Building A Computer For School

Hi,
I'm starting college in september at my local college in their Multimedia Prodcution course and I badly need a new computer. Currently running an AMD 750 mhz Compaq Presario 5000 which was bought about 5 years ago.

Now the computer that they recommend a student should have, now this is the bear minimium is this:"We recommend, as a minimum, either a PC or Macintosh computer with the following: 500 MHz processor or equivalent (Pentium III for the PC and G4 for Mac), 256K L2 cache, 128 MB or higher RAM, 10 GB hard drive, 3.5 floppy drive, mouse, at least 4 PCI slots, 2 USB ports, 16MB graphics accelerator card, 16-bit stereo full-duplex sound card, 250 MB Zip drive (internal), fast CD-RW, fast modem, and a 17” monitor. "

And the software that I will be using is:"Adobe Acrobat, After Effects, Texture Collection, Gallery Effects, Illustrator, PhotoShop, Premiere, Typecaster, and Webmorsels: Macromedia’s Director, Dreamweaver, and Flash; QuarkXpress: 3D Studio Max; Pro-Tools LE; Sound Edit 16"

Now as many of you here are seasoned in many of these programs I'm sure what would you suggest I get? I am considering building the computer myself as I see it being cheaper in the end then buying something form say dell or one of the likes.

What components do you all think I should have. I would like to have a very nice (not necessarily the abosolute best but very good) computer. Should I get one of those 64 bit motherboards? How much RAM should I really have, I would like 1 Gig is this more power then I need, or should I have more? What about dual processors? (good idea, not necessary?)

I have a ton more questions but I'll wait for some answers from you all before I ask more questions.

Also for more about the course it can be found at the link below
www.confederationc.on.ca

If you are using 3d modelling software (3D Studio Max), I recommend atleast a 128MB graphics card. Radeon 9800s are excellent. I'm not sure if that is out of your price range. You will probably want atleast 512 MB of RAM, seeing as you are using these programs.
I'm not sure about other Adobe products/3D Studio Max, but photoshop uses scratchdisks. I would recommend two hard drives, so you can have the scratchdisk on a seperate drive. According to photoshop, it's more efficient if you do this.
I don't think you need a seperate sound card. There are plenty of high-quality motherboards with a built in sound card. My ABIT motherboard is wonderful, with a built in sound card also.

Ask more questions, I'm sure someone besides me would like to help you.

Ouch, their bare minimum pc description would barely run windows XP, even without apps. You'd be running all of your apps off scratch disks, which would be like driving around with your parking brake on, in reverse.

What is your budget? I recently put a system together for a friend for under $900 that was really badass. But he already had a monitor, key, etc. so tha saved him a little bit.

If you want a notebook go with an Intel Centrino M. But if you want a desktop I'd get a 64 AMD.

But really you need to define a budget because it would be easy to build you a dream system for 2-3 grand.

Well If I could do it for under $2000 Canadian that would be great. I am actually looking to build a desktop.

This is what I want to get if possible in the desktop:
2 x 160gig hard drive
1 Gig Ram
RADEON 9800
Sound Blaster Audigy
Video Input
Firewire, USB 2
DVDRW
CDRW
XP Professional

Am I asking too much for from too little?

RAM is your friend. All of the graphics apps chew up memory like crazy, especially when you want to use more than one at once, like say After Effects and Photoshop at the same time. 1 gig should be pretty good though. Just get big chips so you can expand it to 1.5 or 2 later.

Like allanon said, you don't really need that Audigy sound card unless you just want it for games or something. Most motherboards these days have built-in sound cards, as well as built-in ethernet, usb/firewire, etc.

Premier is one of my main interests in this course, should I not worry about the sound card when editing say an indie movie?

If you want Canadian Prices, a place I check (I don't buy from them so much but they list a lot of hardware, etc and the prices seem pretty consitent with most shops in Vancouver) is
www.frontierpc.com

You don't really need to have 2 drives for scratch disks, you can just put in a slice right after the OS partition. My main windows system has 4 partitions, 15 gigs for winxp, 2 gigs for scratch space, 5 gigs for the wife, and the rest is mine. But you only use Scratch disks if you run out of ram. 1 gig is a lot and you shouldn't have that problem.

If you are interested in quality sound and plan on doing a lot of audio editing I would not get a soundblaster card or use the onbaord one (it will more than likely have onboard as it's pretty standard on most boards now - but you can disable it or just tell the app to not use it). I would look into a project studio priced sound card. Something by MOTU or M-Audio... but if audio is not your schtick, then just get onboard - make sure it at least has an s/pdif I/O. That will come in handy interfacing with other gear and you won't rely on the cheap audio converters.

I don't know anything about video editing so I can't recommend anything there.

So does everyone agree that I should go for the 64 AMD?

Thanks for the advice thus far, keep it coming, it's helping a lot

well since you are going to do a lot of encoding/rendering p4 is actually better in that than amd 64, although the 64 is better for gaming. So if you dont do a lot of gaming go with P4.

okay now from my understanding is that a)I don't need a 64 bit motherboard a p4 is better B) that I don't necessarily need an Audigy and if I do want a better sound card to get a MOTU or M-Audio C) a gig of ram is plenty (now that should be or does is matter if it's DDR?)

Now what about a graphics card? What about an video input card? What about dual monitors? What size monitor should I really have? LCD or CRT?

Thanks for the help.