Been out of the loop for the last 7 or 8 years and want to get back to recording for fun. I used to run a PC with Sonar 5, FX Pansion Guru, a Delta 8 bus 24/96 and a few outboard rack effects. I lost some steam after the motherboard went on my DAW and more importantly had my daughter. 

Few questions.. 

What kind of computer specs are needed these days to keep up with say a dozen each of vsti's/vst's? I've got a 2 Ghz Mac Air with 8gb of 1600 mhz ddr3 ram. I'd rather not use this small laptop though and would like to keep my DAW dedicated and offline as much as possible. I'd like to build a PC with a budget of around $300-$500. I do not want to deal with latency issues so please tell me if I need to increase my budget or go MAC.
 
How is the new Sonar X3? Is producer necessary? How buggy is this platform as a whole and does it favor working with certain plugins over others? Does it work with Reason's rewire? 

What's a good affordable soundcard that will give me low latency working with Sonar 3x, running Native Instruments vsti's (Absynth, Electric Piano, and probably a few others), as well as effect plug ins like Waves, Izotope,etc.. ? 

Who has a good standard 2 input usb mic pre for guitar/mics? 

Most the music I make is in the box with some guitar, bass, and occasional vocal. Maybe around 30-40 tracks with a 8-12 vsti's and 20-30 effect plug ins. 

I'll let others cover the computers in depth.  I use an off the shelf HP which is more than fast enough - i7 and 8 gigs.  Just make sure you have plenty of memory and a 2nd internal hard drive for audio streaming.  X3 and Win8 are touchable and it works pretty well.  So include a touchscreen monitor in your price, preferably w/ an adjustable slant so you can put your screen right where a console would be.  Last year I got a 21 inch del touchscreen w/ the adjustable base so it goes from almost flat to straight up for less than $300.  They should be a little cheaper this year.  Just be sure you can swing it around - that makes all the difference but seems to add a $100 or so to the price.
 
X3 producer has just about all you will need except for some extra synths.  The ProChannel (a channel strip on every track in X3) is about the only audio VSTs you'll need.  an 1176 comp, an ssl buss comp and excellent EQ come standard, along w/ Breeverb reverb (Perfect Space convolution still comes w/ X3, as well as many of the old effects, Nomad Audio's blue tubes and a useful suite of mastering tools).  Like I said, you may want to pick a few more, but you don't really need them.
 
Tascam has some new interfaces out - Cakewalk is part of Gibson and Tascam is the hardware partner.  Or many use Focusrite, who have a ton of choices.  And lots of us used Roland interfaces back when Cake was owned by them.  It doesn't really matter, most of the similarly priced units are similar on the inside - converter chips, electronics and preamps.  They do the job and quite well.
 
Welcome back and have fun.
 
@

Touchscreens haha so cool... ya I've been out of the loop! 
 
So are most still loading everything from within the box and not using external HD's? How are you backing up things if not? 
 
How is the standard Sonar X3? I have most of the Waves plug ins still I've become familiar with. 
 
Has Sonar X3 been out long enough to work the bugs out? Does it crash often?
 
 
 

AT
I'll let others cover the computers in depth.  I use an off the shelf HP which is more than fast enough - i7 and 8 gigs.  Just make sure you have plenty of memory and a 2nd internal hard drive for audio streaming.  X3 and Win8 are touchable and it works pretty well.  So include a touchscreen monitor in your price, preferably w/ an adjustable slant so you can put your screen right where a console would be.  Last year I got a 21 inch del touchscreen w/ the adjustable base so it goes from almost flat to straight up for less than $300.  They should be a little cheaper this year.  Just be sure you can swing it around - that makes all the difference but seems to add a $100 or so to the price.
 
X3 producer has just about all you will need except for some extra synths.  The ProChannel (a channel strip on every track in X3) is about the only audio VSTs you'll need.  an 1176 comp, an ssl buss comp and excellent EQ come standard, along w/ Breeverb reverb (Perfect Space convolution still comes w/ X3, as well as many of the old effects, Nomad Audio's blue tubes and a useful suite of mastering tools).  Like I said, you may want to pick a few more, but you don't really need them.
 
Tascam has some new interfaces out - Cakewalk is part of Gibson and Tascam is the hardware partner.  Or many use Focusrite, who have a ton of choices.  And lots of us used Roland interfaces back when Cake was owned by them.  It doesn't really matter, most of the similarly priced units are similar on the inside - converter chips, electronics and preamps.  They do the job and quite well.
 
Welcome back and have fun.
 
@

Loading?  Sonar is pretty small, really and most common HDs are a terabyte.  If you are going laptop an external drive helps /w the audio, but a desktop is the most bang for your buck.  Most people get a 256 gig solid state drive (tho a bit expensive) for the OS and then a regular 7200 rpm drive to write the audio files to.
 
All versions of SONAR is the same program, basically (you can find a chart of the differences on the website), without the frills.  If you have waves and softsynths you like, you can skip Pro, although Z3TA and DimPro cover a lot of sonic ground and come w/ Pro.  The middle version of SONAR comes w/ ProChannel (PC), which is a really nice way to work - all the track effects can be seen and set from an inspector - even common VSTs can be "chained" into the PC.  It is  convenient, like having a console strip visible for whichever track you are working on.
 
SONAR is pretty stable.  I haven't had any problems to speak of, anyway.
 
@

Ah yes SSD drives must be the deal! How are most backing up? 
 
 

Your budget seems tight but you don't say what it needs to include. Do you still have a case, monitors, your previous soundcard, etc.?

Also, "going Mac" won't do you any good unless you also "go Logic", because Sonar doesn't run on OSX. Latency issues have a lot more to do with your soundcard anyway, and you already got a few decent budget friendly recommendations there.

Finally if you have a bunch of external plugs you like, I wouldn't spring for Producer. As a package, it's great value, but if you'll be using your Waves and IzoTope anyway it's a little pointless. Addictive Drums is pretty cool though and may be useful for your style.

You will need Waves v9 by the way, so you may need to pay for WUP.

I figured I'd just get a used tower on CL. There are quite a few i7's for sale. Is there a preferred chipset? 
 
I have monitors, a big screen, mics etc.. main thing I need is the most bang for the buck soundcard that has the lowest latency. Been looking at the Steinberg UR22 and Akai EIE Pro. I don't so much need more than 1 or 2 inputs but need something that will keep my latency down. 
 
How come I need Wave v9? 

You need v9 because they fixed some X3 compatibility somewhere during v9, I think r15 or something.

You could try with your older ones, but if you run into issues that's the official story.

I would recommend the a Focusrite Scarlett as your best "bang for buck" audio interface

There are a few flavours at the "2 input" price point so you can't go wrong

I haven't used one myself but have seen enough good reports to know I wouldn't hesitate if I needed to replace mine

To build on AT's comments about a second internal hard drive, on a Laptop this typically means going for Laptop with a DVD writer, that you switch out for a SSD. Not all laptops come with DVD writers now, as downloading and storing on much bigger hardrives is leaving them behind.
 
Like AT I also went for an off the shelf HP. I saw a few posters here running them without real issues, and the cakewalk staff seem to generally run them, and they are usually the machines pictured on their site. I don't think there is an official endorsement though. There is a program called DPC LatencyMon, which is a good indicator of if a machine is suitable for Audio. I haven't had mine long enough to know, but DPC Latency Mon ran for an hour and said it was good.