COMPUTER Sir nice to see ur specialty on the expert's lounge! What is the best combination when assembling your own PC with regards to all its components giving the user the best option.

I start out on the Asus site. I ask the customer what they need the computer to do. Then I look up the chipsets on the motherboards to see what they are capable of. If you want good graphics for photo programs, or gaming, you would want a good graphics card. That card also has a chip on it. Every motherboard and graphic card maker uses some of the same chips. Just because you like Envidea , Geforce or ATI, you do not have to buy that brand brand. Asus makes great motherboards and Video cards. The have proven themselves and won many awards. Asus also makes their own Laptops. You can go (here) to read about companies that make laptops.

The main thing is to make sure that the chipset is a good strong chipset. The chipset on the motherboard or video card are more important than the processor or memory. You can get the fastest processor and memory and put in with a crappy chipset and you will have a crappy computer. The chipset tells everything how to work. Asus usually uses the best chipsets, but they do have some low end boards. Most of their low end boards have video onboard. You want to match the processor with the chip[set speed if at all possible. If the processor that matches the speed seems too high, you can go with a slower bus speed processor. This will enable the customer to be able to upgrade later. They have motherboards that they considered ROG certified boards and those some of their best boards right now. Check (these) motherboards out. I have used one of these boards recently in a build. (This) is the one that I used and it was well designed and had very good quality parts. I only use Maxtor or Seagate Hard Drives because they are very good and have a 5 year warranty. I only use Pentium Processors because it has a TRUE clock speed and overclocks very well. Amd's are not for me because in the past they had trouble with a heat issue and that turned me away. They are supposed to be better now but I just do noy want to try them again. The same goes with IBM / Hitachi hard drives. I have used them in the past and gave them a try when Hitachi bought them out. In the past they were **** and took 3 months to get back from service. The new drive that I used died one day and I could not even retrieve my information off of it.
In a laptop I prefer ASUS because of the construction and how dependable they are. I have a L5000 series laptop that is over 3 years old that uses a 2.8 gig socket 478 processor and 1 gig of memory and 128 MB ATI video chip. I have not been able to find another laptop that my customers have brought me recently out do it.

Never use less that 2 gig of memory with VISTA and never use less than 512 mb of memory with XP. Try to stay away from onboard video unless you check out the video chipset. Some new motherboards are supposed to be coming out with high end video onboard. If you ever have the chance, go to a real computer show with Motherboard, Video, and Processor Manufacturers. Microsoft is usually at these conferences. This is a good place to learn and see the upcoming new things. You can also check out the web sites of these people and join there dealer programs. Intel has a thing on it's site to where you can find out when they will be dropping prices and coming out with new processors.

Now if you need information on a good system to build let me know. I will be glad to help you.