what do you recommend?

Well, I'm looking to pick up a new system.. and I'm wondering what you knowledgeable people recommend; cpu (Intel preferrably), mb, ram, sound card.

I mostly do graphics work and gaming, but I'm starting to get into recording music as well.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated, thanks.

I know about the speed = money thing... I've bought and built computers before...however, I'm not really up to date with what's brand spankin' new these days other than video cards, and thats why I'm asking what people have to say

Money is -not- a problem.. which is why im very open to suggestions..this is also going to be a comp I'll have for a few years as well..so, it will need to hold up for a while, so, probably as fast as I can get..heh

I already have everything except for the cpu, mb, and sound card...shouldve stated that in my previous post, my bad..

More specific things..ie - what mb is most stable for specified chip (ie - dual xeon)... what sound cards are good for doing music and such.. creative? or something else... etc blah blah yada..you get the point..

It's 2am, and I'm not really alive right now, so I hope this all made sense...anyways..off to the weak world of sleep.

Personally id go intel, with say a 2.26B p4 as they seem to be a good combination of speed/price, or as good as you can get with a p4 that is

The 133mhz bus makes quite a difference so i wouldnt settle for a 100mhz version.

As for motherboard id go for the...Abit IT7-MAX2 using the 845E, chipset.

Should be plenty fast enough and offer pretty much every feature you could want.

Graphics wise its gonna have to be either a GF4 Ti. Your choice on which 1 as they are obviously the same thing but just clocked differently or wait till next month and grab a Radeon 9700.

For sound, i have an Audigy Platinum as i thought i would have the odd go at doing music and ive been very pleased with it. Its had far more use than i initially thought it would have

RAM wise, 512mb is what i would recommend or 1024mb if your feeling adventurous

As far as HDDs go, alecstaar has mentioned the 1 i would get, the 8MB buffer WD drive, but you pay more obviously for that buffer

Anyway thats what i would recommend, i personally would get a RDRAM system but i find it harder to recommend them to anyone as each day goes by

I'd go with the ASUS P4T533C or the Gigabyte GA-8IHXP and a 2.26GHZ P4. Get some good Samsung PC800 Rambus, or wait till the PC1066 comes out in like 2 weeks. Get a TI4600.

Why oh why have you removed your sig Sapiens?

This is one time its definately needed as you have just recommended what you have. Aint no better recommendation that using said recommended yourself...No?

/me makes note to use the word 'recommended' ....More :p

:x

Asus also has a P4T533 (no extra letters) that comes with some PC4200 32-bit RDRAM (as it's not widely available yet). Looks pretty sweet if ya ask me. the 32-bit stuff means that you don't need to have matching pairs of RDRAM anymore. You still need to terminate it, however, but the terminator should be included with the board.
Can't go wrong with Asus.

As a rule you cannot go wring with ASUS, I own a board from them at the moment, but the P4T533 may not be the best board to go for at the moment.
Numerous reasons:

1. Most vendors are selling the board without any RAM and then selling the RAM seperately, costs a small fortune.
2. RAM is in extremely short supply, if you think 256MB will be enough for now until about September when this stuff will be available en mass then maybe, otherwise you'll be hard pushed to find anywhere selling the RAM.
3. A lot of the RAM being sold seperately is PC3200 and not PC4200.
This is basically PC800 rather than PC1066 memory.
4. The PC4200 floating around at the moment is non-ECC, great you may say. Well think again, reports surfacing about this being a very unreliable combination, ASUS only varified EEC RAM for this board and that isn't currently available.

The idea and plan was sound, 32bit RDRAM modules, in essence two sticks of RAM in one module, no need to purchase two sticks any more.
However the board has been released too early, the RAM isn't widely available and what is about is expensive.
If you are considering this board I would recommend waiting about a month until RAM is available from anywhere.

I'd get the Gigabyte GA-8IHXP motherboard or something with the SiS 658 chipset to get AGP 8x support, such as the AS45GTR which throws in serial ATA as well.

Western Digital is the way to go with drives. Maxtor is good too.
For a CD burner, get the Plextor 40x, which I just bought yesterday for $120.

Memory and CPU, as much as you can afford!

Thanks for the help guys, much appreciated.

Have a little research to do now...

one of my favorite things to do is go to a site and build a dream system

Then see what I can use to get the best buy

I like that too. I'm gonna dream up a dual Xeon rig here and go all out, but I don't think I'll be doing that till at least next year.