I've been building them since,, well... 2000. Just read the indirections, getcha a magnifying glass so you can see the fine print on the motherboard. Get the best parts you can afford. I find that dual cores still outperform quad cores for some reason. And memory, memory, memory speeds up a machine like nobody's business. Get the right kind of memory for the 'mobo' (motherboard), power supply sufficient to run everything, and a graphics card worthy of the tasks you perform. I have a gaming machine because I play on 3D simulated games, so for me memory and graphics card were most important.