good tips from techmouse, also, you're best with setting yourself a budget, and trying to work to that.

what have you got now that you can use in the new pc ?
things like what harddrives have you got ?

cd, dvd drives/writers etc

the minimum you will need is a cpu, motherboard, psu and probably memory (RAM) depending on what memory is in your current pc.

whats noisy in a pc ?

well the main noise is from fans, powerful graphics cards have noisy fans on (but you wont need a powerful card if you're not going to be playing games)
case fans can be noisy, psu can be noisy and so can cpu fans.

If i was building a new pc now, i'd buy an asus motherboard, socket 939 for the latest amd 64 bit processors.
i wouldnt bother buying an sli one (this is for gaming, it means you can run two graphics cards as one powerful one)
so if you don't get an sli motherboard, you will save yourself a little money.

i'd probably go for this one
http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l...mp;modelmenu=1

or maybe go for the ultra version which will allow you to use dual core processors in the future.

other manufacturers worth looking out for are gigabyte (i use them, and so do lots of people i know, good solid boards for cheapish prices too)
and asrock, as techmouse said are ok, allthough reliabilty maybe an issue with these.

as for cpu, this depends on your budget.

i'd choose either and amd 64bit 3200 venice or an amd 64bit 3700 sandiego processor.


(if you buy retail, they come with heatsink and fan, which are quite quiet)

or if you buy an oem version, it comes without a heatsink and fan, but will be cheaper to buy, plus you can buy an even quieter one (just make sure it will fit you cpu and will work with the speed of your processor)


now for the psu, i wouldn't go too much lower than 500w,
seasonic make silent ones,
tagan make silent ones,
antec make silent ones ( i use an antec psu, fantastic so far, and much quieter than my old one),
so do enermax

just make sure any psu you buy, says atx 2.0 compliant and not the new atx2.01, unless your motherboard is going to be atx v2.01, which i doubt it will be

also, get a modular psu, which means you can attach and take off any cables you're not using.

other things you may need,

well, you will need a new graphics card, as most new motherboards use pci express now for graphics cards, so you will need a pci express card.

if you're not going to be playing games, then id buy an ati radeon x300 se or maybe an nvidia geeforce 6200, both these cards should come with no fan installed, as they're not powerful enough to need one, so this will cut down noise.

or buy any other low end card with a fan installed, as it wont be too noisy anyway, like i say, just make sure its pci-express.

you may need some memory (RAM), depending on what you have at the minute.

i'd personally get 2Gb if you can afford it, corsair is good, 2Gb ddr xms3200c2pt is around £146 .

geil are also a good make, as are g skill, crucial and ocz

just make sure you get cas 2.5 or cas 2 as its faster than cas3 memory.

it may also be worth you buying a new hard drive,

get a sata 2 one, i'd go for a samsung spinpoint one too, im just about to order one, as they're the quietest around, and pretty fast.

if you need any help, just shout, i can also look around more for you if you want, and price up the parts and tell you what goes with what.