I don't know how daft you want to get with it, but if you've got any particular questions stick them on here and I'll be happy to help if I can. This was the last real PC 'project' I did. My colleague and I designed and built this little box of tricks for a magazine's annual shoot-out of top PC builders...
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In terms of advice to prevent you from needing to upgrade often there are two schools of thought I guess, both with their advantages and disadvantages...
Firstly, you could throw loads of money at the key parts and buy the best there is. That way you won't *need* to upgrade for a while, but given the rate of development (see "Moore's law") you'll suffer depreciation and although it will still perform well, it won't be 'the best' for long.
The other way to look at it is that if you spend as little as possible you can possibly come out with a usable machine that you won't be too worried about replacing completely in 12/18 months time. Lets say you spend £250 and keep it for a year, it's cost about 69p a day to own...
I guess it all depends on what you want to do with the machine really; but there's never a 'great' time to buy PC equipment though, and waiting for a 'good' time to buy is a never-ending game.
Around now is as good a time as any though, Intel have new chips coming through in the next week or two. They've just announced some of the details for them but NDA prevents me naming them and giving all the specs; but they're the 45nm process versions of the current chips and run at a higher FSB. Pricing will largely be the same. So basically if you get one of these you're getting a bit more performance and a little extra future-proofing. You'll need a decent P35 chipset board to support them but they're relatively inexpensive. Most use DDR2 memory which is very cheap at the moment and DDR3 is both not particularly beneficial for most users at present and still ridiculously expensive. Also DDR2 won't drop off the planet any time soon as even if Intel switch completely to DDR3 architecture (not happening any time soon), AMD have only just released their latest-generation chip which has an integrated memory controller for DDR2, so that means part will be around for a while (don't even bother considering a Phenom btw - they're 20% slower than the competing Core2Quad on average).
Anyway, I could waffle-on for ages but I'm sure you've had enough...
Just let us know what you plan on using the machine for and the kind of spend you've got in mind and I'll throw up some ideas if you want...
Regards,
Rob.
