PC recomendation for cd ripping

Should not make a difference. I suggest you select 0% compression for FLAC or rip as a .WAV file instead.

I use Db Poweramp for ripping.

"My PC is about 4 yrs old. I maybe over thinking this but does the cd/dvd drive of the PC effect the quality (sound) of the FLAC file created when ripping cd's?"

I'm not too familiar with Jriver, so I'm not sure how good it is for ripping. If you use EAC (its a free program), its at least as good as any other ripping software and it has a utility for checking how good your optical drive is. The only downside is that it can be difficult to set up. There are a few good user guides for download that give you step by step instructions on how to get the best rip's. Just follow the instructions and you'll be OK.

did a similarly big leap last year. from a 4 year old vista setup to a i7-3770 3.4 GHz with 16GB of premium RAM and a 2GB video card. MUCH nicer PC. noticed zero difference in SQ but ripping speed was waaaay faster (would guess 3x or more)

The best ripper of all is dbPowerAmp, and it is priced very low. It also uses the multiple cores of your processor to speed things up.

As for ripping to FLAC, use Level 5 or 6. This will net you files about 60% the size of the original with full fidelity...

-RW-