I have a friend who is a sound man for a local venue. He's considering buying a computer, and I will likely build if for him, if he does. He wants to do lots of encoding, ripping, and other cpu intensive tasks. I'm thinking that a xeon rig is what he needs, but he's not very wealthy. Can I buy a dual xeon motherboard and put one xeon in until he has more money? Or should I consider another route? I don't have a budget yet, but if I had to guess, I would guess 800 - 1000 usd.

Motown,

I have a SuperMicro P4DC6 and two Tyan i860s and for those two specific boards yes you can start with one cpu and move up to two. I don't know if it's that way with every board however from what I've seen it is that way with most. A few things to be observant of (especially when purchasing parts off of Ebay *smile*) is whether or not there is an on-board voltage regulator module. You want an on-board VRM (they're expensive if they have to be bought separate). Also, not all Xeons are capable of dual processing, if you truly plan on purchasing a second processor down the line, make certain that your initial processor supports dual processing. Depending on what your plans are I may have more advice for you however those two initial pieces of information I wish someone had slipped to me before I started spending my money.