Hi, I am building a PC (more accurately having it built for me) primarily for music production (lots of virtual synths, effects, samples and audio streaming). Would be really grateful for any comments as I am uncertain on a lot of things. My particular questions are below but if it looks like I am going wrong anywhere I would be grateful to know.

My criteria are (no particular order):

1. I would like it to be quick but it doesn't need to be blazingly so to the extent that it takes me into silly $$$ territory
2. No serious games use, no overclocking
3. Definitely want a dual monitor setup but don't really understand the gfx card aspect
4. Needs to be quiet, if not silent

My provisional spec is (running Windows 7 Home Premium):

COOLERMASTER SILEO 500 QUIET MID TOWER CASE - My concern is whether this will get too hot and whether I should use another case. Ideally I would like an Antec P183 but the supplier I am looking at doesn't offer it.

Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-3770 (3.4GHz) 8MB Cache

ASUS® P8Z77-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX

16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (4 x 4GB KIT) - Not sure whether 16 is enough/too much? And is it a waste of money going for this quicker RAM than standard Samsung 1300 MHz sticks?

Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 640 - DVI,HDMI,VGA - 3D Vision Ready - This is the most confusing part, mainly because I want a dual monitor set up (see my monitor choices below). Yet this card only has 1 x DVI, 1 x VGA and 1 x HDMI. So how does that work - do I connect one monitor to the DVI and one to the HDMI? My PC at work has dual monitor but irritatingly they display at different resolutions (but identical monitors), I guess because of the different resolutions of the two outputs. Very confused. Also is this going to be a good enough card?

120GB INTEL® 330 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 500MB/sR | 450MB/sW) - system disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm) - projects disk
3rd Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm) - sample library disk

500W FSP AURUM XILENSER - 100% Fanless SILENT 80+ GOLD PSU - power supply is the second major area of worry, this is what the default PCS audio rig recommended. My concern (see comment above re heat and the Coolermaster Sileo case) is whether everything is going to be too hot, and also it is relatively expensive.

TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER - upgraded from the recommended Titan Super Quiet cooler - will this be any noisier?

2 x IIYAMA E2473HDS 24" LED WIDESCREEN, 2 HDMI/DVI-D 1920x1080

Thank you very much.

Dont have time to comment on everything right now, but Fractal Design R3 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2010/10/29/fractal-de sign-define-r3-review/3 is a very good case, perhaps better than the sileo. In Sweden the R3 can be found a little bit cheaper than the sileo.

Good luck!

/Johnny

The graphics card should be fine for dual monitors. Much lower cards would be fine as well. You can put a DVI to HDMI adapter on the DVI port if you need it... but many monitors these days have both.

CASE - This is fine althrough the R3 as mentioned is also good depending upon what drive bay configuration you need. I use both for quiet studio boxes and prefer working with both over the Antec solutions.

GFX - Z77 if it has on board capability will be able to drive two monitors without a add in card with the correct adaptors to match whatever your monitor is using. As for your work machine using different resolutions, it sounds to me like it's either set up wrong or plain broken... unless your using 2 X 28" or above then I can think of another couple of reasons, but I'm guessing on a work box your probably not! But yeah all the snap in cards out at the moment that I can think of will drive two monitors with right adaptors.

PSU appears to be a FSP OEM design and I wouldn't choose a FSP PSU personally. Something Seasonic (either own brand or rebadged) or something from Enermax is where I tend to go for PSU's.

Rest of the spec is all good.

using onboard graphics = shared memory.. yay

umm not really onboard has its own dedicated ram albeit small amount.
most audio software will not require going past that. on the other hand with the average system having 8 or 16 gig ram its moot anyway.

benchmarking systems with dedicated vs onboard shows not performance difference unless you need cuda enabled for a very small amount of software (Nebula)

Scott
ADK