Recommendations for quiet DAW

[notdeadyet]

Hi,

I'm considering building a PC for my next DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) machine. I've been using Macs for the last 10 years, so I'm not up on the latest PC technology, though I have built a PC before (when Windows 95 was cutting edge!).

My budget is $2k or less if possible for the box alone. My main goal is a quiet machine that I will not be able to hear in the studio. My current Mac (MDD dual 1.25GHz G4) is so loud it is unuseable in the studio unless I take drastic measures to reduce the noise. After quietness, my next biggest goal is power to cost ratio. I would run SONAR on it, and would like to use softsynths and plugins - ideally doing as much in the box as possible.

I don't have a shopping list yet, as I am still trying to get ideas about what will work best. I'm hoping people will make suggestions for various components, especially people who have built DAWs themselves. Example DAW builds would be awesome.

I will say I'm leaning toward an Antec P182 enclosure, though I'm still looking for a really huge case designed for quiet coolness. I don't need a standard size case - tower, mid-tower or whatever - I would devote a lot of space to the box in exchange for silence and power. I don't know why someone doesn't build a humongous case for this purpose, with plenty of free space around the hot components and huge, slow fans - or no fans at all but large radiant fins or whatever. I have thought of not using a case at all, and just building a huge box and mounting the components in there the best I can. It would be completely jacklegged, but as I said, I don't care about size compared to silence and power.

As for CPU I'm leaning quad core Intel, though I'm still researching the new i7 and may wait a few months if it seems that they will come down in price and good mobo matches become known.

I want as much RAM as Windows can handle, which as I understand it is alarmingly little compared to the Mac world. I'm still trying to figure this out, as it seems XP (which afaik is still the preferred Windows flavor for DAW apps) can only see around 3G. My 5+ year old Mac has 4G in it, and current Macs can use 32G! But I'm hoping I'm missing something there and will be able to use a decent amount of RAM for a modern DAW. (Would be glad for someone to set this straight...)

So I'm looking for suggestions ranging from specific components to consider or avoid, all the way to complete examples specifically built as quiet studio DAW machines (which would be very helpful!)

Thanks for reading.