Hello everyone,

My name is Kur. I've been making beat with my mc-303 for about 2 years and I am now at the very first stage of planning to build myself my very first daw system. Please note that I have limited experience and knowledge in regards to computer.

I've been reading this board and google for about 1 week now, and decided that he first couple important and hard-to-decide-which-one-to-buy items I'm planning to buy are: the mobo, cpu, case, cooling fan for cpu and power supply.

CPU - I am having a hard time to choose between AMD Athlon 64 3700+ ClawHammer/Hammer 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache Socket 754 Processor - OEM or Intel Pentium 4 640 - 3.2GHz - 800MHz FSB - 2MB Cache - Hyper-Threading - Socket 775 (LGA775) - Prescott - 0.09 micron - OEM. ClawHammer is about 40 dollars more expensive than Prescott.

The reasons I have a hard time is that (after hours of reading and searching in this forum) the motherboard going with Prescott has an pci-express, which I learned is not a good thing for daw system. Unless I buy the "normal" video card, like ATI Radeon 9200 128MB DDR 8X AGP Video Card w/ TV-Out or ATi X300 or Nvidia 6200. My question is if anyone here has the same set up and know for sure that these video cards are good choices for pci-e systems? They do indeed do no harm to daw system.

Another is I dont know much about Clawhammer, Could anyone tell me the reasons I should go with Clawhammer over prescott.

I think as soon as I have more info on the cpu, I would have a better ideas on the mobo. I am looking into the asus p5ad2-e mobo for Prescott. What do you think of this mobo? What mobo would you recommend for Clawhammer?

Is zalman 7700 copper a good choice for cooling? Would you recommend it? if not, what are other brand names or specifically model would you recommend?

Case: I'm looking into the Antec Performance I P-160WF Silver Computer Case With Side Panel Window, 130 dollars. Is it necessary to pay this much for a case or will those that under 100 do fine?

I would greatly appreciate any of your expertise, opinion, feedback. Thank you all very much in advance.

kur