Building Your Recording PC Checklist

Here I will be Providing a checklist for you to go over,
when purchasing your parts for building your Home Recording Computer.
All things will vary, depending on your budget.
But you can try to follow my guidelines as close as you can.



1. Try and find a motherboard w/ no on-board Audio or Video.
If you can't find that, then look for the fastest or upper range
speeds in the System Bus, Brige, or Mthz per second.
See how many SATA ports it has for how many HDD you will use.

2. Go Dual Core or higher, Higher if you want to do video too. (Use AMD)

3. Hard Drives - 1 will do for beginner, but if you are recording audio,
use a second just for that. Get 7200 RPM or higher / SATA.
I only use Western Digital HDD, nothing else.
Caviar Blue and Black are fine.
Western Digital HDD purchase from Newegg.com

4. Dedicate 1 HD for Operating Sys, 1 for Samples/VST,
1 for Audio Record, 1 for Audio play.

5. Power source (PSU) I like Corsair PSU's.
On average you'll only need 400w - 650w at most.

6. A good GPU if you can afford it, is ASUS, or Zotac. The more memory built on
the card, the more your motherboard will have ram freed up.
(+ some allow 2-3 monitors at a time.)

7. Most Logitech Mice & Keyboard combos are good,
try and get Laser / Wireless and some extra buttons on your Keyboard,
those come in handy for opening frequent folders / Apps fastley.

8. Audio Interface - Are you using USB or FireWire?
Make sure motherboard has 1 or both.

9. Make sure you have tools to assemble, or have some who knows how.
Make sure you know about damages to circuitry from static electricity.

10. Choosing a tower case - most will do, but aluminum extracts heat greatly.

11. Make sure you have fans for air circulation. most towers come with.

12. OS - I will get into this later, but you can use any you like.
I recommend Win XP 64bit, all have advantage / disadvantage.

13. Last but most important - All products have warranty. Make sure to go to each
Vendor website and enter in all serial and info required to activate warranty.
Save all purchase receipts - You will need this.
This will save you headache and money if something craps out.