Have to say pretty cool reading over the OP on this experience, hear it over and over again from people who do the custom PC build route to cheap HD gaming (work in IT support, so their mistakes pay my rent)
There is some great guides out there on places like Toms hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/motherboard-selection-guide,3900.html which can help you get started and explain a few of the issues you run into (like what socket numbers mean or various ram types) but the easiest and most common way of getting it all up and running is just to do what you did, buy some parts and then see what's missing and build your rig from there. Then at the end of the day you've both built your own PC and hopefully learned a few bits along the way which you can put into doing it the next time or knowing how to replace individual pieces to upgrade what you bought.
At least it didn't end in complete disaster, I've seen it all from damaged sticks of ram being broken to fit into slots to some real horror shows with CPU/Thermal paste.... one person put the Paste into the socket and then pressed the CPU down into it, was a PGA or Pin Grid Array too (the one with 700+ holes) so each of those with thermal paste pressed down into them as he mashed the CPU down onto the paste, was pretty hard not to laugh cos I felt so bad for the person who done that, wish I had taken a picture but I was trying to make the person feel a bit better at the time.
But yeah cool to read your journey to being a PC builder, hope it didn't put you off doing it again in the future.
Why not check me out on youtube and help me on the way to 2k subs over at www.youtube.com/stormcloudlive
