Spec me a Pc for Audio editing

[Sasso]

hey my mate has asked me if i could reccommend or probably even build him a pc. hes doing music/music tech and will be doing a lot of music editing and using quite a few demanding programs and running several plugins and synths at the same time. he reads quite a few tech mags and they all seem to reccommed a quad core processor and 2-4gb of ram.
what i need is everything thats going in the "PC" i.e cpu,mobo,etc... but excluding monitor mouse etc as hes getting those himself.
not sure if going to be running xp or vista yet as have to check the compatability of the programs. he would also liek to be able to play some latest games but isnt really a pc game junky so might not have to be that demanding on the gfx card.
now the importabnt bit, his budget is 500-600£ but if can get lower its a bonus so all u music techs and studio operators out there i would very much appreciate your help

 

[jak731]

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Abit IP35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £69.99
(£82.24) £69.99
(£82.24)
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) £27.99
(£32.89) £27.99
(£32.89)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £134.99
(£158.61) £134.99
(£158.61)
Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK) £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GV-RX385512H) £84.99
(£99.86) £84.99
(£99.86)
Pioneer DVR-215BK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
(£21.14) £17.99
(£21.14)
Akasa AK-ZEN-01-BK Zen Black Case - No PSU £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) £46.99
(£55.21) £46.99
(£55.21)
Samsung SpinPoint S 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD250HJ) £35.99
(£42.29) £35.99
(£42.29)
Sub Total : £508.91
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £91.33
Total : £613.19

bit over, but i tried to pick parts that shouldnt make much noise as far as i know.

you could always alter the spec a bit to make it fit your friends budget.

no audio equipment such as soundcards are included as i dont know if it is needed or not

just a sidenote ,i dont do much audio work on computers apart from re-encoding a music file if i need it in another format

 

[caff]

The more disk space the better - I would push for >500GB for storing music projects, samples and instruments.

If he needs low latency recording (i.e. for using with a MIDI keyboard) I recommend a soundcard like the E-Mu 0404 for about £45 - not sold here.

Also to add to the complexity, try to get quiet components like CPU / case fans - see my post about this in this forum, I am trying to silence the current PC I have. Better to get it right first time than do what I'm doing, spending more money changing fans.