first thing I am going to say is that you will eventually find yourself spending more money than you initially budgeted.
The computer is more powerful and has more fx, and is cheaper, but a standalone thing vs1680 is more straight forward, does not crash, and sounds prettty good too.
But since I have not had issues with my puter, I will suggest getting one. with an 8 in 8outsound card that comes with integrated software. You can get the delta 1010 with vegas pro now for $700 or 600, and that includes one of the best sound cards on the market, with software that is really intuitive, powerful and comes with important fx like compression, reverb, chorus, disstortion etc.
to get a standalone with nearly those spec... well you can't for that price range, and a 20 bit 44.1 hz vs1680 , will set you back about double that price if you wanted to add the fx boards price.
