You are right, ram is very important. I didn’t want to get into too much detail but, for ram go with at least 512mb base. I went with CPU first because RAM can be added in addition to the existing amount. Where a CPU has to be replaced. I would rather see him spend $200 on ram and $350 on the CPU than spend $400 on ram and $200 on the CPU. 512mb of ram on a Athlon 64 is much much faster than 1gb of ram on a Athlon 2000XP.