seems like you got pretty decent pc there. Im not familiar with your sound card (layla).

I looked up the Mobo and it supports SATA 0/1 which is nice. I would cancel the ATA100 hdd and go with two SATA drives and set your self up with a raid 0 array for faster hardrive usage. Stick with AMD. But make sure you get a cool case with good ventilation.
I think you forgot to add a video card.

About your dealer, Im not familiar with it, I order my stuff from either
http://www.newegg.com
http://www.computergeeks.com
http://www.tigerdirect.com
you should double check the reviews on your hardware before ordering just to make sure it the hardware is crap.
Btw how much are you willing to spend on this pc?

Well those are my suggestions, im pretty sure there is a better computer tech guy in RO that could give you better advice.

I'd like to end up in the 500 range, but I'm willing to go higher if necessary.

The Layla is a 24bit sound card linked to a 8in 12 out rack mount unit, so it's a good piece of outbourd gear too.

SATA Hdd's are much more expensive, but maybe the way to go?

My main problem is that I'm a working musician and father and working slob so I don't have alot of time to spend researching what's good and bad in the computer hardware world. I was hoping (maybe naively) that someone of experience could just tell me what direction to take. I just want to make sure I'm getting the best bang for my buck.

BTW, my last system (used with the layla) was a P3 500mghz w/ 3x128 megs ram. That worked surprisingly well, but I'd like to blow that out of the water and step into a new plateu of multitracking!

SATA Hdd's are much more expensive...

In my experience, given two identical drives, the SATA version has only been a couple of bucks more than the IDE.

If you are tracking 8 channels and use plug-ins, I would recommend as much RAM as the board can hold and a minimum 2.5GHz processor.

Be careful with those giant heatsinks for the processor as well. Some of the big daddy's have been known to snap the motherboard from it's weight when the motherboard is mounted vertically in a standard tower.

I use a Coolermaster Aquagate (fan replaced with a much quieter Antec LED fan) and an Antec Phantom 500 power supply to keep things quiet. I usually run 110-120F depending on load.

Make sure the Layla is compatible with the on-board sound or you will have to switch between them with multiple hardware profiles in Windows.

Thankyou for the advice.

I'll actually just disable the onboard sound - it's useless. So, it's just the Layla for recording and nothing else.

So, you really think that as much RAM as possible would be the best? Some of the Mother Boards I've been looking at can handle 4megs. Should I go that high? Like I said, I used to record 8 tracks simultaneous on a P3 500mghz, 5meg RAM system and it worked pretty well. I'm just wondering if there's a cut off point with returns - know what I'm saying? I see alot of people with only 1 meg of RAM.

I'll be carefull on the fans - thanx so much.

fatman wrote: I would cancel the ATA100 hdd and go with two SATA drives and set your self up with a raid 0 array for faster hardrive usage.

that's not a smart thing to do. normal user will gain nothing from RAID 0 except a MUCH hiher chance to lose data. It's NOT worth it. RAID 5 og the other hand would be a smart choise, because of the redundancy, but that requires 3 identical drives and an expensive RAID 5 controller.

if i only had $500 this is what i would do:

Go rob a kid for 13bucks and than buy this..

[list] MSI RS480M2-IL Athlon64 ATI Radeon XPRESS 200 (VPCIXD4ALFSR) MBoa 1 89 89
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 512KB /2.0GHz s939 1 146 146
Cooling Fan CPU Athlon 64 1 12 12
512Mb PC3200 400MHz DDR Memory 2 46 92
SEAGATE 200GB ATA100 HDD 7200rpm 8MB 1 100 100
SONY Black DW-Q28A 16x DVD±RW/±R Double Layer 1 46 46
Deluxe Mid-Tower Case 400W Front USB 1 28 28

a total of 513$.. only 42$ more than the "way outdated" socket A system.

What is changed:

[list]A MUCH fester CPU with intergrated DualChannel memory controller.
a 939 motherboard with intergrated graphics (way better IG than on the other board), so it is possible you could upgrade to a X2 dualcore later (if there is/will be bios support).
2x 512MB memory sticks, so you can use it in dualchannel mode.

gnarr,

Good points. That's exactly the kind of info I was looking for. Think I'm going to grab another smaller harddrive for OS/Apps too.

Any other advice out there?