Building First Computer

I am thinking about building my first computer. I am confused about certain things.

How do I match a mother board up with a case so the mother board will fit in the case? I am looking at mother boards that have usb/fire wire ports in back and front. How do I find a case that will dovetail with such a board?

I want a board with pleanty of PCI slots to allow for expansion. I also do not want on board sound.

Can anyone recommend a good board and case? I am not working on a paupers budget.

I am considering a Pentium 4/2.4 GHz processor.

Thanks.

asus A7n8x nforce2 or the Abit Nf7-s are both great boards. They both have onboard sound but the sound is just as good as anything out right now. Both have the ability to have back and front usb.Not sure about firewire in both. theses bards are atx form. You need to find a case that is atx. Chieftecs are pretty good cases and have built in usb and firewire ports in front

First off all ATX motherboards will fit all ATX cases. To start, you can go to this site: http://www.newegg.com/index.asp?DEPA=0
To get prices and compatiblity. There are many such sites, but newegg is one of the better ones. There are litterly hundreds of motherboard manufactures. Many good boards, such as Abit, Gigabyte etc. It boils down to personal perferences as far as to the best. Hope this helps. You will be getting a lots of suggestions in awhile. :)

A good place to start would be here: http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/index.html

And perhaps here: http://www.anandtech.com/

To get started on Motherboards. Keep in mind the emergence of SATA that you might want to include a board with SerialATA connectors for the near future. I'm an AMD fan myself,not just for economy,but also for performance. I'm looking very closely at the new Asus offering in the A7V600 board. Lots of bang for the buck there...:)

First system bring back fond memories. Patience is the key word here that and have someone like VDr to ask questions of. :)

As cases go Antec are the more popular choice of my clientelle. The SX1000II has the features you are looking for and more. Such as modded side panels LED fans and light tubes. Fully tricked out these cases look really cool. They're large enough to accomodate just about any future upgrade you want to consider. Even if you're not interested in the case I strongly you think about going with an oversized case. Easier to upgrade\work inside of, better air flow hence a cooler working temp.
http://www.antec-inc.com/images/400/SX1000II_front.jpg

You might want to post want you want to do with this computer. How is it to be used? Storing data, server, gamer, etc. Or just build one with the basic components large enough for multifunction use. In that case a full tower and a power supply (good one) in excess of 400W. :)

This link may help out in some areas, http://www.gamespot.com/gshw/stories...842650,00.html

My current case is over 2 feet tall and has about 17 bays in it, huge!!!