Larry Jones
...Buy the most power, headroom and future-proofing you can afford. If it's within your budget, you will never regret having more capability than you "need," but you will surely regret buying just the "right" amount of power only to find that you need more down the road...

I agree. It's nearly 6 years since I began ordering the parts to build the DAW PC that I am still using now. The CPU, Motherboard, RAM and PSU were all quite expensive at the time, but in retrospect it was worth it. There was plenty of scope for expansion and I have gradually added things like extra HDDs, SSDs and UAD2 card. I'm not planning to replace it just yet.

Larry Jones
 
...I broke a processor once trying to upgrade. No returns, and no warranty if you damage it yourself. Cha-ching! How many forum members would be comfortable upgrading chips inside the box? I really don't think that's an option for most of us. I know I won't be trying it again.

 
Larry, thanks for sharing your opinion.  However, the title of this topic was "build".  That implies installing CPU's, RAM, motherboards, drives, etc.  I imagine that there are more than a few forum members who dabble in this sorcery.
 
If you are not comfortable exploring and learning more about this rewarding and money saving pastime, there are builders that will be happy to assist you.  Have a great day!

abacab
Have a great day!

Your passive/aggressive (read: snotty) replies to every darned thing I've written here have made that less likely today. I appreciate your points. I agree with your points. I tried to use a personal experience to elucidate one of my points, and you used that to try to belittle me. Hope it makes you feel better.

Larry Jones

abacab
Have a great day!

Your passive/aggressive (read: snotty) replies to every darned thing I've written here have made that less likely today. I appreciate your points. I agree with your points. I tried to use a personal experience to elucidate one of my points, and you used that to try to belittle me. Hope it makes you feel better.

I realize that this is a public forum, where everyone is entitled to their opinion.  But I was merely responding to folks saying that it would require the ultimate processor to configure a proper DAW.
 
I guess I must have accidentally stepped on some raw nerves by suggesting you can do more with less. If that challenged the accepted wisdom here, so be it. 
 
My entire intent was to share helpful information, not to make anybody feel bad about their choices.  I was a bit surprised by the negative responses, however.
 
$200 bucks is still a big deal to some folks ...

Without taking sides in what seems to have somehow gone sideways here.. I myself don't need the overhead of the i7. I went in the middle with an i5 after reading up and seeing what a lot of folks around here seem to be using. I saved about $100, not a big deal but I wanted things like more RAM and a good power supply and my total was heading for over $800 fast. So I skimped on the CPU to stay in budget. In the end it's never been an issue and I figured I can always upgrade down the road within a few years before the socket becomes obsolete. I haven't needed to. My CPU meters never move. But that's me and the way I work. So I agree you can certainly build a working DAW for around $500 that would be more than OK for a lot of musician's who just record mostly audio and only use a fraction of the VST's and plug ins popular with "producers".
We are possibly not the largest group of people who use a DAW. But all we need is a multitrack platform and say a set of canned drums and a few keyboards.  A $2,000 computer is way overkill for most of us. A $500 computer or a $2,000 computer will both be obsolete long before you replace a lot of other studio gear. I'm on my 4th computer but I still have the same monitors etc...

I used a Core i5 for a few years without any problems - or at least, without problems related to cpu overhead. I had stability issues, but that had more do with a wonky motherboard, outdated audio hardware and bad luck. I never found myself hitting a performance wall and/or running out of CPU power, and my projects usually involve multiple tracks and multiple sample libraries. Admittedly, I'm not a heavy plug-in user -- usually just one or two reverbs, a couple of compressors and a limiter. Maybe that helped, I dunno. But my main rig for quite a few years was about $600 - $700 worth of parts, assembled by me, and intermittently upgraded (usually a $100 at a time). And I was fine with it, and had a lot of fun using it.
 
I've since moved to a 6 core Haswell i7 system, with lots of frills -- but not because I felt I really needed that much firepower. I just wanted it, and found myself in a position where I could afford it. So, I did.
 
And I must admit, its been great. Stable, and powerful, and I rarely make it even break a sweat. I do think this current system will last me a long, long time, so I'm happy I upgraded, and having all that power under the hood is great. But I think a modest, low to mid-range system can work well if you're careful in how you build and in how you use the machine. 

The last couple of comments expressed some very helpful insights.  Thanks for sharing!  There were also a few comments earlier that were constructive, as well.
 
I agree that this discussion went sort of sideways for a while.  But really if you read the first post which clearly states the topic is about building a $500 PC, and links to a PC magazine article about same, why in the world would you come into the thread and and start taking a swing with your opinions about $1000 or $2000 PC budgets, or getting a top of the line DAW?
 
I know what a well specified high end DAW should look like, and I never disrespected anybody who wishes to own the best.  I actually recommend that you do so!  There have been many other threads here and elsewhere about building the best DAW.  I have even learned a lot from them. 
 
