new computer advice

[snowgie]

Digital audio newbie here. I've gotten bored with MIDI (Cakewalk Home Studio) and want to take it up a notch, but I'll need to do the same with my computer. What is most important to consider when buying a new PC? RAM? Processor speed? Hard drive size? What are some specs I should shoot for.... or if anyone can recommend a site or article to learn more, that's awesome too.
Thanks,
Brian

[FT13]

specs id shoot for:

1.) 1gig or over

2.) 512 2100 DDR ram

3.) Motherboard that supports 266 Front Side Bus

4.) 40 gig hard drives at 7200rpm's

5.) Terratec or Audiophile soundcard.

-Sin

[Justin]

To clarify, you'll also want 2 of those hard drives, one for audio, one for the operating system.

Nifty feature to add for $50 or so. Get a removable drive bay...makes it a lot easier to swap drives if you fill one up.

DVD Roms are nice if you're going to use high-end sample libraries, as more and more of them come in this format.

Firewire is rapidly coming into it's own in the audio world, so it's a nice feature to have in case you want to use a firewire interface, drive or dv camcorder.

BTW if you're looking into getting a dedicated audio pc. We now have several configurations available from Sweetwater. They're all rack mounted and we can install and configure the software and interfaces for you before it ships out.