That is the half the fun of building your own PC, learning about all the different boards and what makes them different.
It comes down to what you want in your computer; do you want it to look good? Or just work really well.
Do you do a lot of gaming, if you do then you will need the latest and greatest Video card if not, and you will watch DVD?s then a good video card with lots of ram will be fine (and save you half the money)
Are you going to be video editing or audio? In most cases if you are doing that, you want to insure you have fast hard drives 8 Meg buffers, fast access time. Most serious video and audio people have their files and O/S on one drive, and put their video and audio files on a second separate drive.
You need to do your own research, and then research the best places to buy your parts.
For me, I go with a name Brand mother board, you do get what you pay for when it comes to mother boards. Some can be finicky with O/S's so I like the Intel boards or the Asus something of that caliber.
I have built many systems, and all are different depending on my use. So as a basic system, with min. requirements it?s pretty hard to beat the big manufactures on price, except that you will have a better quality machine if you pick the better parts. If you are making a high end machine, you can usually save some money, and again, have a better quality machine, if you know what you are doing, and have done your research. One good place to find out about boards, drives, chips is tomshardware.com .
Basic Items you will need to buy: 1. Case $25 and up, 2.Mother board $45 and up, 3.Chip ? Intel or AMD both are excellent no matter what anyone says, they both have pros and cons. $60 and up 4. Hard drive $50 and up 5. Video Card $25 and up 6. Ram should be at least 512K of ram Pricing depends on the system u build 256K is good, but for a little extra 512 is great. All depends on what you are using it for, I do web design, and have some powerful programs up, so running programs like Photoshop, dream weaver and surfing the net can slow you down, so I use a gig on my developing computer. In my database computer, I only have 256K. 7. Most motherboards have an eithernet card build in to the board, if not, you will need that for either networking $5 and up, or for high-speed Internet.
8. Modem, $5 and up some motherboards have that, if not and you want to fax you will need that as well. 9. Audio cards that depends on you. I have 5.1 channels on my Intel mother board, and I like it. My friend is an audio nut, so he has a separate board for audio. $10 and up. 10. Floppy Drive (Just for old times sake) $5 and up. 11. CD Player or Burner. Or both, Burners are so cheap, and store a lot of information. $30 and up 12. DVD player or burner, this you don?t need, unless you are watching movies? or Store LOTS of Data.
That?s it in a nut shell, with basic prices, you might be able to shop it, and save a bit more, but that is around the bottom end of the prices, the top, is anything u want to spend?
Good Luck.... the best part is the fun in the learning process, once you have done it a few times.... you'll wonder what all the fuss was about, it is pretty easy.
Willemakit