Help a Newbie: Buying PC parts

Hello Gamespot!

I am a PC hardware newbie that is looking to buy a Gaming PC within the next 2-3 months. I have been trying to do research into what the good components are on the market now, but, as I result of my unfamiliarity with PC technical terms, I have been easily swamped by information that I find hard to understand.

I have gone to Youtube in search of guides and reviews to parts, but technical terms always get in the way of my understanding of what parts are better than others, what their functions are, etc.

If anybody could give me explanations (in plain english please :)) of what are the important things I should be looking for in a CPU, GPU, motherboard, etc., that would be great.

If anyone wishes to identify some parts, I am leaning more towards the Intel chip-side of things. About that, what is the difference between AMD and Intel? Which one, in your opinion, is better?

My budget is around 1300-1500$.

Thanks.

You would be better off coming back to us when you are right about to purchase your rig. Prices can change quite a lot.

But just to give you a basic idea, $1300-1500 will get you an intel i5-2500k, 8GB of RAM, a nice case, and a high-end video card... plus all the rest.

That would be alot of work to explain everything you need to know about every different part of a PC. That would mean teaching you everything I have learned over the past 8 years, and still wouldn't be able to cover everything simply because I don't know everything still. What I'm trying to say is that everything, EVERTHING, is important and can be a determining factor when purchasing computer hardware. It just depends on how picky you want to be about certain things. But, I can remember being where you are so I will help you out a little...

www.google.com

But no, seriously; if you want to learn about the important things to look for then start doing research on a particular part, such as the cpu. You might notice that the CPUs advertised on newegg.com have certain specifications such as L2, and L3 cache. You might not know what that is, so do a google search 'what is L2 cache on a CPU?' and you should find some answers.

Still somewhat relevent.

Look up Linus Tech Tips, he does a good job explaining a lot of basic and more advanced stuff and he is also attached to NCIX guides as well. Also, if you don't mind watching a youtube video for an hour TimeToLiveCustoms has a lot of good information and some of the best and detailed (really, really detailed) reviews out there. Those are my two favorites on youtube for hardware info.