The point that may have been overlooked is that there is a valid niche for functional entry level PC systems, and this was only an attempt at a constructive discussion on how to possibly meet that specific goal. 
 
Cakewalk has recently published an article in which it found that the ASIO4ALL driver is the most used audio output for Sonar (and I'm just going to guess here that the majority are under-powered laptops).
 
What does that tell you?  Maybe a basic budget desktop PC with a real audio interface may be a step up?

abacab
 
Cakewalk has recently published an article in which it found that the ASIO4ALL driver is the most used audio output for Sonar (and I'm just going to guess here that the majority are under-powered laptops).
 
What does that tell you?  Maybe a basic budget desktop PC with a real audio interface may be a step up?

Interesting fact. That is no surprise as Sonar has found a market in the wonderful world of "producers" > From what I gather these are non musicians who buy software to make music piece by piece out of loops and such not. These folks are not going to spend money on anything more than the computer and the software. Probably using headphones etc. And a laptop will be the weapon of choice.  Today's consumer wants everything in a tidy package. Desktop computer sales are way down as most people use phones and tablets to do their computing chores. 
 

Cactus Music
Probably using headphones etc. And a laptop will be the weapon of choice.  Today's consumer wants everything in a tidy package. Desktop computer sales are way down as most people use phones and tablets to do their computing chores. 

I think that you have hit the mark here.  I don't know anybody personally who has bought a desktop in recent years, except for recently helping a friend build one as a Photoshop darkroom PC.  Lots of friends and family have asked for my recommendation on a laptop or tablet, though.
 
Everybody who wants to be online now, can do so with a smartphone.  To be "connected" 20 years ago you had to pay almost $2000 for a basic desktop PC, and then go online to Compuserve or AOL with a dial-up modem.  Tech has changed drastically in the past two decades.
 
Pushing desktop PC sales in these times is now a hard sell.  They are viewed either as school or office equipment,  or specialized workstations (including gaming rigs and DAW's here).
 
I have noticed a trend lately towards "light" music production on an iPad.  There are a number of iOS apps, controller devices, and external monitors that seem to work well with this.  I saw a recent YouTube demo by Jordan Rudess playing one.
 
So evidently one's weapon of choice can be pretty diverse in these modern times.
 
Bottom line is that anything that expands Cakewalk's market share should be good for us.  It means product development should keep on truckin!!!

Mesh
I wonder what the longevity of a sub $500 built system would be? My goal would be to have something that would last for sometime.
 
 I'm currently helping my nephew build a gaming machine, but his budget is $2k. He's also planning on using it for video editing/general usage when he goes to college next year.....so, it's got to last at least 5-7 years (even more if he takes care of it).
 
The interesting part about doing a sub $500 machine (DAW) is it might work out really well as a starter kit for someone who doesn't have the funds to go all out.

In an earlier post in this thread, I laid out the cost of the various components for a newly built desktop for a friend of mine, and I just wanted to add that I SPECIFICALLY made sure that every single component had a decent manufacturer's warranty, compared to other offerings by competitors for the given component.  
 
For example, some hard drives from Western Digital have differing warranties - the Blue level of drives have I think a 2 or a 3 year warranty, while their Black level drives have a FIVE year warranty.  (They do cost more though).  
 
Memory tends to come with a limited lifetime warranty, from many of the vendors.
 
Power supplies, no matter who's - tend to have a 1 year warranty, with some of the cheaper ones only coming with a 90-day warranty.
 
For the computer I posted about building, I picked up extended warranties for a few of the components - those I deemed it worth doing for, it only cost $5 to get a 3-year in-store warranty extension for the motherboard, meaning I wouldn't have to send it back to the manufacturer if something bad happened, I could just take it back to the store (Micro Center in this case), and they would simply give me a new one or a full refund.  I did the same for the HDTV's I picked up for myself - which included accidental screen damage for 2 years.
 
Because I hand-selected each and every component, I had 100% opportunity to control the quality of the build, AND strengthen areas where my experience has taught me that issues could happen.  I ended up picking up Toshiba 7,200 HDD, because of its 3 year warranty, and competitive cost, and chose NOT to pick up an extended warranty on that.  Many/most of the hard drive makers offer, for a small fee, the PRE-shipping out a replacement drive, which will come with a box to return a defective drive, and the shipping label already set up - last I checked it was $9.99 from Seagate, and on two occasions where I used that approach for replacing failed drives, I got the new ones in 2-3 business days.  SO - for some components I saved on not picking up the extra warranties, but did choose it for other components.
 
This new build ROCKS, with the AMD processor and 16 GB of memory, and is indeed well made, with good quality components.
 
Bob Bone