Your question is a little broad Ottomatrix.

AMD? Intel? Etc... Too many options.

Generally if you stick with known manufacturers who consistently perform well (Asus/Tyan/MSI and the like), you'll be fine.

My advice, no matter WHO you chose, is to do the research up front and PLAN the WHOLE thing. That way, knowing what you are going to build, you can check for COMPATIBILITY issues and make certain that everything is going to work together before you purchase the parts and find that one thing doesn't work w/ the other.

Kingston and Corsair are probably the two best RAM manufacturers. If you stick with either, you should be fine.

Best-

Kev.

thankz kev

sorry forgot to say that the cpu was going to be a P4 3.2

If you're going for a Socket 478 P4 then I'd go for either the Intel 865PE or 875P chipset mobos from Abit or Asus.

Intel 865PE - Abit IS7 series or Asus P4P800 series.
Intel 875P - Abit IC7 series or Asus P4C800 series.

For the newer LGA775 P4's I'd again go for Intel 865PE chipset. Have a look at Abit AS-8.

As a CPU goes, AMD Athlons tend to have better floating point performance for great plugin performance, just stay away from VIA chipset MB's as they tend to have PCI Bus timing problems which can give you hell with pops and clicks.

Less is more as well. Try not to get a MB with onboard sound, etc. If you can or at least one that can have everything disabled.

My recommendation would be
- 1 GB RAM at least. Get the good stuff like Corsair or GeIL
- AMD64 CPU Fast as you can afford
- 2 x SATA 10,000 RPM 75 GB Western Digital Raptor Drives (Get a Silent Drive Sleeve for these) for nice an high track counts.
- Zalman Flower heatsink with Low RPM Fan
- Get a Matrox Video Card with Dual head Output and make sure it is one without a fan as this contributes to noise.
- I like using 2 x 17" Screens as opposed to 1 19" screen. Much more usful as you can haev your Mixdown window on one and edit on the other or have an extended edit window.

Obviously you are not going to play games on this machine as it is a dedicated music making machine so you can afford to not have the fastest video card

Do you know of a good motherboard for an AMD 64 without onboard audio or video nor a VIA chipset? I want to start building my machine, but selecting the right motherboard is my only problem. If you know of a model that would kick butt.

D875p will be a good choice i have 3.2 HT and D875p board with 3 ghz ram with it...works perfect...go for it...

therecordingart wrote: Do you know of a good motherboard for an AMD 64 without onboard audio or video nor a VIA chipset? I want to start building my machine, but selecting the right motherboard is my only problem. If you know of a model that would kick butt.

Look for boards with the NVidia NForce 3 chipset.