[dman]

a) http://www.anandtech.com/tag/guides has guides that are updated frequently and are pretty good. b) You can also head to www.hardforums.com and get recommendations from techies themselves. People on hardforums are extremely helpful and knowledgeable.

[davidmathers]

This. Also look for the roadmap articles and head to head comparison articles:

http://www.anandtech.com/tag/cpus

And there are usually head to head comparisons for each generation of new components:

http://www.anandtech.com/tag/mb

http://www.anandtech.com/tag/gpus

http://www.anandtech.com/tag/memory