[albee1952]

With your budget, building your own would be the best way to go. You can build with everything you need and that PC has some stuff I would skip(in addition to not knowing if the motherboard is compatible. Look at the threads here on self-built systems. A little homework will net you a list of parts that will give solid performance. Asus or intel motherboards, intel Q9550 and 4 gig of RAM are starters. Stay cheap on the video card(onboard video is a "no go"). I use a $37 MSI GeForce 7300LE with a pair of 22" flatscreens. You need 2 hard drives. The system drive can be small980-160gig is plenty). Audio drive can be as big as you like but I stop at 500gig(personal choice). Many Asus boards have working firewire ports(but a conpatible card is cheap anyway). I recommend all SATA drives(including DVD). I would also recommend Windows XP over Vista. While you will get differing opinions, more like XP and it is easier to setup for the "non-genius" (like me).