laptop: get a DELL Intel i7+ above with 16GB of physical RAM (you can allot more RAM to your machine on Windows by creating a pagefile.sys file which acts as a virtual motherboard RAM stick which helps out a lot when configured properly!!!) Having a DELL is beneficial because it works seamlessly with a free program out there called SpeedFan by some Italian electrical engineer/programmer, where you calibrate your loud fans from making noise by getting SpeedFan configured properly to slow down their speed (set their fan Pw current(s) to 65% - read its instructions) hence their noise although it still rotates fast enough to keep the motherboard, internal drives from overheating.
outboard H/W gear: RME Babyface Pro (DO NOT skip this step). It's the best USB audio interface on the market for a Windows OS machine! This is because it plug and plays seamlessly with absolutely NO DRIVER errors ever!!!! and depending on your chipset motherboard RAM architecture, it goes up to 4,096 samples of audio buffer space but typically maxes out at 2,048!!!!!!
...so no I/O contention which causes the glitchy pause sounds on playback with more-than-usual plugins and/or higher sample resolution....
and even cheap sounding mics can plug into it's high Signal-to-Noise ratio microphone preamps so get a Shure SM 58 for good quality, cheaper low-end in price.
USB 3.0 hub: it is good to hook up the Babyface Pro to it if you only have USB 2.0 class-compliant ports on your laptop if it's slightly older in model. This hub is also good for the next and important product if you know your music theory and have musicianship:
MIDI keyboard controller: 49-keyed version is perfect size for real musicianship. 88-keys would be for like superduper musicianship....25-keys is good for a person that makes Rap and Hip-Hop that don't have musicianship skills but have production and sampling skills.
Headphones: Any Seinheisser pair of cans that have high impedance and 20/20 vision should do the trick...especially if they are external noise-canceling.
Misc: good non-cheap anti-power-surge power strip. So many out there so no need to list any.
Worry about purchasing the monitors that at least have the frequency of 20/20 vision (2o Hz to 2o kHz) when you can afford it as it will put you over the 2k-spending budget.
Misc. Part II: make sure that you partition your computer into to logical and physical layers: main data kernel disk for your programs, drivers, etc. and the other partition for your data (i.e. your wave files recorded). Get those digital files mastered by pros or really learn some good software to get those digital glitches out of your music which has CRC errors and bad crap like that. Like the late Prince used to say in "Insatiable", he be like a good piece of software and he'll "erase all the naughty bits". Get it? lol
Misc. Part III: get good ASIO latency calibration software for cheap. What it does is that it takes what ever round-trip latency that the RME Babyface Pro puts out...which typically is 3ms at 44.1 kHz sample frequency. It will anticipate the ASIO clock and off-sync it to thinking it's round-trip latency is perfectly at 0ms!
Good luck in finding this! Yes you can get all of this for 2 stacks!
