Hardware recommendations ??

[Lindsay Haisley]

Hi, all,

I'm retiring my old desktop box and building an entirely new one, and
looking for recommendations on a replacement mainboard and CPU.  The box
will serve multiple functions, including some recording and processing
of audio, and possibly video from a Haupage card at some point.  I'm
using ardour2/jack/audacity and friends for audio.  Because these are
probably the most demanding applications in terms of chipset, memory and
CPU, I'm coming to the Ubuntu Studio group first for some
recommendations on decent, reliable hardware that'll run 10.04+ Ubuntu
Linux, my multimedia stuff, and have plenty of versatility for a home
office environment as well.

The box will probably run a RAID1 array (using a 3ware controller card),
a couple of sound cards (including a M-Audio Delta44 card and a
dual-output conventional sound card (so that I can send output to either
the cheap computer speakers or the studio monitors via an external amp),
so it'll need to have ample card slots.  It'll have a DVD r/w drive and
a CD r/w drive, plus the usual support for USB2, Firewire and the like.

I usually deal with Mwave on mainboards since they'll put together the
MB, CPU and memory and test out the whole she-bang before sending it.
I've had pretty good luck with them in the past.

Any suggestions, discussion, or avenues for further research will be
welcome.

-- 
Lindsay Haisley       | "Everything works if you let it"
FMP Computer Services |   (The Roadie)
512-259-1190          |
http://www.fmp.com    |