"Jaser" wrote in message
...
I'm a home/small office user. No games. Some multimedia. Music is
important.

If sound quality is important (ie you have HiFi separates rather than a midi
system)
then a sound card is a must.

I haven't bought a PC in years and first of all I'm trying to
sort out which processor family I should go for. The chipset is
important and I want one that is modern and provides a good range
of features like multiple PATA/SATA drives, lots of USB, good
onboard sound (or I'll have to buy a sound card). Has onboard
video come of age enough to handle movies easily?

if those movies include HD/Bluray then a plug-in card like an ATI HD3400 or
HD 4400
with a passive heatsink - not fast enough for games but it'll take some of
the load off the CPU.

Power consumption and noise are quite important.

buy an OEM processor (retail ones have crap heatsinks) and spend a little
extra on a quality (and quiet) cooler

STEP 2) Will I need 64 bit? Last time I looked the lack of 64 bit
apps was said to be a problem. Should i go for 64 bit?

only if you applications that are 64bit and require a LOT of memory.

STEP 3) What about mutliple cores/cpus? How do I narrow down the
selection in that web page. I read about extra cores/cpus not
helping unless there were certain types of workload. Without a
ton of detail about multiprocessing and threads and all that,
what's the bottom line?

a dual-core is still plenty for most people. it improves multitasking on a
PC noticeably.
few people *need* a quad core right now.