[Bungleau]

I've been using AMD chips in my last two machines. They've worked just fine for me, and they're a lot cheaper than Intel. That's the way I'd go...

I will tell you that, having just built up another PC, the next time I will *not* buy all the parts individually. Instead, I will buy a barebones PC from someone like Tigerdirect and add whatever else I want to it. There's no way I can justify the price difference... for less than I paid for the *case* for my last machine, I could have gotten the case, motherboard, keyboard, mouse, and floppy drive. For a little more than I paid for the case, I could have gotten the CPU and cooling fan as well.

But... to each his or her own. I don't do high-level gaming, so I don't have tremendous demands on my system. Figure out what you're using it for, and that will often tell you what you need.