Ok, sorry, what I meant by it being a joke was that I've never heard anyone talk about WHICH thermal lube to use, wasn't really directed at you persay.

@quiet: Oh trust me, it's important. Since they still make the case I have and I didn't see a case, I'll take this time to suggest that you NEVER EVER EVER get a coolermaster case. Please trust me on this (there is a really nice/well built/not overpriced corsair that I've seen up close and personal, maybe the 400? Anyways, it's nice )

If it were me i'd definitely not get the radeon.. Nvidia has a lot of older cards that match or surpass that card's specs for less $

Also, on the case front, rosewill makes some great ones

Yeah I'm not even concerned about the video card, I'm not playing games on the thing.

My wife jokingly said 'why don't you get a new hobby?' and also 'The longer you wait the better and cheaper the computer will be.' so it doesn't look like she is biting I am disabled and have no real funds of 'my own' so she has to sign off on whatever I get. I could go down a step, what about AMD or Intel i3 processors? And SSD drive maybe I can do without, I am no pro, never will be and could add a second data drive myself later. I need bang for the buck but a box that will be happy to host Diva and the plugins that will be coming out over the next few years. I don't want it obsolete on the day of purchase.

Get at least an i5 2400 or better.. the price of the AMD systems are tempting.. but they are rather slow compared to their Intel 'counterparts' these days.. DIVA sings much prettier on an i5 or better

And your wife is correct that the longer you wait, the better system you will get for your money.. obviously..

however that is a never-ending scenario because performance will invariably continue to improve for the next couple of decades at least ?? Shes good.

Oh yeah, she knows what she's doing That's why she has the money.

I configured a box with the fastest AMD and it wasn't much less than the Intel. Anyhow in 6 months or so I should be able to get a box, she knows I want it and after a sufficient wait she WILL succumb to my desires! She loves me. Thanks for the advice guys, at least I know where to start. If there is another vendor I should consider over ibuypower.com please let me know.

You'll be surprised how much you rely on you rvidya card if you get a decent one.
I ended up doing some film work, and not to mention being able to have ALL graphical processes on your GPU instead of CPU is great.

I actually went for a quad core AMD. The processor is cheaper for it's intel counterpart, but not a huge sum. Where it really matters is the cheaper motherboard as well.


Check into the 64 bit phenom's

Isn't that pretty much the end of it right there?

You asked what brand, but to reiterate what others have been getting at, brand doesn't really matter very much. Shopping by brand is often completely arbitrary to quality. It's more about the type and quality of components inside. Unfortunately, it can be hard to tell what a computer-assembling company mashes together in their kits. It's hard to know what's good stuff and whats cheap stuff in there.

But there is a hard and fast rule that has always served me well in my many years of computer-building: You Get What You Pay For. There's exceptions to the rule, but it's a strong trend.

There's one more thing to keep in mind to moderate the prior rule a little bit. Component quality vs cost of component follows a roughly exponential curve. Typically, there's components that sit somewhere at a nice knee in the curve where it's pretty high grade but isn't getting super expensive yet. IMO, that's the place to shop for. Identify what the knee of the price curve is, and go for that... Or push it up a bit if you're concerned about making sure your PC is slightly future-proofed.

In the end, most of the time, I just look for a guide. I've used Anandtech's guides extensively over the years. Browse that, and just skip to the conclusions if you want. http://www.anandtech.com/tag/guides

If this isn't much help for you, and you really just need to pick a pre-assembled system from a big conglomo-company like Dell, then just pick the company that has the name you like best, or whichever one you trust to have a decent warranty, or decent support. If this system is for music, you might shoot for a business-oriented system, not a media-oriented system. Business class computers typically have right component spread for music production.

If you're overclocking, which thermal compound you're using can become fairly critical. The generic white stuff that comes with most coolers isn't the best...

What's up with Coolermaster? They make some of the best cases going... I admit they make plenty of naff ones as well through, but you have to pick and choose.

The long story short is that coolermaster makes noisy cases. I'm sure there are some that are not but by and large they are.

I'm not joking, if you go to frys and tap around on the cases, you can hear it. It's really something I wish I had done prior to buying this one. No joke, it's like a reverb hall. Add fans and other things that vibrate and this case will amplify that substantially.

People, you do not want to go through what I did!

+1

My big necessity is a quiet computer, my hearing can get really weird and a noisy computer literally hurts my head.

I know I've told this before but I have towels covering my computer and all the rattly front covers had to be removed, the sides had to be removed, and I STILL have to bang on it from time to time when some unknown part start buzzing just because the hard drive is working

I should just get that corsair and redo it but the computer works so well....I'm afraid to mess with it.