Really, nothing has changed much in the past five years about building a PC. What I mean to say is that the parts available to you have not grown exponentially. You're not going to be shopping for any old stock. Of the new parts, you're going to choose whether you want to run Intel or AMD. Then you can start looking at which motherboard based on your CPU brand (motherboard choice will definitely involve evaluating the chipset used, be it VIA, SIS, Intel, NVIDIA, whatever).

Make a decision as to whether you'd like to restrict yourself to a 533 MHz FSB or whether you want to plan ahead for your future CPU suporting 800MHz. It may not be worth it to look this far ahead for mobo only, so let that information guide you.

Hyperthreading and the newer and faster FSB are likely to be what you'll want to investigate as a "premium" factor. Memory will be chosen to complement the CPU and mobo (the faster the better, single DIMM better than two for non dual-channel systems, brand not usually a critical difference except when trying to squeeze the last ounce of performance - amount if up to you, I wouldn't go with anything less than 512MB at today's prices and usage requirements)

Price was a concern for me so I picked up a 1.7GHz P4 and some PC2700 memory late last year. I paid a premium for the Shuttle system, but I ended up not breaking the bank and with a level of performance I'm hapy with for this machine's intended purpose (it's my living room/TV PC).

Once you've decided on a few of the choices above, take a look a round-ups of some current motherboards one a couple of the review sites. As well as some practical tests comparing different CPU's within a similar configuration.

The latest mobo's I've heard good things about: MSI and AOPEN (can't recall specific models). YMMV of course.

Oh, but put in any component starting with NV-anything and you'll throw any performance advantages out the window. Have I stressed that enough?

Bruno