DAW = Digital Audio Workstation....basically running Sonar & Reason + the apps for my guitar and keyboards to do musical work. It needs beefiness + lots of file storage, as will tv ripping for when I'm not home.

Basically this will only be getting impacted as an sql server while I am doing dev work, and file serving will be while streaming video or audio at night or while friends are round and want to watch something (a way to save me having to worry about my dvd collection getting damaged or having to watch tv shows at a time that doesn't suit me).

And yeah, it's likely overkill for multiboxing but for what else I need to do, or playing Flight Sim X, it should be a decent option until the next round of pin changes The main concern for me is with the subsystems I have never bothered to worry about too much, such as the difference between DDR2 and 3 or CAS timings etc and so was hoping some people here would be more knowledgable in that area to help me make a more informed choice.

As for 4 cheaper boxes, I don't really ever like that as an option just for the fact I will often just go bush for a few weeks at a time away from my main place so I can get away from meetings and people, and just work. Having one powerhouse box means I just need to pack it + monitors and I'm good to go for any situation (and no, I have one laptop but I hate trying to do anything but write word documents on it, I love my G15 + a decent size screen ) so having to worry about moving 4 boxes would just not be feasible.