Hey guys. My daw finally died. I was going to buy one from studiocat, but my budget won't allow it.
I have 1,000.00. I've decided to build one myself. Need help selecting components. Case, motherboard, operating system, everything. I use a Motu 896HD firewire, and a Mackie pro control. I checked out tigerdirect tonight, but there are allot of choices. Again, I have 1000.00 to spend. This DAW will be used for my trio only. A typical song contains 20 tracks at best, I use EZ drummer, and maybe 2 vsti's in a song, I run sonar producer 8.5.3 Thanks in advance for your help.

You might want to try the Computer forum here, lot's of good stuff about what works and what don't work.
Good for you!   that budget should do it easy. Building your own is the way to go I think. There is a ton of info etc. Window 7 64 bit has made thing better for all of us so old issues are long gone.
I would see what people with the same interface you have are using.
Good luck.

Thanks Cactus.. I'll check out the Computer forum.

There was a recent post on the Reaper forum in which a guy details the computer build that he'd done. He thought it worked well enough that the specs would be helpful to others. It cost around $1000. http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=109899

I would advise using an Intel CPU and not the cheaper AMD knock-offs. They cost more, but you get what you pay for.

Thanks guys. I'm actually leaning toward studiocat at this point.