Upgrading my DAW, do you see any issues with this setup?

[Cowboy]

I haven't posted here in a long time, but I figured I'd call upon the experts to give me a little final advice, if it's needed.

So, I've decided I need to upgrade my ancient P4-based DAW. I already have a Pulsar II and SCOPE 4.5, which works great, so I don't see any need to upgrade that. After a lot of research, it looks like this is what I'm going with. My grand total after rebates (but before tax) is $831. If I needed a $150 case, $100 PSU, $30 CPU fan, mouse, keyboard, etc, that would come to less than $1200, for a badass DAW that will easily be viable for 5 years, and would only really need a good audio interface and a pair of decent LCD monitors (and maybe a CPU upgrade in 3 years).

This setup should be very stable, fast and quiet, while not drawing unnecessary power. The 3 internal 1TB hard drives will be configured as follows: Each drive will have 500GB usable space with the remainder of the space serving as an automated nightly backup location for the next drive's data. This way, should any one drive fail, no data should be lost. Drive C: will be for the OS, swap space, and applications. Drive D: will be for samples and sampler data, and drive E: will be for recorded audio, which should allow for plenty of recording and playback bandwidth.

And 500GB is a lot of space, but the larger drives have a significantly higher data density and cache size, which amounts to higher speeds. Besides, there are some really cool sample sets out there, and some of the big ones can easily take up a few GB each.

Also, I've been a long-time Acid user, but after reading about everything Sonar 7 can do, I'm definitely going to give it a shot. It looks like it can do everything Acid Pro 6 can do, plus about a billion other very useful things. And it's being continuously developed, which is more than I can say for Acid, which hasn't seen an update since 2006.

And I'm going to stick with XP Pro 32-bit for now, because my audio card has no Vista 64-bit drivers. When my audio card gets new drivers, and enough of my apps are updated to 64-bit, I'll look into upgrading to Vista 64-bit. This probably won't happen for a year or two, and at that point, I might be in an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mood.

Hardware:

MOBO (the P35 chipset, and specifically this board are supposedly very stable with the Pulsar card and other DAW setups)
$100: Intel BOXDP35DPM LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813121314

CPU (even in Sonar, price-to-performance seems to favor the Core 2 Duo over the quad)
$190: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115036

RAM (XP might only see ~3GB, but it'll all get used.. and 4GB is more future-proof)
$71 = $101 - $30 Rebate: Crucial Ballistix 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820148212

GFX (passively cooled, this will drive dual LCD monitors easily and inexpensively)
$23 = $33 - $10 Rebate: ASUS EN8400GS SILENT/HTP/256M GeForce 8400 GS 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121240

CASE (keeping the soundproofed Antec Sonata II I already have, which is similar to Quiet PC USA's $150 AcoustiCase 360)

PSU (keeping my 450W Antec for now, it works well and is on the quiet side.. The extreme.outervision.com PSU calculator estimated 264W required, so let's round that up to 450 just in case)

CPU FAN (keeping the $30 ZALMAN CNPS7000B-ALCU I already have)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835118112

CPU FAN CLIP
$4 - ZALMAN ZM-CS1 Clip Support for installation of CNPS7000 series onto Socket 775
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835118219

DVD-R/CD-RW
$23 - LITE-ON Black 16X DVD-ROM 52X CD-R 32X CD-RW 52X CD-ROM SATA Combo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827106100

HARD DRIVES
$420 = 3x $140 (1TB) - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822152102

- Cowboy

[dawman]

http://xtreview.com/review215.htm

Let this review speak for itself, and BTW the CL4 memory option will make your VSTi's and VST FX much snappier.

I perform nightly w/ 2 x Scope DAW's. The Intel motherboards are excellent choices as their stability has proven every hour, every night, every day, and every year.

No tweaks or Overclocking are even necessary, but they do provide better performance for the ASIO / Standalone apps.

The P4 Northwood / Supermicro P4SCT+II DAW running Gigastudio 2.54 has run on an Intel Canterwood ES chipset for years w/ 36GB Raptors, and I will upgrade that when the Nehalem / X58's come out. I will not get the Nehalem, but take advantage of the price drops that are sure to occur when it becomes available. I have learned how to buy the cheaper, proven combos over the years.

The P35 / DDRII combo is proven, and mature. Especially if the E8600 w/ 0 Stepping is used.

You Will Be Happy.

[garyb]

....except for the ram.

that ram is 2.0 volt and the motherboard requires 1.8vlt ONLY. i reccommend good old kingston value ram. there are others, but they are hard to find at 1.8vlt.

also, the stock cpu cooler is small and quiet. it's all you need. there's nothing wrong with the cooler upgrade though, of course....

[Cowboy]

@garyb: Thanks for the heads-up! It looks like this might do the trick, I've had good luck with Mushkin in the past:

mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820146731

@stardust: What's wrong with Asus? Do you have a specific recommendation?

Thanks!

- Cowboy

[garyb]

yes, the mushkin should be great.

as to the graph card, i usually choose a EVGA Nvidia card well under $100. i always end up with a stable system good graphics and dual head capability. what more is needed?