I'd only spend about $2000 on the computer itself - even that's pushing it.
AMD/P4, couldn't care less. 🙂 Somewhere around or over 2GHz.
SILENT FANS
Nice, cool case.
Silent fans.
Large, fast, QUIET hard drive (or two) 🙂 A pair of 80's or 120's shouldn't be too unreasonable.
Nice, quiet DVD-ROM and CD-RW.
Lots and lots of blank CD's 😀
A couple 200-capacity CD binders.
A decent VIVO or AIW card- 7500 or 8500AIW. Plus a VCR on the side. 🙂
good optical mouse.
GOOD ergonomic keyboard
Nice sound card - I'm thinking TB Santa Cruz. 😉
Almost forgot a UPS! Something to not only provide a few minutes of power in an outage, but also to REGULATE the power coming in to all this expensive stuff.
So in other words, a good computer without spending more than $2000! The rest goes towards:
For me- a PRO AUDIO card from EgoSys or MIDIMan (or similar)
SOFTWARE! (Games for some, music software for me! 3D programs for others...)
AN AWESOME DESK AND AWESOME CHAIR! (Oh to have a nice desk with a comfortable chair! Lots of workspace, lots of filing and storage space...)
AN AWESOME PRINTER! (None of this inkjet junk - colour laser for me, thank you! Unless it's a photo-quality inket for pictures and a laser for everything else. Colour laser has got to be about as good as a HP 900-series, right? Haven't checked reviews for a few years...)
AN AWESOME, HUGE MONITOR! Not just big, but awesome quality so your eyes don't hurt! As compact/light as possible without being flatscreen LCD. I have nothing against LCD, but big screen LCD = big waste of money!) :| Then radiation-proof the thing. 😀
AWESOME SPEAKERS! None of these lil' $100-250 5.1 sets from Creative Labs and their ilk. 🙂 For me, pro audio monitors - for others, theatre-quality speakers with amplifier/decoder.
Home insurance for all this stuff! 😀😀😀
Have I missed anything?
Oh yeah.... that $10k US would be ~$16,000 Canadian. 😀