[the.blode]

For the past five years I've been using a shared Desktop for office/home needs as well as for intensive home studio needs... This has resulted in a computer completely overloaded with software and performance demands, crashing regularly and overheating.

I've been toying with the idea of putting together a new desktop dedicated to my studio needs and taking a load of pressure off the shared desktop, as well as enhancing performance - and now, seeing as this shared computer finally packed it in last night, seems like the perfect opportunity to get on with it.

basically, I was just looking for some advice on hardware for this new computer. I'll be putting it together myself, but it's been a long time since I've had to look at computer hardware, so I'm a bit behind the times.

The computer I'm updating from is a Pentium 3 Overclocked to about 2.4Ghz on some Aopen mobo I can't remember anything about (originally was an ASUS but it died). 1G RAM, 6600GT and a STaudio DSP24 audio interface.. Now I'm looking for something much higher performance

The processor I was considering is the Q6600, with a 975X mobo like the Gigabyte G1975X - but this isn't set in stone. I'm open to consideration. No games or in fact ANY kind of high profile software apart from Audio and DSP is going to be on this computer, so GPU doesn't have to be top of the line. I was looking at 2-4Gig of DDR2 RAM. Cases and Cooling I really have no idea on - the same goes with PC power supplies.

I'm not an avid overclocking techhead, but some options would be nice - stable high performance is the goal.

Thanks for any help