Buying a new PC need HELP musicians!!!

Make sure you get a fire extinguisher with your Dell..latest Dell accessory.

A Swepe what do you mean by "load it down" with RAM.

whatever you get make sure it has an extended warranty! my main computer just died on me and you guessed it...i forgot to renew the guarantee and PC World won't even look at it. My mates in IT reckon the M board's gone so they might find one for me  (). Using my trusty lap top at the moment...always have back-up!!!

^Yes. Just change the default location when installing.

If you're just going to run standard Office apps and play music on it (to listen to), then you really don't need much grunt.

I still have a 486 with 32Mb RAM and an SB AWE 32 running Windows 98 and Office 97 that is perfectly adequate for Word, light Excel use, Internet surfing and music playback.

You don't need anything bigger than a 500Mhz processor - in fact, even that is overkill really.

The only reason you'd need a lot of RAM is if you plan on running Windows XP, which will eat as much RAM as you want to throw at it - 256Mb being a bare minimum.

The only reason you'd want a faster processor is if you're doing intensive stuff like gaming, recording and manipulating audio - then you'd want the fastest processor you can get.

A Dual-Core processor, or even a Dual/Dual Core processor setup with 4Gb RAM is good - but you can never render those samples fast enough or process too many simultaneous effects.

Plus, for audio work, you want the fastest disk subsystem you can lay your hands on - Serial Attached SCSI is top, but SATA II or even III are more than adequate. You will also run out of disk space - that is a given, so the bigger the better, and using a separate disk - or even better, a separate array of disks for your data is a good way to keep it away from your software and make it more easily retrievable when disaster strikes (don't ever think it might not).

Don't put the apps on the same drive as the data - put it on the system drive. If you have to re-install the O/S, you'll have to re-install the apps too, so there's just no point.

Finally, if it's on the Internet, ANTI-VIRUS!!!

This stuff is the studio's enemy, as it gobbles processor time - so do all your music work offline and with A/V disabled, but enable it BEFORE going online.
    

Edited by Certif1ed - August 21 2006 at 08:13

Here is what I got:

Dell
Pentium dual core D processor 2.8Ghz
1 GB Ram
Radeon x300 something graphics card (he said its the best radeon they have or something?)
x-Fi sound card (top of the line)
surround sound speakers for x-Fi model, with subwoofer
17" flat screen monitor
keyboard
optical Mouse
160 GB Internal Hard Drive

Think thats it

$1050

Hows that?