I’m looking for a new PC for recording.
Hoping to snag something good next week…
Can you recommend anything in the $5-700 range?
Thx
I don’t know anything about recording on a PC but I would suggest this: Look at the software that you’re interested in using, and it will suggest a minimum configuration that will be necessary (likely versions of the Windows operating system, how much RAM, etc.). This will give you a minimum level to shoot for, and then I suppose you can go up from there… so (a) choose the software, (b) determine the minimum configuration that you need, then (c) start looking for a good computer. Hopefully this helped. 
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Can’t recommend anything specifically, but the couple things I’d think about are:
- Recording is very RAM-intensive - as much as you can afford, and as I understand dual core or quad core can really make a difference here by increasing the “bandwidth” a computer has to run processes.
- Your other major limiting factor is hard drive speed and how fast your computer can read data stored to your hard drive. SSD is awesome, but short of tat the fastest you can get, while still having a TON of storage space. It may be worth getting an external drive to back up older projects to, as well, to keep your primary drive from filling up, if you do end up on a smaller but faster drive.
Pretty much anything on the market today is capable of supporting a professional-quality DAW, so these are mostly factors for how large and resource intensive a mix you can handle how many tracks you’re playing back at any given time, how many FX instances are being run at once, that sort of stuff.
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From my experience if you really want a PC, not Mac, then it have to be a bit expensive.
A lot of plugins on different tracks in DAW can make CPU crazy, same for RAM. So, typical starting config: i7, 16Gb, SSD, ASIO-supporting multitrack soundcard.
Using some tricks you may make these requirements less strict. If you don’t need to record band in real time, or if you record using analogue mixer, you don’t need multitrack soundcard (ASIO is still ‘must have’). Economy of plugins (using multifunctional plugins, using prerendered tracks etc) lets you use less expensive CPU (i5 and alike) and less RAM amount. If you don’t use Kontakt/GIGA like instruments - SSD is not so necessary - some more or less fast HDD would be enough (eg WD Black series). Same for RAM - if you don’t use heavy virtual instruments and keep your projects in neat mode - 8Gb is enough for start (good thing about RAM is that you can always to buy more).
More or less, requirements are close to those of gaming PC but without expensive graphic card (thank god!). If you’re going to use software guitar plugins my advice is to get external soundcard (Firewire, USB etc). Internal and PCI soundcards could be noisy, which is noticable with a lot of gain. Samplerate 192k or 96k is necessary to minimize sound latency.
P.S. Don’t save on PSU. People brought me a lot of PC where cheap chinese PS had burnt their expensive ultrafast videocards or fancy soundcards.