Am looking to build a DAW

[Treeline]

Pray for me...​

Are newer motherboards going to hiss at me if I try to use older hard drives? ATA / SATA compatible boards and IDE drives? I'm trying to pinch pennies. Have a Matrox dual monitor card, a Sony CD/R and a couple of drives that are fine - 20 G and 80 G. Am looking at an Intel board / P4 chip / Cubase / arrangement at this point, a quiet power supply with an AMD chip alternative.

 

[crankz1]

Best wishes ..... and you should be fine using the stuff you already have (drives, video card).
If you are going Intel ... get a mobo with the 875P chipset. Don't worry about all the new boards with the PCI express stuff. I'd wait till that stuff develops further.
As far as the Intel processor ..... Northwoods run slightly cooler and overclock well, but they aren't being made anymore.
Myself .... I use a 3.0 GHz Prescott on an Abit IC7-G mobo, and I'm tickled pink with it.
Research the compatible RAM for whatever mobo you go with and get the best you can afford. Think Crucial DDR 400 dual channel, provided the mobo supports it.
Same goes for the power supply .... don't skimp on it. Be prepared to shell out around $100 for a good one. Antec comes to mind or Thermaltake.

 

[Treeline]

I was thinking about Antec after reading the DAW build it stuff at www.extremetech.com . Antec has a quiet power supply and a fanless "quiet as a dead mouse" power supply. Dollars, dollars...