two months (almost) - so a bump is in order.
i've been saving for a while to finally split my home system (i7-860, 4gb DDR3 ram, 5tb of space, GTX 260 core 216) into two systems - one for gaming and online use, one for offline-only music. i'm getting close. it'll be the first time i'll have two dedicated machines with unique uses at any given time. looking forward to it =) depending on how i scale it and how i work everything, it'll be anywhere from 600-1000$ for the upgrades, but it's been over a year since i've done anything major to my home machine. i'm past due for an overhaul.
moving my music onto an offline-only machine will not only bring productivity benefits, it'll allow me to experiment more with overclocking than i've been able to on my primary system in the past (always been worried that losing a CPU would put me out of business musically for the months to save up for a new one). it'll also allow me to fotz around more with custom setups, as i won't have to have a million hard drives sucking power and generating heat in what for most cases is the primary air intake port on the system (the front lower bay).