All motherboards will accept separate video cards, and in some cases also have integrated/built-in video. Upgraded motherboards offer room for additional memory slots, usually 4 x 240-pin DDR2 memory modules. High end boards may also have additional features such as: Firewire, RAID, Dual Video Card Support, HDMI, Additional USB, HD Audio, Gigabit LAN, eSATA and WiFi. Click on the name of the for complete specifications. For more motherboard options, click on the links to the left.

For gaming, video editing or other demanding applications we recommend a high-performance CPU cooler with larger fan and copper core or heat-pipe design. If your new computer will be used mainly for web browsing, email and office applications then a smaller, aluminum heat sink or low-noise cooler should be adequate.

Minimum recommendations for general use are 2GB for Windows XP and 4GB for Windows Vista. Memory intensive applications such as multimedia and video/photo editing software will benefit from additional memory. Multiple module kits are capable of running in dual-channel mode for twice the memory throughput and higher overall system performance.

If your power supply is more than 2 years old, you may want to consider replacing it with a newer that meets the power requirements of newer CPU's and video cards. Dual core CPU's and high-end video cards have additional power requirements, a minimum of 600 watts is recommended. For single core and entry level CPU's, 450 – 550 watts is adequate.

All drives listed below are high-performance SATA-2 (up to 3Gb / sec) for high-speed file access. General use systems (web browsing, email, etc) do not require a large amount of drive space. Users who download large amounts of music or video files will want to consider a larger (320GB and up) drive to hold the additional files.

For playing, recording or ripping music, a CD-RW drive is an economical choice. Choose a DVD/RW to add DVD playback and video recording features. Note: Some operating systems and software applications are only available on DVD media.