Computer Building 101

Heyo ding.

for the motherboard, i suggest either asus or msi.

the cpu/processor is really quite up to you. but i suggest going with the AMD. it's cheaper. and you don't really need dual processing unless you're seriously into multi-tasking.

you'll need ram, and i suggest 1gb and above. think it's rather cheap now anyway.

for graphics, that really depends... if you want to play games or not..... duh. the 2 main brands are ati or nvidia. they claim ati graphics looks better then nvidia... they look the same to me really. how much it'll set you back... depends on your budget really.

soundcard.. actually, onboard is okay. if you want, you can get a seperate card, what is does it's that it actually offloads some of the CPU usage. as when you use the onboard sound processor, it utilizes your CPU processor to help it process the sound signals. Anyway, since you mentioned that you wanted one, yah. go with creative.

you'll need speakers. if your pair is dead. don't get a super set of speakers unless you have a good soundcard to go with it.

you'll need a casing. floppy disk(which is used sometimes still, but rarely). keyboard, mouse.

DVD burners are rather cheap now. good investment. but been hearing that the dvds get mouldy quite fast in our weather.

You can re-use the hard disk, no problem with that.

for the firewire and usb, it'll come along with the motherboard. the bluetooth, i'm not too sure if they have integrated it with the motherboards yet, but i don't think so. you need to buy a seperate bit for that. you can buy one that's the size of the thumbdrive and plugs right into your usb port. get the version 2.0 of the bluetooth. not the older standard.

multislot card thingy, i think some motherboards bundle them together. and some casings have the thingy in front that allow you to do that. or you could buy the usb bit and plug it in.

the monitor is up to you. if apple is too expensive, go with either samsung/philips/viewsonic. i suggest you go down and see which monitor you like.

all in all, you'll need to have a budget 1st.