[mjslakeridge]

As promised, here are the specs to the rig I built, which is running Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 3, and Pro Tools version 7.4 cs10:

Motherboard-Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P (760 chipset) cost - free when bundled with the processor and purchased from MicroCenter. I would probably upgrade the motherboard as it is pretty much bare bones-1 pci express slot, 1 pci 16 slot and 1 pci slot. It does have 6 SATA ports which is nice, although I currently am using 3 of them.

BIOS- Award version F3. Board came with version F1, I did flash to F3 per Gigabyte's recommendation for the FX series processor.

Processor- AMD FX 6300 black edition- cost $129, I think they are selling for $119 now.

Memory- 2 x 2048 MB DDR 3 Kingston 1333 mhz modules - cost about $20. This Motherboard has 2 DDR3 slots and will support up to 8GB I believe, but Windows XP has a limit of 4GB.

System drive-Hitachi HDS728080PLA380 Deskstar 80GB 3.5-inch SATA Hard Drive- cost unknown, came with Sweetwater build. I think I am only using about 20 GB of this drive, so would probably buy a SSD drive for the operating system and PT files.

Audio drive- Seagate Barracuda SATA 2 TB 7,200 rpm model # STBD2000101- $99

CPU cooler - Scythe ShurikeN Revision B -$35 I probably could have used the stock cooler that came with the processor, but I had this one already, so decided to use it.

Power supply- Antec SP 350 -cost unknown (it came with the Sweetwater build I bought 6-7 years ago). Only 350 watts? that was a surprise to me as I crawled under the desk with a flashlight this morning. MicroCenter has a low end Thermal Master case that comes with a 500 W power supply for about $35- I have that for my non-PT computer.

PCI cards- 1 PCI express card with 2 firewire 400 connections- 1 used for Digi 002 rack unit and 1 used for external FW disk drive (backup drive). cost- free (co worker gave it to me), but I think they sell for $25- less if you use PCI rather than PCI express.

Graphics card- using the onboard ATI Radeon card on the Motherboard-has one DVI and one analog video connection for my 2 monitors. Avid recommends using a separate graphics card, I guess it takes load off of the CPU, since I have the PCI 16 slot available, I may install one the next time I feel like crawling around under the desk. I believe they recommend specific graphics cards, so check their system requirements if you go that route. I am satisfied using the onboard card for now, screen redraws are fine and for my sessions, I have more than enough CPU horsepower.

Other- Using the Digi 002 rack, Digi Command 8 control surface, have a midi keyboard connected into the Command 8 midi in port. Also just bought a Behringer ADA8000 8 channel analog to digital converter with 8 mic pre's for $125 on Craig's list. Connected to the back of the Digi 002 rack via Toslink (lightpipe) cable, which allows me to track 16 live tracks at once.

Let me know if I forgot any important details. This is a fairly low budget build, and it may not be for everyone, certainly not a professional setup, but I am very happy with it for my home project studio. I have no plans to upgrade from Windows XP or PT 7.4 for this rig anytime soon, even though Microsoft will quit supporting XP in April, 2014. I don't connect this rig to the internet, except when doing updates. Also, I do an Acronis backup of the entire operating drive before updating drivers or anything else, it has saved me on more than occasion.