How to configure a PC for outstanding Audio?

Danlib1,
You guys need to relax. lol
I wasn't slapping you down guy. It was a joke. I just get tired of people trying to shove Mac down mine and others throats. Some of you guys act as though no one has tried a Mac besides you. Mac isn't for everyone neither is Windows.

I said up top that if it works for you that is fine. Doesn't mean it will work for me and everyone else.
Enjoy your Mac and i'll enjoy my Windows 7. ;-)

This could be an incredibly fruitful thread. Please continue with germane comments and re-emerge from childhood. Good Grief.

I have been using a dedicated PC as my main source for about two years. These are some of the tweaks I have used to improve sound quality in my Windows XP system.

1. Using high quality PSU. I recently upgraded to the Corsair HX850 with great results. You can read a review at HardOCP.com regarding the excellent DC output from this unit. Others suggest using a linear PSU but that usually means modifying and/or building your own.

2. Minimizing power draw by underclocking cpu (1.2ghz works for me) & going fanless. I also put my HDD in an external enclosure and use the esata port so that I am not using the PSU for power. At this point I only have the motherboard and CD-Rom drive plugged into the PSU. Going fanless can cause some heat related issues so you will want to use a high quality cpu heatsink. I have been a Thermalright fan for a long time so I use the AXP-140.

3. Remove all but necessary services (done in msconfig). Black Viper's website is helpful in determining which services are useless. The biggies are Themes, Remote Access & Indexing.

4. Use a media player that supports ASIO/Bit Perfect output. I use the JRiver Media Jukebox 12 because it has a GUI that I like along with support for ASIO. Foobar2000 is another great choice if you like a stripped down look with lots of configuration options and plugins.

These are just some of the basic tweaks I would recommend to anyone just getting started in the PC audio realm.

My System

Custom PC -> Tascam US-144 -> Benchmark Dac1 -> McIntosh MC7100 -> Proac Reference 8 Signature w Sub (Cardas/Audioquest Cables)

Interesting suggestions by Stateradiofan. As someone who builds his own computers, I can second the thought that Corsair power supplies are among the best. They also tend to be remarkably quiet acoustically.

The Tascam US-144 looks like something which provides a lot of capabilities and features for its $135 cost (at B&H)). Would I be correct in assuming that you are using it as usb in and spdif out, and if so that it does that conversion purely in the digital domain, without a d/a and then a/d conversion?

Also, I'd imagine that a major benefit of going fanless, and also of underclocking the cpu, besides minimizing power draw, would be reduction of emi/rfi (electromagnetic/radio frequency interference) that might couple through the cabling (or the air) into the dac. Running without fans would increase the operating temperature of the cpu and other digital chips on the motherboard, which would tend to slow down their risetimes and falltimes (and propagation delays as well, perhaps making the underclocking necessary), which would reduce digital noise that could increase jitter and/or couple into analog circuits in the dac.

Regards,
-- Al

Stateradiofan,

Wow -- very interesting suggestions. Could you describe the rest of your computer: Mobo, CPU, Case, etc. everything?

Dave