[wonderwes]

First, buy the parts online. Pricewatch.com is a good source. You can buy combo bundles that come with the processor, motherboard, and ram all put together. They sell those on mwave.com. Its really great because you can plop it right into the case and just hook up the cables. They will even test it before they send it so you are certain not to get bunk parts.

I would not try to throw it in the same case as your emachine. That e-machine probably doesnt have the power supply to handle a p4 chip. My advice, if you are going to do all that work, might as well just put it in a brand new PC case. You don't have to get an expensive one, just get one with a 350W+ power supply.

So take that new procesor/mb/ram combo, new case, then throw in that cdrom, video card, and anything else from the emachine. Most motherboards now already have a soundcard built in. Also you got a nice video card, but if you play high end games (like Halflife2) it will get very hot. A $20 exhaust fan to put right next to the video card wont hurt.

It will be a chore to put all this together, but the overall satisfaction of putting together your own box to your specifications will pay off in the long run.

Oh yeah, make sure you take the HD and do a fresh install of windows on it when putting in the new hardware.

Some of the Dell models are only around $300-350 esp with the coupon codes out there. So you might not save that much from building it yourself.

More video cards are going now from AGP to Pci Express, so make sure you read that it has an AGP port.