[evulish]

I'd steer clear of barebone systems, too. You'll want to pick your motherboard since that's where all the features lie. Take a look at tomshardware.com and get a good idea of motherboards. If you want a system to last a bit longer, I'd go with an Athlon 64. What you want to use the computer for can drastically change the type of components you'll want. And your budget. I always forget about that one. The amount of money you have to spend on this thing will probably be the biggest deciding factor I'd also like to highly recommend www.zipzoomfly.com. They commonly have better prices and better shipping than Newegg. I got a $70 newegg order for $14 less at zipzoomfly with free 2-day shipping.

If I had to build a system to last a while, I'd go with an Athlon 64 3200 or so, 1gb ram, a video card using PCI Express, one or two 160gb Serial ATA drives, a DVD burner, and an M-Audio sound card.