upgrading studio with 1500 budget...help!!

[Cdacoron]

hey guys, im plannin to upgrade my studio with 1500 budget,...main purpose of increasing mixing efficiency and processing power. i have in mind buying the UAD-1 power plugs to increase the efficiency of my computer in addition to buying more studio foam to improve room acoustics.

Now, with the UAD-1 plugs, i kinda had in mind getting the studio pak. but i was also thinkin of getting 2 cards to increase the efficiency of the plugs through uad-1. Is it better to just get the project pak + an extra card? are the plugs given in the project pak good quality (i heard they are)? or am i fine with one card (studio pak)+ extra plugs. i guess my main purpose of gettin the the UAD-1 is mainly for the high quality EQ's and Compression without killing my processing power...and saving them for my other plugs "waves plug-ins" im fine for the effects, i dont really use too much crazy stuff in my mixes. anywayz, any advice will help towards my goal. thanx

[pipelineaudio]

If you want to increase your power, 1500 bucks will buy you the system I just put together

Searching my name you will see years of grumbling over the pathetic power of computers. But this time, this is a JUMP, a HUGE jump in power

I have maxed out a hard drive speed recording and playing back at 96khz at 3 msec latency with some pretty hardcore plugins 22% CPU TOPS

Im flabbergasted!!!

I do have a UAD-1 as well, but its problems can easily cancel out any claimed gains. If you are using cubendo or samplitude though, the UAD-1 really CAN save you some CPU

Anyway heres the ingredients

Motherboard: $350 Tyan S2895 K8WE - if there is a faster or better mobo for ANY platform for DAW use, besides maybe the Supermicro H8DCE, please tell me. I dont believe there is anything even comparable for any price. FW , gigabit LAN, USB 2 the bundle

RAM: $140 : Corsair Reg ECC 512 meg X four sticks (needed to get NUMA support)

Video: $45: Radeon XT 128 meg. Dual DVI AND TV out

CPU: $425: 2 X AMD Opteron 248 ( this board is ready for dualcores when they come out cheap, but as my Sisoft Sandra reults show above, I neednt worry for a while

Case: $190: P-link 4 space rackmount for EATX +680 watt PSU

Fans: $100: Im a bit paranoid here. Anyone else will pull this off for 20 bucks, but hey...

OS: $85: WinXP SP2(SP2 needed for NUMA support for the RAM). Buy the mobo AND either RAM, HD's, Video card, or PSU from a shop and you will be able to pick up a retailer distro XP for less than 100 dollars

CD/DVD: $45: Pioneer I forget which, but its black like my coffee

Swap Bay IDE: $16: Inclose PMD 96 for IDE (part of the fan cost above was replacing this fan with a quieter one that glows blue or red depending on temp)

Swap Bay SATA: $32: VanTec EZSwap 2

[Echelon]

What are you using for harddrives?

[pipelineaudio]

THought I'd be getting some raptors and rading them, but after testing, the sata-2 7200 rpm 8 meg cache drives are more than fast enough

WD-1600JS, just becuase I saw some for cheap.