I've built my DAW PC in 2013. Runs solid with ASUS P9X79 board. I think it is very similar to Albee's 6 core he was mentioning above.
I'm lucky, only experienced 2 HD fails since the late 80-ies.
In this PC I have a Samsung pro 850 SSD now ( 256GB ) 2x 2GB WD Caviars and 2 hot swap bays . I organize my bare Sata HDs many different ways , so none of them gets over stressed or near full.
I did have a part broken , the same one twice in a year !!
Corsair H100i water cooler . Avoid it !! Using a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO now. Fine, thanx.
My MAc mini is mid-2011 ( server, 2x 500GB 7200 rpm ) is factory with 8GB of RAM. It is no longer doing audio duties..Just looks pretty with Sierra on that 27" TB monitor
