It isn't too difficult from an RPM, I think a n00b should be ok.
I roughly followed the how-to at
ev1 servers sorry for the competiton link, but it's useful) and it worked fine for me (redhat 9 latest cpanel) although I didn;t need to remove the libpng packages it tells you to because I didn't have the installed.
Someone with a bit more knowledge than me might come along in a bit and provide more help for you.