Intel Core2 Duo E7400 2.80Ghz CPU

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3L LGA 775 ATX System Board

M-Audio 1010LT PCI 10-In-10-Out Professional Audio Card

Corsair 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 SDRAM System Memory

Dual Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s @ RAID 1

ATI Radeon x600 PCIe 128MB Graphics Card

Acer 23" Widescreen LCD Display - 1650x1080

Dual LG SATA 22X DVD-R/W

Thermaltake TR2 W007RUC 430W ATX12V Power Supply

Coolermaster Centurion 534 Black ATX Aluminum/Steel Mid-Tower Chassis

All-In-One USB 2.0 Media Card Reader

The first component for Brian's new Music Studio rig has arrived. An sweet mid-tower from Coolermaster.
(click to enlarge)

This professional quality audio card has an unbelieveable 22 total connections. 16 Analog: 8-In/8-Out, 2 Mic Inputs (XLR), 2 S/PDIF Digital: 1-In/1-Out, 2 Midi: 1-In/1-Out. All those cables hanging off the back of the PC are going to make it tough for Brian to swap out connections. We'll have to do something about that. ; )

Another great CPU from Intel. At around $120 the price vs performance can't be beat!

All new systems are first installed on a test bench to ensure functionality of all the new components.
This also makes it quite a bit easier to work on the system while we tweak it to run perfectly.

Something we've come to expect from Gigabyte system boards over the past two years or so... No problems...

12+ hours of continual stress testing, completing 22 passes with zero failures. All looks good so far.

Isn't this just riveting!

Here we connected all the devices and power-on the system to ensure the build was completed correctly.
Of course, we never ship systems in this condition. It's not yet complete.

The image below has the same number of cables and the same number of connections as the one above. The only difference, is the image below shows a properly wired system. All cables are logically routed and secured to prevent movement, and increase system airflow. THIS is a properly wired system!

As may be seen in the results below, Prime95 has run for nearly nine continuous hours with zero failures.

Remember when we wrote earlier that we were pulling all the stops out on this project? Well, here's what we meant. We hand fabricated a custom breakout box so Brian can easily access all the audio jacks without climbing behind his PC. We used an old SatTV box for the chassis and fabricated new front and rear panels. This device is completely flexible connection-wise. Since each in/out is simply straight-through wiring, Brian can use any connection for anything he wants. We also made sure we reinforced the center of the chassis so it can double as an LCD monitor stand. Brian loved it!