When it comes to RAM, there are two options. The first, of course, is laying out some cash for some quality, name brand RAM. The second is going with some unknown company and taking your chances. Some motherboards don't care. Some, like the Tyan Trinity (http://www.tyan.com/products/html/fam_trinity.html) board I use in my system, will laugh at you, spit in your face, and crash constantly if you give them anything less than quality RAM. With that in mind, we suggest Kingston Technologies. You can score 256 MB for all of $140, which is almost 2MBs per gaming dollar. Now, why not just a generic RAM stick from Jim Bob's House O' RAM? Because, as always, you get what you pay for. Name Brand RAM is more expensive than generic, but it tends to work better. Crucial and Corsair also have good reputations. Buy from companies and people you know and trust, because good RAM is critical to the operation of your system.
IBM's Deskstar line is, possibly, the best line of hard drives in the market today. And I, personally, have one of these 30GB monsters perched in my current rig, holding my MP3 collection (all legal, of course). You get 30GBs of storage might, 7200RPMs for fast access, and one of the easiest drives to work with when it comes to tinkering with second hard drives. You ARE going to put another one in when you get the cash, aren't you? With game installs clocking in around 1 Gigabyte each, this puppy has enough storage for all your favorite games, MS Office, Windows, and everything else your little heart could desire.
There's GeForce, then there's everything else. They may be outperformed at times, but the GeForce chipset is now in its third iteration. EVERYONE makes a GeForce-based card and you can find anything from a stripped down value edition to a top of the line GeForce 2 Ultra with bells and whistles galore. The GeForce 3 lurks over the horizon, waiting to storm the gaming world again. Actually, it's out, but starts at around $600. I like power, but I'm not insane.
A screaming video card can add years on to the life of your system. When gaming, your card and RAM are everything. This is the place to lay out some sweet cash. When shopping, remember that NVIDIA provides better driver support than some of the actual board manufacturers. Look for the features you want in the card like TV-OUT or a neat software bundle over manufacturer names.
You want the stats on this beast? How about the top of the line GeForce 2 GTS chipset? How about fillrates up to 1.6 Gigatexels per second? Or even 32MB of screaming DDR memory? And there's always the mind-blowing 5.3GB/second of bandwidth.
That translates to "graphics powerful enough to melt your retina!"
Pick it up OEM to save about $100, or, if you absolutely MUST have the box, you'll be spending more cash.
