Newb to building. Need fast, stable machine for music production.

[bigkd]

Hey all... I was going to buy a new mac pro for music production, but it is waaaay out of my budget, and I figured that I could build a fast windows machine for much less money. So here I am!

I've heard good things about the Sandy Bridge i7 2600 cpu's. I would imagine that even stock with no overclocking that this cpu would be plenty powerful for music production with ableton/logic.

Requirements/my current thoughts:

Sandy bridge 17 2600K [is K the best one?].

SSD for OS and programs. I have heard that using an SSD for this purpose can enhance performance and boot times.

7200 hard drive

I may use dual monitors in the future, but will stick with one for now, so I may not need a graphics card?

I'm wondering if anybody out there has a parts list/starting point for a successful, STABLE, machine that fits my requirements.

The machine needs to be fast, stable, have several pci/pcie slots, and be virtually silent.

 

[yougotjaked]

What's your budget? I'll be more than happy to make a build list for you

 

[bigkd]

I would like to keep the machine under $1500 including the case and Win7 OS. That seems pretty generous IMO.

I'm not quite sure what to do about the case. I don't want a monster-sized tower. I was thinking a mid-sized lian li case or possibly rackmounting it with the rest of my audio processing gear, but I have heard people discouraging this due to noise being introduced into the audio signals. I guess I could rackmount it in a separate rack.

Also, I would like to have firewire and maybe usb 3.0

 

[amuffin]

Do you play games?

 

[bigkd]

Nope. This machine is 100% for music production. Large track counts, lots of virtual plugins, stability, silence, and low latency i/o are my main needs.

 

[amuffin]

Nope. This machine is 100% for music production. Large track counts, lots of virtual plugins, stability, silence, and low latency i/o are my main needs.

Antec sonata 2 is a great case for silence