When I was looking to purchase my first PC, that was the question I hated hearing from the salesperson. I really had no idea. I had recently completed a one day training called "Introduction to Personal Computers" for work, and I finally understood what I needed to do to make one of these Things work. I'm much older, but probably not much wiser now. As someone that builds custom PCs, the question of "what do you want to do with the PC" is very important. Will the PC be used to play games? Edit Video? Check email and Skype with friends and family? Use the PC as a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device? Once you answer that question, I will be able to make suggestions for components that will best your needs. If you know what you want, Brookside Computer will build the best price to performance PC.