If you already have a board in mind, just be patient and read alot.  You might have to piece it together yourself.  For example when my solidoodle board died I managed to get back up and running with an Azteeg X3 board.  I followed Ian Johnson's thread on updating to the same board but had some challenges that he did not document.  The Azteeg is RAMPS compatible so I read the RAMPS page on the reprap wiki, Ian's post, and the Sanguinololu reprap wiki page because it is extremely well documented and has some good general information.  Between those three pages, I was able to get up and running again.

A good place to start reading http://reprap.org/wiki/List_of_electronics.  Good Luck.

And check back here once in a while.  Someone more knowledgeable than me will likely respond with better advice.