Building my first PC and need some help.

[Hydrashokglock]

I am planning on building my first PC because mine is a piece of garbage. I have read up on the assembly of the PC and it doesn't seem that difficult so I thought I would give it a try. I also have a friend that has built one before and he is going to help me. I just don't know where to start. There are so many choices. Basically, I want a good computer that I can surf the web on, burn cds and dvds, watch videos on it(connecting to my HDTV would be great), and play an occasional video game on(nothing to fancy). I haven't decided on a budget yet so I was wondering what I could do and some price ranges. If I have to put a price on it right now I would say $400-500. I was also wondering about Vista. Should I go with it instead of XP? Any help would be greatly appriecated.

[Big_Daddy]

I like Vista and it doesn't give me trouble. For that amount of money, you may want to look at a 780G or 790GX board because a video card will be iffy with that budget. Vista will be your most expensive piece ($100-100). I assume you are using your existing monitor

[Theophylact]

I've been very happy with this motherboard; this slightly newer one seems very similar. You can get a good dual-core processor for under $70. The board doesn't have a lot of expansion slots, but with onboard video and ethernet, 5 SATA connections (4 RAID), 4 USB ports (plus headers for 4 more), plus HDMI, Firewire and e-SATA ports, how many do you need?

This week, you can get a 1TB hard drive for under a hundred bucks, and 4GB of quality DDR2 800 for $91 ($61 after mail-in rebate).