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First things first when deciding to build your own PC, it's important to sit down and plan what exactly you are going to use your PC for. By pinpointing what you want to use your PC for, you can tailor the components you buy and maximise your money by spending more on the components important to what your PC is being built for and cutting back a little on the bits and pieces that are not so important.

As a rough guide, here's a list of components that will make up most core PC systems these days:

CPU (or processor)
Motherboard (or mainboards as they're sometimes known)
Graphics adapter (or VGA card, or graphics card)
Monitor (CRT [television type] or LCD/TFT)
Memory (or RAM)
Sound card
DVD/DVD writer
Hard disk drive
Speakers
Broadband or Cable Modem/Router (if required) or network adapter
Case
Operating System
Software

Plus all your ports, sockets and leads which you shouldn't have to worry about as they'll be included with any components that need them.
Important! This advice is aimed generally at those that are only interested in building a PC. The advice would vary slightly for those interested in further tweaking such as case modification or overclocking. Additionally, the advice given below is based on the assumption that you are buying all components brand new and are not re-using any from scavenged older PCs. Additionally, the prices of PC components can change wildly within very short spaces of time, so I've tried not to quote specific prices.

Starting off:

Ideally, the first decision you must make will dictate future purchases. You must decide either what motherboard you would like OR what kind of CPU you wish to have. The result of either of these decisions will have a direct effect on the other.

Motherboards are tied in to one make of CPU (Intel or AMD) and usually one smaller product line, dictated by the interface between CPU and motherboard (typically called a socket or a slot). For example, if I decide that I want an AMD Athlon Socket AM2 CPU, then I must select a motherboard that supports the AM2 CPUs. By the same token, if I decide that I want an ASUS P5LD2-SE/C motherboard, then I will be restricted to Intel Socket 775 processors. My own personal preference is for AMD processors, simply because they tend to be cheaper than the equivalent Intel processors. For general home use, there's not much to pick between processors at similar speeds. That is, a 3200Mhz AMD CPU will give equivalent real world (or as good as) performance as a 3.2Ghz Intel CPU if inserted

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