building a new DAW

[badassmak]

OK...so I almost lost my mind and nearly everything on my hard drive trying to install my new soundcard, a Delta 66, onto my crappy compaq. There is a lot of problems with conflicting onboard sound and video etc. I have decided its well past time to start building a DAW from scratch. (This machine Ill keep for my online gamin and stuff).

I have a Delta 66 as stated above...
I am using n-track, but would like to keep in mind to be able to upgrade to cubase in the future.
I record a variety of tunes...

Anyhow, with the above listed, does anybody have suggestions as to what, first of all, mobo I should get, processor, hd...'s...vid card, and anything else I should consider...

I know your going to tell me to search and read , and I am. I have some ideas, ie hd's at lleast 7200 RPM, AMD athlon thingys seems to be the processor of choice at this point, but if anyone has specifically a setup utilizing the above that works well, I'd like to here from you. Im not horribly concerned about budget, this is something Im serious about, and Im not going to try and squeeze by on cheap parts.

By the way if anyone knows of a good place to buy these parts online (Canada), that would be appreciated as well...funny how most free shipping only applies to the US hehe...

 

[dragonworks]

Come to your senses man and get a mac G4 or somethin will ya!

 

[Stealthtech]

ASUS Mobo
P4 Pentium
DDR Ram
WD HD's

would be my choice

 

[badassmak]

mac...$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

hehe yes...your right about that...I was at some dudes place last night, he does sound tech on the road. A nice g4, with the digi 001 thingy, all in a nice road case. Very stable stuff (runnin protools as well on OSX)...Im jealous, also feel like a knob for startin wih the pc route, but i think im kinda commited to the pc for now. Thanks for the replies.

 

[Even]

actually you can disable your onboard sound from your CMOS settings. I would steer you towards that first thing.

 

[badassmak]

disabling onboard

yea man, I have managed to figure that out and quite a few other technical feats with this incredibly, stupendously difficult machine to work with. The thing is I have so many other things tied up in this computer I cant seriously consider using it for recording applications. In fact, the HD is gettinng pretty full (16 outta 20 gigs). A lot of that is MP3's I have downloaded from the net (woohoo free music)...I also dabble in some web design, really like my video games, keep in touch with my gf on this thing (she's overseas), as well as friends and family. With all of these kinda programs installed and being used regularily, I can't really tweak the machine properly to suit the needs alone to record with.

Quite simply if this was my absolute only option to be recording with, with it being as stubborn as it is, the only thing I could really consider having on here would be recording apps, to make it work properly. I really wish I had known more about computers before I bought this one a year and a half ago, because really it is a giant POS.hehehe...but after my first computer cratered (emachine 2 gig HD, roasted power supply, thus roasted mobo) after 3 months of being online, I was way to NAIVE to know better, next time wont be the same. I do appreciate the comments tho..