Hi Shane - Thanks for the reply! Good to know you have experience with both ECC and non ECC and feel there is no need to worry about it and actually prefer non ECC!
Luckily, Pro Tools Vanilla fits my needs for my setup so i don't need to worry about that weird buffer setting thing they got going on with Pro Tools HD at the moment.
In terms of the qualified computer thing I was referring to, in that same link you sent
http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...m-Requirements
if you scroll down to Supported Computers they have a list of "qualified Windows computers" and all the desktops on the list are HPs with Xeon only. Way back in September on this thread someone posted an i7 build they were having problems with (may have been the HD problem you were talking about) and they mentioned in the post that when they called Avid, Avid said the I7 build was not on the qualified list so they couldn't help them. Here is the post:
http://duc.avid.com/showpost.php?p=2...postcount=6470.
I guess that is really why I'm scared about I7. That if something doesn't work out right, Avid has the right to say they don't need to help me to fix it because they have only qualified HP workstations with Xeon chips in them. But it seems like an I7 build is exactly what I need price and performance wise.
Anyway, sounds like you build plenty of I7 builds with no problems at all so maybe I shouldn't worry so much haha. Thanks again!