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Brian, here's what you need
Brian,
Avoid celeron chips. They're evil.
Go for a P4 from 2.0Ghz to 2.4 Ghz.
Get at least a 300W PS.
USB 2.0 PCI card, if your motherboard does not have it. Not only does it do 480Mb/s, the standard NEC chipset has 3 USB controllers on it, and it makes even USB 1.1 devices way faster. Cost is around $30 for this.
1394 Firewire card. These are $20.
Video Card: go for an ATI Radeon 9000 or equivalent. These things kick, and for the price, you can't do better.
CD-RW: There are CD-RW drives for $60 that are 44x at CompUSA, and the HI-VAL ones actually are darn good for the price.
DVD: You can get this for $30 with software off of the net too.
Motherboard: Any ASUS P4 motherboard will make you happy. These are the ones that let you flash your BIOS from Windows 2000 or XP. Gigabyte is to be avoided like the plague. $100
Hard Drive: Maxtor makes some good 40GB HD's, and you can get them for around $70. There are bigger ones available, but 40GB is enough for most people.
Sound Card: SB Live! $30 for this too.
Your average motherboard these days does have onboard Ethernet. If you need a fast ethernet card, lemme know, I've got a stack I can part with.
Mitch
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