h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just wanted to say that I find the idea of anyone giving advice to others about how to build PCs a little scary! I've worked with and built computers since "I were knee high to a grasshopper", have worked in IT for nearly 15 years, been on more training courses than I can remember and I still manage to detonate computers occasionally. Strangely enough its never my own (or works) computers I blow up, just those of friends and relatives who have asked for assistance.

My advice would be "if you don't do it for a living then its quicker, chepaer and simpler to buy them", Leave the DIY works to geeks like me. Making an article like this fully informative and keeping it up to date could be a life's work, cause you thousands of emails and possible legal action when someone blows themselves up after taking your advice

As a for instance, did you know you need to have 333MHz RAM (and hence a motherboard which supports it) to clock an Athlon 2400+ CPU to 2.5GHz (in my case I also needed to update my BIOS from 1006 to 1016 to get this support)? Do most people really want to know about dull stuff like this or just buy one off the shelf which says "2.5GHz CPU inside"?

Well you have me there, all right. Never even knew that RAM could be measureed in Hz. I'll stay with the shop models.

Where have you been lately - its no longer size but speed that matters (yukyuk)