Upgrading my PC: What do I tell the comp people...

[PTLExp]

Based on Allen Hallada's recommended hardware, I'm upgrading my 3-year old PIII system.

I know a little bit about computers, but never built a system, and frankly I don't have time to do it (working on tons of audio projects to pay off my upgrade, LOL) so I'm going to have the same local PC place upgrade the parts for me.

I got a fairly new case and power supply in the current system, and I'm upgrading to the following:

Athlon 64 3400 processor
Asus K8V mobo
ATI Radeon 9200se video card
Micron PC3200 SDRAM (1gb)

I'll be using my old "audio drive", a Maxtor 7200rpm drive (40gb) as my "system" drive and also bought another Maxtor 7200rpm drive (80gb) as my new Audio drive (I did this because my previous "system" drive is a 10gb drive running Win98SE and I'm now upgrading to WinXP which takes almost 10gb to install).

**Questions for you folks: Do I need to specifically tell the PC people to do anything in particular other than "put it together"? Also, if some of you out there have upgraded to using some of these hardware parts, did you guys "tweak" any of the settings (like on the BIOS) yourselves after installation to better work in Pro Tools?

I figured things like software tweaks I can do myself, instead of asking the PC people to do them for me. As always, thanks all in advance who come through with the good advice.

[Nitronick]

Just don't let them try to talk you into getting anything different from what's on the list. While something they may recommend may actually be a "better" piece, it may not have been tested and used with a PT system. Or it may have been tested and failed. The components on the list ARE KNOWN to work.

[Nitronick]

Ast to the tweaks.
My last system I built, I just performed the adjustments recommended by DIGI in the manual. I have made major O/S tweaks in previous systems, and it only resulted in a few more aux tracks on the DaveC test. Nothing that will really help in the sessions I do. I have NEVER come close to taxing my current system.

[PTLExp]

Cool, thanks. I actually bought the parts through newegg and I'm just taking all the stuff in and saying "here you go". I've used these guys for years and they're very good about not pushing stuff on you. Usually they'll give you feedback if you ask, but other than that, they just stick to doing what you ask them to do (PC Club).

One thing I left out and forgot to ask, the Motherboard I'm getting features onboard audio. Should that be disabled or turned off or leaving it alone good enough?

[Nitronick]

I went into BIOS and turned off everything I wasn't going to use. Onboard sound, parallel and serial ports, etc.