Essentials components for DAW PC & Audio Interface recommendations

[Caiyuo]

Two-parter here because I was hoping those who would have input on the former would also have recommendations for the latter.

First, as far as a PC specifically used for digital audio recording, what components are important for smooth performance? Specifically being able to add VSTs and record a track with live input monitoring so that the effect playback had little/no latency. Is this something where you'd benefit from any sort of upgrade (HDD, memory), or does any one part make a significant difference? Are the PC specs even a significant part of this or is it more reliant on the soundcard or audio interface?

Currently the PC I'm using is pretty fucking old (P4, 2000~) and the physical setup is a connection straight from the instrument/mic to the PC soundcard using a 1/4inch-to-1/8inch adapter. With this, using Reaper as the DAW, I'm able to record and playback with VSTs, but when trying to do live input monitoring so that the VST effects are reflected in real-time when recording, there's horrible slowdown and the sound is really fucked up, hence why I'm trying to find what the missing link is.

Second, it seems like the process would benefit overall with a digital audio interface or a pre-amp in between the instrument and PC and was wondering what kind of suggestions you all might have. Currently price is definitely a factor, but I don't mind getting the whole gamut of recommendations so I can at least gauge what is reasonable now and what to look at in the future. Also, how important is the actual PC interface? The computer itself has USB 2.0, but not Firewire, though I think I could use a PCI expansion card for Firewire if that were a necessity.

I've found recommendations and reviews online, but I'm not really sure what I should be looking at as far as features and capabilities or what brands and models are dependable and popular.

Thanks to all for any help!

[Dontkare]

Have you tried plugging it in?

[Caiyuo]

MY B.

p.s. consider your willage razed.

[Woozie]

I have an AMD Athlon Dual Core 4450e 2.30GHz and like 3mb of ram and I can run FL Studio, Reason (rewired to FL Studio), and a bunch of VSTs (sample tank, synthogy ivory, and a few other miscellaneous effects and VSTs) all at the same time without much of a problem. My computer is nothing special, so you must not really need anything special to handle this stuff. My biggest problem is having enough harddrive space to hold all of my VSTs (my harddrive is like 250gb). I think I would see a noticeable improvement if I had more ram and a faster processor, but what I have now does work just fine.

I can't really answer the rest of your questions. I don't know if there is a way to record directly into the computer without latency. Some preamps have latency-free monitoring, so you can at least hear yourself with the rest of the track while recording. But that doesn't guarantee that you wont have to sync your recording to the track on the computer.

[Caiyuo]

Thanks, Woozie, that helps to at least know where some gaps in this setup are because the processor is like a 2GHz P4 and I think there's maybe 1GB of ram in it if I remember right. It's really a pretty awful computer at this point in time, so I'm not surprised. Still have to wonder if an interface/preamp will at least allow it to process effects, even if not live monitoring.