vir killer, we are almost the same boat, i start my hifi journey 20 years ago, i start my pc audio 2 years ago. i used monica2 usb dac and mod it with blackgate cap and japan resistor and follow all the mod from their forum, after that i compared it with my friend MBL dac in his system, monica2 sound still cant beat MBL even i using 70A car battery, so i start to do research to make my sound better, i upgrade my pc two times and changed my dac to weiss dac2 with firewire, i change my playback software from foobar,cplay to sawstudio and izotope rx advanced using for recording studio, I follow the acoustic treamtment as recording studio used like bass trap and diffuser(diy) Yes , diy mod will improved the sound quality but it had limited improved, I am also a musician, i have a band play at nightclub when i was young, so i know how the live instruments sound like. MY system is pc firewire to Weiss dac2 direct to Jeffrowland 8Ti HC to Hales concert five, interconnect cardas golden cross, powercord acrolink 4030, speaker cable Ah pui signature series one ( diy with 4N copper )haha

i used seasonic M12D 850, i think it better than pc power cooling which also make by seasonic. i underclock my amd 5050e to 1.2G,window i use vistalite, disable and delete all unwanted programs,shut down all unwanted services and changed some regedit, disable lan and usb function in bios.

i try winxp, vistalite, window 7 with separate hard drive, vistalite sound better, dont know due to hard drive or os? vistalite using new WD640, other using old seagate. will try SSD when prices drop.