Help building a DAW and Photoshop PC tower.

[Michael Etheridge]

Building a new PC for average gaming, Photoshop and mainly DAW ( Digital Audio Workstation) purposes using ProTools. I'm a musician with lots of mixing, mastering and producing experience using a computer. I'm building a new PC tower because my IT classes require me to build my own for a project so.....I said I might as well build a good DAW.

I am currently in school for I.T and know a fair deal about computers. Im not ignorant to CPU, RAM or HDD/SSD mechanics. My knowledge is limited to the best bang for the buck when buying hardware. I'm also not very knowledgable about graphics cards and I want make sure I at least have a card that will play present and future games "decent". I can always upgrade the GPU later.

My motherboard needs to be quality, my Drive has to be able to write as fast or faster than a 7,200 rpm HDD because audio editing requires it. My CPU has to be a Quad-core or higher with cache to be 4mb or higher.

Where do I begin ha?

 

[Thanatos Telos]

EDIT: Sorry, posted in the wrong thread. (Have several open in other tabs.)

Okay, budget?

 

[Michael Etheridge]

Around $400-600

EDIT: Sorry, posted in the wrong thread. (Have several open in other tabs.)

Okay, budget?

 

[manofchalk]

Your needs are outstripping you budget I'm afraid, you want it to basically be able to do anything and you want it on a barebones budget. You might have to redress your expectations of the rig, or you will end up disappointed.

 

[Michael Etheridge]

I'm not asking it to do everything. I'm sorry. I mainly need it for DAW purposes and upgrades for gaming and video can come later.

All I need for a DAW is a Quadcore or higher, 7,200 rpm HDD, and 16GB or RAM. Anything more would be over-kill for a DAW.

I've not come close to breaking a sweat with my laptops AMD A6 Quadcore and 8GB of RAM so I know it's possible with my budget.

 

[manofchalk]

This is about as good as you can get while remaining fairly close too budget. I would see if you can source an OS through your school, as if their the ones saying you have to build it then it would make sense they would supply the software at least.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($64.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($119.00 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($62.98 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB Video Card ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Core 3000 USB 3.0 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.50 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($59.99 @ NCIX US)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.73 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $644.17
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-07-16 10:21 EDT-0400)

 

[sturoc]

So what did you wind up building ?