Aww shucks, I'm blushing
First off, welcome to CF! Secondly, yeah, you need 100 Posts to be able to PM other members; 2048 relayed the message though.
Building a system is fairly straight-forward, and as mentioned before, hard to intentionally physically screw up (this part ONLY fits here, that part ONLY fits there). However, it's always recommended that you have a basic-to-decent understanding of general PC knowledge just in case something goes wrong with either the hardware or software end of it. From what I've seen (and please don't take this as fact) setting up BIOS, Drive formatting and OS Install are the areas people often get stuck on.
So I understand you want to play games, but what else is important to you? Will you ever keep irreplaceable personal files on the system or is that not a concern? Do you want something that looks sleek and professional, or something screams 'Look at me! I'm a badass computer! Give me your attention!'? Do you want something near-silent or does a fan hum sooth you (it sure does for me!)?
Biggest, newest, fastest, most expensive, highest-rated, etc. do not always = best. Custom systems are just that - customized to the user. Someone who does data entry and does so on a full-fledged gaming system is going to be saying "this is waaaaay too much system for anyone", just as a hard-core gamer using a server designed for small-business applications is saying "this is lame - it's completely useless". Both systems are incredibly capable, just for totally different situations.
Different answer from different people. It's not so much XP vs. Vista as it is 32-bit vs. 64-bit. XP itself will utilize 4 Gigs, but on a system equipped as such, it will only tell the end-user that +/- 3 is available; the rest is being used by the system itself. So it will see 4, you will see roughly 3; it's all there though.
Imsati, thank you for replying and its a pleasure to meet you. The custom rig that im looking for isn't one that screams look at me but rather something cool and simple. The custom rig that I want setup is going to mainly be for gaming. I dont do much video editing or anything of that nature. Just Gaming, wathcing dvd's, getting my work done on the internet with my emails, and using the basic Microsoft programs. Im looking for something affordable but yet something to have power to run high end games at maximum setting with low fps. How does it sound?
