[citation][nom]L337_DAW_enthusiast[/nom]This is actually my area of expertise, I don't feel that alot of these choices are very good.... That CPU is a tad underpowered, my last 2 DAWs have been quads, any quad ever made is sufficient for audio, they're not power hungry or loud if they're running less than 50% load... That CPU is decent, but you could actually max it out in a big project with lots of plugins. Much less, why do you need the uber-overclocking heatsink for a 45w CPU? Besides, 64bit DAWs aren't ready for primetime yet, 64bit still gotten very little support from plugin vendors... It only makes sense if you have a crap-load of RAM installed, and will actually use it for stuff like massively layered multisampled pianos, etc... I run ridiculously large projects, and barely exceed 1gb of RAM useage for my DAW's process in task manager, not even enough to justify using the /3G boot switch... Any quad ever made, 4gb of ram and 32bit is more than good enough for 99.9% of the audio world....[/citation]
Very true. Though, I would recommend at least 2gb for newer Sequencers and plugins. In my experience, it's always been the CPU and Hard drives that really bottleneck things while recording.
(To other readers):
When building a system like this, you need multiple cores. All worthwhile Sequencers have been designed to take advantage of them, so use it to your advantage. Also, DO NOT use a 64-bit OS unless you are sure the plugins you're using support it. AND, do not use a 64-bit OS with less than 6GB of ram. Why? Because the benchmarks show that a 64-bit OS actually eats up more RAM in the first place. The benefits come with large amounts of RAM... something a 32-bit OS can't take advantage of. Using 4GB of RAM in a 64-bit system is kind of stupid. A 32-bit OS with 4GB will actually be a smidgen faster and much more compatible.