Personally, I have my list of trusted brands for each component (which are likely out of date, but whatever). I also poke around Newegg's reviews.
As a general rule, I tend to prefer older high-end components over newer mid-range components. That usually gives you better bang for your buck (since "older" in computer hardware is often a single year).
I never skimp on my power supply. A bad power supply can ruin your whole computer, and a flaky power supply can make it LOOK like another component is bad. Also, I buy the CPU/fan retail box combos, since custom fans invalidate your CPU warranty, and the boxed version has the thermal grease already done for you. This means you throw out overclocking, but you probably didn't want that anyway.
I think the other guides angrycoder and kylek are likely to be more help than I am, though.
Not necessarily. You can get surprisingly good overclocking results on most Intel chips even using the stock heat-sink/fan these days (and it has been this way for a while, at least since the Core 2 Duo days and even the generation prior to those).
But yeah, for someone who isn't even sure he wants to build his own rig and who won't be using the machine primarily for gaming the overclocking can be skipped without much real world loss.
As a general rule, I tend to prefer older high-end components over newer mid-range components. That usually gives you better bang for your buck (since "older" in computer hardware is often a single year).
I never skimp on my power supply. A bad power supply can ruin your whole computer, and a flaky power supply can make it LOOK like another component is bad. Also, I buy the CPU/fan retail box combos, since custom fans invalidate your CPU warranty, and the boxed version has the thermal grease already done for you. This means you throw out overclocking, but you probably didn't want that anyway.
I think the other guides angrycoder and kylek are likely to be more help than I am, though.