Well, you can always count on helpful forum members that are more current with computer tech than you, to help you out.

I don't pretend to know all that much about computer hardware, but with some help I was able to pick and choose the parts for two of my rigs (my 2009 and current 2011 gaming rigs). In point of fact, I pretty much picked all the parts for my second rig myself, with one error I can recall offhand...I originally had a core i5, but it wouldn't have worked with other parts of my rig (I think it was the RAM?) so I went with a core i7 (which was discounted at the time, so I got it for less than I expected).