I bought a few books, read a lot on the internet, and built a AMD 3700+ system from the ground up with quality components for about $1400. (Which I know is too much for a lot of people around here.)
I wanted quality parts which had warranties and built it in a quality case -
Antec P160
1 gig of RAM
Radeon X800 XL
DVD+R
On-board sound with an
Asus Motherboard
WinXP Pro SP2
Zalman fan
I had to replace my Compaq, purchased in 1999, 700 Mhz <256megs of RAM, Win98. It was starting to have recurrent errors that we couldn't solve.
Overall the build went smoothly and I had noone standing over my shoulder helping. A great learning experience for me.