Going back to the original questions about the PC, the one you have is more than capable of producing excellent results for audio recording. I would question the use of any Soundblaster card. Sorry, they are just not of pro quality. The main limitation they've had in the past (besides mediocre converters) is the latency. This is a big deal in computer recording. A professional audio interface will enable latencies down to 3-4ms, which is really what you need for overdubbing parts.

Gaming PCs are usually some of the highest-end computers around. The main difference between those and audio workstations would be less of a need for high-quality graphics (a 512mb graphics card is pretty much overkill for audio production); and hard disk space: you need a lot of it for audio. I would suggest 300GB 7200 drives at today's prices.

The 10K rpm drives are also very leading edge (there are now 15k rpm drives available), but are probably not necessary for most audio. I know people who regularly get 60 tracks of audio at 44.1K/24 bits on 7200 rpm drives. If you are recording at 96K, a 10K rpm drive might give you more tracks, but your CPU will also be working twice as hard.

Trying to get lots of different software all playing nicely with one another on a PC can be very frustrating. It is MUCH better to dedicate a computer for audio recording and keep it very clean (minimal software installed). Every time you add software, it makes changes to the registry and adds new areas of potential incompatibily and/or instability. The people who have the machines that crash the least are the ones who don't run 25 different pieces of software on them, but tune the pc for a couple of primary pieces of software and get rid of everything else.

Just some food for thought...

Larry
http://www.audibleresponse.com
http://www.myspace.com/larrywilliamsproductions
...now writing/producing with Natascha: http://www.myspace.com/nataschacorrigan