A friend of mine put together this spec for a new desktop DAW for me, wondered what you guys think;
 
KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent "Infin8 Black Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **WorldWide Exclusive**
AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 9590 Black Edition 4.70GHz (5.00GHz Turbo) (Socket AM3+) Processor - OEM
ASRock 990FX Extreme9 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 ATX Motherboard
Western Digital Caviar Red 4TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD40EFRX - OEM HDD
Fractal Design Define XL R2 Midi Tower Case - Titanium Grey
Corsair Hydro H100i GTX 240mm High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060021-WW)
Corsair RM Series RM 650 '80+ Gold' 650W Power Supply (CP-9020054-UK)
Corsair Vengeance Pro Red 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (CMY16GX3M2A2400C11R)
Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT250BX100SSD1)
OcUK Value Blu-ray / DVDRW combi SATA - OEM

Red drives are specifically designed for servers, NAS servers generally. The assumption frequently made in server design is that the drive will be installed in a fault tolerant RAID array, and typically these drives will give up trying to access questionable sectors after a very few tries. In a desktop PC that is generally a disadvantage. Liquid cooling should not be necessary in a system that is not overclocked, and is not necessarily any quieter than standard cooling since you still need to fan the heat exchanger, unless you put it in another room. Unless you plan to run a toaster off your USB, 600 W is probably overkill. If you are looking for a quiet PS, there is no clear advantage in more power per se unless you clearly have a fan control that varies its built in fan power in response to temperature. A lower capacity power supply specifically designed for silence is almost always preferable, and a fanless PS is usually going to be designed for a lot less output. Solid state drives usually offer no benefit vs a 7200 rpm standard drive for audio. A BluRay burner is not likely to be necessary for audio backup, 10 meg per minute stereo gives you 70 minutes on a CD, standard DVD gives you waaaay more than enough even for projects at 96K, and there is no reason for a dedicated DAW machine to have an optical drive except for backup and possibly CD ripping. Some of the money you save might be spent on 32 GB of memory--it is remotely conceivable you might actually use that much.

AMD stands out to me, only because I have seen comments in passing. I would definitely research comparison info of AMD vs Intel.

A DAW is not graphics intensive, so the graphics may be huge overkill. If gaming (3D) is intended, yes, but a DAW is 2D.

I was actually about to upgrade tothe fx- 9590. i currently have the fx-6350 6-core 3.9 (overclocked to 4.1), it runs Sonar like a champ as it is, however in some very intensive instrumental projects it was getting a lil on the higher end. Havent had a real reason to get yet im just gunna most likely get it to ensure more in the future. Overall looks like a great setup as Mettelus said, the graphics card is a bit overkill for a DAW, maybe if your trying to design a next gen game?you could save money on that and as the other guy said, get some more RAM or possibly a slightly more powerful Power Supply.

AMD CPU's run Sonar just fine - specially the higher-end ones, and in fact some do better than some of the much costlier Intel chips (certainly though some of the i7 chips are the fastest).
 
Anyways, I agree the liquid cooling money would be better spent on more memory - I run 32 GB of memory on my primary computer, and never ever have to worry about project loads.
 
I would also not bother with any kind of fancy graphics card either - they just are not needed by Sonar.  I actually run 2 HDTV displays off of my on-board graphics, and have no video performance issues whatsoever.
 
I DO use a 250 GB SSD drive as my C: drive, and keep only Windows and applications on it - all else goes to one of my other drives.  I have several additional drives, a 2 TB for Cakewalk Projects and Cakewalk Content, another 2 TB drive for nothing but sample libraries, and another 1 TB drive for my user libraries (documents, pictures, downloads, videos, music, all that stuff).  I also have a 4 TB drive for backups.
 
I happen to have a 1000 watt power supply, but it is not required.
 
I would suggest you put your money into main memory, and perhaps additional drives, and save any other money for nice plugins, like a good orchestral library.
 
Bob Bone
 

There are better mainboards in the price range of the
ASRock 990FX Extreme9 AMD 990FX out there,
I just read some comments about  issues
( for example the cooler control)  .
 
regards

Thanks for the comments guys. Got an alternative quote, spec as follows;
 
Case InWIN GT1 BLACK GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-4790k (4.0GHz) 8MB Cache
Motherboard ASUS® Z97-PRO GAMER: ATX, USB3.0, SATA 6GB/S, SLi, XFIRE
Memory (RAM) 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X FURY DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card 2GB AMD RADEON™ R7 360 - DVI, HDMI, DP- DX® 12
1st Hard Disk 240GB KINGSTON HYPERX SAVAGE SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 560MB/sR |
530MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk 2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply CORSAIR 450W VS SERIES™ VS-450 POWER SUPPLY
Processor Cooling CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT
PORTS
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Operating System Genuine Windows 8.1 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Windows 10 Upgrade FREE Upgrade to Windows 10 with all Windows 7 & Windows 8.1 Purchases*
DVD Recovery Media Windows 8.1 (64-bit) DVD with paper sleeve
Office Software FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
Anti-Virus NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Monitor AOC 18.5" WIDESCREEN LED TFT - 1366 x 768, 5MS, D-Sub, DVI-D
2nd Monitor AOC 18.5" WIDESCREEN LED TFT - 1366 x 768, 5MS, D-Sub, DVI-D
External Hard Drive WD 1TB Passport Ultra USB 3.0 External HDD - WDBZFP0010BBK
Warranty 3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year
Labour)
 
...plus a USB interface..still looking at those.
 
Bearing in mind that I'm upgrading from a 7 year old PC with XP and 2G of RAM..any thoughts?

that i7 chip comes with onboard HD4600 graphics chip which supports up to 3 displays and would be fine for Sonar and general PC work (if you wanted to save a bit of money)
that Radeon is going to be pretty loud at times - fine if the PC is not in the same room as where you record
for comparison i run an old fanless NVidia GeForce card with only 512mb and even that is overkill for me.
 
of course if you also game then you'll need a better graphics card

Thanks Mark, that's the kind of info I was after. So, if I ditch the Radeon card, would the onboard one be quieter? I do record in the same room as the PC, and it's a small room.

I don't know James, I'm sure one of  the tech bods would be able to tell you. however this similar Scan stsyem uses onboard graphics so if it's good enough for them...
http://www.scan.co.uk/3xs...ha97-computer-music-pc