hi everyone, glad to join another recording board!

just a brief intro, i'm a 28 year old electronic music producer living in taos, new mexico. i've been djing and promoting events for 6 years, and during the last 2 years have been putting my project studio together. with a limited budget, i buy equipment as i can, or build it (which is leading me down a whole other twisted path of electronincs).

here's a brief rundown of the studio as is:
event tr8 monitors (i list these first, as they are my favorite purchase as yet)
Mackie 1402
dbx over easy comp/limiter
PreSonus tube pre
bbe sonic maximizer (not currently in use...)
m-audio radium midi key
MOTU midi express xt (8x8)
Korg electribe er-1
roland juno 106
Yamaha dx7
Paia Fatman analog synth (built as kit)
m-audio delta 44
Cubase sx
reason
etc.
2x technic 1200s
numark ttx turntable
numark dj mixer

my goal (ha! as if there will ever be an end to this!) with the studio is to have the best of both worlds, part analog, part digital.

i dj/listen/produce drum and bass, techno (both bangy and minimal), industrial and experimental/downtempo electronic music. you can listen to my dj mixes on http://www.littleplanet.net or http://www.unifiedculture.net

so. let's get down to it. my immediate problem is my pc, which i didn't expect to work this long. it's an hp machine with a celeron 1.2ghz processor and 1 gig ddr ram. i've known this thing was junk for a daw since i installed my audio inteface.

so, time to build a new one:
Enermax ICS-443SB 4U Short Depth Rackmount Case w/o PS
Nexus 120 mm Real Silent Case Fan
NX-4090 Nexus 400 Watt 16.2 db Quiet Power Supply
Seagate 80GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
Seagate 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
2X Smart Drive 2002 Copper Cool, Quiet Hard Drive Enclosure
plextor DVD writer + 52x CD burner (already own)

not too shabby. you're probably asking, "what about the mboard and processor?" which brings us to my conundrum, and the point in my research where i need to ask help.

i'd like to go with an intel chip. at first i had initially settled on a pentium 4 3.2e ghz prescott on an ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard, which i think would be more than adequate for my current needs, but i'm becoming concerned about flexibility and expandablilty. so here are my questions...

1. as 64 bit architecture becomes more of a standard, how will this (or simlilar) processor hold up?
2. is there a significant difference between this processor (socket 478) and the 600 series of socket 775 processors? i.e. is this a better investment for the future?
3. is there a motherboard out there for either of these processors that will allow me to upgrade to 2 dual processors in the future?
4. besides the standard google fare of DIY DAW advice, what are some of the key design elements i should look for in a motherboard? i've wrapped my mind around getting the fastest FSB, SATA and RAID support, fast PCI bus (with separate channels) and PCI-x, but i'm in the dark about subjects like L1 and L2 cache speeds, speeds of the new DDR2 ram, etc.

i would like this pc to be able to handle pro tools with some Apogeeequipment, UAD cards, etc and like i mentioned earlier, be somewhat flexible for changes down the road.

i would greatly appreciate any advice. as i started digging deeper into this part of my purchase, i realized how much info was out there and just how over my head a lot of it was.

thanks for the help,
ender