Recommended parts

Go with an MSI mainboard and AMD Athlon processor.

 

I'm going to bump a thread for some assistance, but here goes...

1. Whatever case you get, make sure that it doesn't have a power supply.
2. Get an Antec 430W TruePower supply. While it costs $78, it's a good supply, and provides plenty of power for the power-hungry PCs. Some power supplies that come with the cases are insufficient for motherboards, and putting in a good power supply eliminates a headache point.
3. ASUS, MSI, Abit, and Soyo all make good motherboards.
4. If you don't need bleeding edge, you can go with a slightly older processor, which is still speedy. Just make sure the motherboard is upgradable.
5. Go with a GeForce or ATI video card.
6. 256MB RAM minimum, 512MB recommended.

It's kinda hard when you just give "motherboard and processor". Without knowing the specifics of kid and types of applications, it's hard to give a recommendation.

 

Video card - I'd suggest an ATI Radeon Series or an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon series. You could probably get an All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 pretty cheap now, and while it's not the best for games, your kid might like the TV tuner. For games, check out the ATI Radeon 9000 and the ATI Radeon 9700 (EXPENSIVE!!!).

Audio - for now, the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is the best thing around. The M-Audio Revolution looks like it MIGHT be a great card (I won't know till it's actually out) but it isn't released yet. So, I'd go with a Santa Cruz. It's fairly cheap, too.

 

Well I'm going to disagree with Zac (of course I would )...

I'd get a Intel Pentium IV processor with a 845 DDR motherboard. Intel if you don't need to overclock. I have a ATI video card and hate the drivers, so I'd look for a Nvidia card. I had a turle beach santa cruz card and liked it, but if you want to save some money and don't need the power, i'd look for a cheaper Creative card. That said, if you are going to spend over $50 on a sound card, the Santa Cruz is the best card out there.
Stay with DDR memory...

The Motherboard that I would get right now is a Asus P4B533 DDR. Its as rock solid as a 440BX chipset which IMO was the best motherboard ever.

 

Well here is a question no one asked? What is your kid probably going to do with the machine? Heavy Gaming, Light Gaming, No Gaming, Mostly Iternet Surf..

Unless you are going to be major gaming, any processor you can buy will probably do you good for a while. I don't see much difference between my 2.0 and 2.4GHz machines (that is only a 20% difference) and it will be 2-3 years before the difference becomes noticable (if at all). If going for memory, try to leave a slot open. So instead of getting Two 128MB memory "Sticks", get one 256 and leave one open for future upgrade.

 

I've got a Hercules Gamesurround fortissimo II sound card that I really like... it has spdif and toslink connectors, and only costs about $100. I'd stick with Intel for the processor, and I'd only use a Maxtor HDD.

 

A Pentium4 2.0GHz (probably slowest you can find without major search) should be more than fine. Keep same amount of RAM, I like to buy from Crucial.com, some other cheaper brands have high failiure rate. Other stuff, not really versed on which brands/models are good for "Medium Gamer".

 

And make sure you get an Intel chipset. They are about the most indistructable motherboards around. You can't overclock anything, but you'll never worry about your motherboard crashing you system. It look at the new i845GL chipset with DDR support.

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/845gl/

This thing is a tank. :righton: