Since I started bouncing tracks through outboard hardware, it sped up my workflow considerably, and interestingly - it made me more creative.

 

having a computer with enough shitzpuh to do what you want docent have to break you financially, I build systems for people all the time. specially in this day and age you can put together a kick ass system for a fraction of the cost of a new computer , my current system i went with CPU and mother board used that were a couple years old. used my current power supply and bought new ram. im into this one for about 500 € and its twice as good as my last audio system which i got for 250 euros a used dual xeon 3.0 ghz quad core with 16 gig of ram. was an old server. you can find them all over ebay, just need to upgrade video card. they are loud but changing the cooling is easy enough. so you see , having a machine to keep pace with what you wanna do docent need to cost you over a grand.

 

My current specs are a Core2Duo T9600 + 4gb ddr 1066 + 750gb 7200rpm (and two external hdds) + Reaper + Windows 10 Pro 64bit. It lags ands crackles when I reach a certain FX number, but I can still with this machine do something. Freezing tracks is saving my life, but the system is old - 2009 old. I've did some of tips for achieving better performance for audio, it worked, mainly the programs to background and wifi off, inside Reaper I also tweaked a little and comparing this machine to the first time I used it to record and mix, it seems like a new one. Regardless, it's all about trial and error, somethings work for your situation some don't.
Going to buy a new pc to get out of dark ages of the dual core era, i7 6700+16gb ddr4 2133+MSI board+1tb 7200 and a 250gb SSD.

 

If you're only into music production and not gaming you don't need the graphic card:



If you'd rather like to build a pc yourself, this might help:

http://assembleyourpc.net

 

I agree with you Rohan, if I help someone build an audio config and he/she is tight on budget I'll will tell him/her to dich the gfx.
But today it's becoming a problem with some kinds of vsts. If you use only stuffs in the like of waves, soundtoys with minimalist interfaces, no gfx animation, it's fine.
If you use vsts like say Melda Production, DMG Audio, or FabFilter, who pull a lot a power both for the audio processing (specially with the very high oversampling options they all offer) and the gfx animation, than your CPU, if you don't have a gfx vard will have to take both loads. And the gfx in IE5 and IE7, not that great nor that powerfull.
In some of these vsts you can disable the animation, or the OpenGL (like in the latest update in DMGAudio, which is great as an option), or at least (like in MeldaP) reduce the power allocated to gfx, but unfortunately not all of them.
I used to rely on my CPU graphic card to do the job but it didn't cut it for me, no for Dualism (from DMG) nor for Visualizer (from Nugen), audio dropouts, DAW crashes, because the need for power for the graphic processing was eating up the CPU ressources I had available for audio...I bought a 100 euros nvidia GEforce (passive, less noise), no more problem when I use visual fxs...
But ultimately I'de say it's more a budget decision.

 

It's worth the wait to collect some more money and buy one with a graphic card.