SAM,i recommend you the athlon64 3200+ procesor,its one of the bests in the market,it has the best rendiment,specially for games.It
s cheaper than pentium IV with dual procesor,and much better
And the Videocard GeForce5600 with 256 mb is great!,and cheap!.
The DDR 512 mb is cheap and good.
The Mother Series ASUS for Single Micropocesor are great for the athlon 64.
The gabinets depend in your money.
the important are the energy limits (watts,or something like that in english),so,the gabinet dont need those deluxes shits,the good is when it
s big.because of the refrigeration.
And the prefered monitors are lcd’s,they are too much cheap (at least in my country),so,with a 15’’ is enough (depends in your money.
The sound card,soundblaster.with support of 5.1 home theather is good.
The pcs are cheaper than macs,and better,except if you want to do your movie,and edit it.
The keyboard,mouse and the keyboard,you select.
If you want a printer,hewlett packard is the best.
This are the suggestions of a novice student of computers engineering.
but,the money is always a trouble,so,i recommend you to buy a normal machine and don`t upgrade a mac.
thanks