Things You'll Need:
- Access to the Web for research
- Phone book or local paper
- Acess to places and sites for researching.
- Some knowlege of building a computer
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Step 1
When purchasing a mother board and processor you want to ask yourself, does it fit your needs and is it compatible with your existing hardware? For example the better Motherboards no longer have an AGP slot for the older type video cards. If you have an AGP card then you have two choices. Find a Motherboard with an AGP slot or get a newer one with built in VGA that supports your monitor or buy a new video card compatible with accelerated PCI slots which is what replaces the old AGP.
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Step 2
You must determine, if the motherboard is expandable to your future needs to upgrade. Does the Motherboard have the capability to upgrade memory or processor in the future, depending on your budget?
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Step 3
Determine what kind of memory, how much memory, and how fast the memory is. While selecting this you must consider the front side bus speed. Is it fast enough for your needs and wants? Can you upgrade your processor if need be and still be able to match your front side bus? I recommend at least 800mgb Front side bus or greater, No less than 1gb, which will make your system bog down if less than 1gb.
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Step 4
If you are planning on running Windows Vista make sure that what ever motherboard and processor you select is Vista ready. Also for the home version and above Vista requires 1 gigabyte of memory or greater. I highly reccomend at least 4gb no less than 2gb of memory.
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Step 5
Some motherboards come with a processor or the processor can be purchases by itself. if you choose to purchase the processor by itself make sure it matches with the motherboard you purchase.
