The "Building the Perfect PC" book states that Corsair and other top of the line memory brands deliver negligible benefits over standard memory. Still, I chose a name I trust, Kingston, and have been happy with it. I initially ordered 4GB (4x1GB) of DDR2-800 memory but, again, if you check the motherboard specifications closely, and if you read the motherboard manual, you'll find that there are some hidden issues.

All too often, even though a motherboard has four memory slots, it is not guaranteed to work perfectly if more than two of those slots are occupied. I now use 2 GB of RAM but initially ordered 4 GB of RAM, and that's a whole other story.

Along with the motherboard, I selected an ASUS graphics card (SLI compatible, of course). I had used ATI in my previous computer, so I chose to go with NVIDIA. I went with the ASUS EN7900GS, the top of the line in terms of mid-range DirectX9 graphics cards.

This section was easy. I chose a Sony floppy drive, an ASUS DVD-ROM drive (I have an external drive that can write to DVDs; my internal drive is intended for games, which will mean lots of read-only use), and a Lite-On CD-R/RW drive. For the hard drive, I selected a fast 320 GB Seagate Barracuda, which uses the SATA 3.0 Gb/s connection instead of a legacy (slower) IDE connection.

While I skipped the Corsair memory, I couldn't bypass the 520-watt Corsair CMPSU-520HX power supply, which is SLI compatible, offers a 5-year warranty and seemed to be far more powerful than anything I'd ever need.

I ordered a pair of Silverstone cooling fans that I have not used, I ordered a sound card that I don't need, but my graphics card did include a free copy of the game Supreme Commander, which is a nifty diversion.

Finally, I decided to have it all shipped by FedEx, which cost just under $150.