyway, that means my budget is ideally around £500, which probably equates to about $1000 i think. Can you tell me please what the significance of the 'Venice' bit is? I also thought that the chip would come with a heatsink, and the case with a power supply, so what are the advantages of buying them separately (bear in mind i'm not intending to overclock)? And lastly, why 1x 1024 for the RAM rather than 2x 512?

The Venice core is a new revision, and it generaly overclocks a lot better.

The PSU's (power supply) that come with cases are usualy cheap crap. A cheap power supply can cause instability, and premature death of your other hardware. Often when they die, they take other parts with them. I have never had a Fortron die.

The processor will come with a heatsink if you get the retail box, but the Freezer is fairly cheap and is much quieter.

Lastly, in the near future, it would be smart to move up to 2GB of ram. You only have 4 slots, so its best to get the most dense chip you can. I have 4x 512mb and all of my slots are filled, and when you fill them all, you lose a little performance.

OK, thanks for the advice.

£500 is only $600. Go with an AMD 3000+ and the new ASRock motherboard. With only £500 there's no way you can get a good PC AND get an x800 XL, so try going with a ATi x700 Pro or less.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813157081

Wow, LordDarik, you have some misconceptions about the strength of your currency...

500.00 GBP United Kingdom Pounds = 902.211 USD

Stoanhart said:

Wow, LordDarik, you have some misconceptions about the strength of your currency...

500.00 GBP United Kingdom Pounds = 902.211 USD

Click to expand...

Well sorry, all the different little euro signs confuse me. And it's actually 901.993.

901.680 now according to XE.com. They are realtime, so you can see how fast currecies change. It's been what, 10 minutes, and we already have 3 different values!

im tempted to go check but im just too tired...