I keep messing up this post and having everything i rite get erased. so Im doing the really really fast version now

Get an AMD Athlon XP Processor. They are fairly inexpensive and quite quick.
Get a motherboard with as little onboard as possible. Network card is ok, and even the crappy onboard sound is fine ( it can be disabled ) , but anything else isnt worth it because it may end up conflicting with other gear.

Get at least 512 MB DDR RAM. If you cant afford more than 512 MB ( about $129 bucks) then buy just 1 512 MB DIMM so you can upgrade later if you run into problems. You can never have too much memory.


Get 2 disk drives. ATA-100 or ATA-133. Size doesnt matter too much, but youll want at least 60 gigs each . Put one drive on each IDE controller. One drive for windows and software, one drive for data.

Sound Card : M-Audio Delta series. they have 4x4 6x6 and 10x10 models. I would stay away from USB and Firewire, especially on a desktop PC.

Case and Powersupplies: THe case itself doesnt matter much, but the power supply and the case fans do. Get Something like the Vantec Stealth power supply and case fans ( the case fans are only 21 dBA ) to cut down the white noise your computer generates. Its hard to make completely silent, but good quiet fans help ALOT

Video Card : doesnt matter really.

I have prices for everything local here in Toronto, but the M-audio cards. Its really not that expensive. I priced out everything I just mentioned minus the sound card for 1200 bucks CDN . The sound card is going to bump that up quite a bit though.

Give me a buzz on icq and Ill show you what and where I was getting everthing from


Mike