Computer Purchase Time

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mrj
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Computer Purchase Time

Post by mrj »

Okies

I'm currently looking at purchasing a desktop. The primary function of this system is music, and most of that focussed in Production.

Need some guidance as to where to start. Of course cost is a factor, want to spend as little as possible, but I would be comfortable with $1500 including monitor (screen, not speaker cos already got those). If I can spend less than that though then thats better.

At the moment I'm thinking dual core 2g would prob be the best bet, and I suppose just heaps of hard disk space, like 400gig or something. Capability to run two screens for the future would be great too.

The best out of the box systems for this sort of thing that I can find seem to be the gaming PC packages that stores around are offering. Obviously not purpose designed for sound alone, but they seem to sorta correlate to the use that I want it for. I definitley don't want it for gaming though. Sound and sound alone.

Also recommendations as to best place to shop would be great. CPL seems to offer pretty good deals as far as I can tell. Any other ideas?

Any guidance would be appreciated

Oh, and go easy on the lingo please.
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Post by flippo »

have you already got a soundcard, or do you have one in mind?
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Post by huge »

CPU: i would recommend an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 stepping cos its so stupidly cheap and music apps will love the extra cores. the stock cooler does a good job of keeping it all cool.

Mobo: kinda far too many to choose from. i'll say the asus as they are quite a good brand.

RAM: quite important part of a DAW, the more the better but if you are running XP then forget anything above 3Gb RAM cos it simply can't adress it. so 2 gig matched pair would be pretty good to start, then you could bung a 1gig stick in as extra.

HDD: as much as you can afford really lol. 500gigger are cheap now! start with one and work your way up. you could always get a smaller 10k RPM drive or a Western Digital Raptor (hella $$$) for flat out system speeds.

GFX: as you wont be gaming (lol :P) dont spend anything over $100 really. cards are easily upgradable if you need more power.

CASE: up to you really. you can spend a butload on a good case like i did lol or you could just get one for $50. Antec Solo Case for $100 looks good. lot of noise reduction tech inside for silent operation.

PSU: so this is what is powering everything and you dont want something cheap that will just fail and kill all your gear. Corsair make good PSU units. as do Antec, Silverstone and Coolermaster. just go for one with enough power to run all your gear. dont opt for a no name unit.

Sound: you might already have one or have one in mind? if you dont you can buy my Delta 66 for $150 :teef:

Monitor: you might already hve one? f you can afford it this is a steal. otherwise the 22" samsungs are good. for around 465.00

so!

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz 4x2Mb - $365.00
Asus P5W DH Deluxe - $259.00
Corsair TWIN2X 6400C4 800Mhz DDR2 2048Mb/2Gb Kit - $168.00
Samsung HD501LJ 500Gb 16Mb SATA II - $162.00
Asus 7300GTS (silent) - $100
Antec Solo Case for $100
Corsair HX520W 520W - $160
Samsung 226BW 2ms 22" WideScreen LCD Monitor - $465.00

all works out to be about $1779. bit more than your budget but all quality gear that will last for years.

(prices as of today from various sources, all off static ice.)

Of course you might not want quad, so you could knock $50 off there. this is just a suggestion to get you started i guess!

check http://staticice.com.au for cheap prices. CPL are good and in the city, MSY are cheaper but out in the sticks plus they always have queues. shopping online is easy and you can do it in your undies. www.pcmaniacs.com.au are awesome. www.pccasegear.com sometimes have cheap cases and PSU's etc, both melbourne based crowds.

hope that helps.

h

ps. if ya need someone to bung it all together i'm cheap :teef:
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Post by spiral »

the ars technica guides are good place to start

http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200708.ars
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Post by fooishbar »

listen to huge, he knows what he says.

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Post by a1studmuffin »

Thanks huge that's some excellent advice there, I'm thinking it's upgrade time for me too so great to have someone who's been paying attention to PC hardware recently give a straight answer like that. :D

My only other addition - for a soundcard, I was doing a bit of research the other week. The two that looked best to me were:

Focusrite Saffire LE - about $500
http://www.storedj.com.au/products/product.php?id=1493

Motu Ultralite - about $1000
http://www.storedj.com.au/products/product.php?id=1396

Both of these were highly recommended by plenty of producers on Gearslutz over any other brand. The Motu in particular got a really good review from some fairly hardcore audiophile geeks. It may sound expensive, but remember that this is a critical part of your music DAW, arguably the most critical for sound quality apart from monitors and maybe acoustic treatment for your walls.
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Post by Lephrenic »

If you only need two outputs, I'd highly recommend the Apogee Duet. It's hard to do much better than Apogee.
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Post by JAMESSSS »

mac only innit?
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Post by nic »

apple powerbook ftw :teef:
atari st 1200 otherwise.
midi solid with 'ribbed carpet snake cables'
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Post by Lephrenic »

jbs wrote:mac only innit?
Oh yeah. Forgot about that. Bit cunty of them, really.

Anyhoo, another good option is Native Instruments Audio Kontrol 1, which comes with Traktor LE and apparently now Cubase LE 4 as well, though you'd want to check with the shop guys first.

Best price I've seen so far is $399 from Factory Sound.
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Post by a1studmuffin »

Yeah I was eyeing off the Audio Kontrol 1 as well. As a bonus it comes with two master outputs, so you could set up a nice pair of monitors and a pair of shitty ones and switch between them while mixing down.
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Post by almax »

huge wrote: Mobo: kinda far too many to choose from. i'll say the asus as they are quite a good brand.
isnt mobo an acronym for Music Of Black Origin? :lol:
excuse my ignorance, but whats a mobo?
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Post by Direkt »

a1studmuffin wrote:Yeah I was eyeing off the Audio Kontrol 1 as well. As a bonus it comes with two master outputs, so you could set up a nice pair of monitors and a pair of shitty ones and switch between them while mixing down.
Most units around $400 come with a min. 2 stereo outs.
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Post by almax »

almax wrote:
huge wrote: Mobo: kinda far too many to choose from. i'll say the asus as they are quite a good brand.
isnt mobo an acronym for Music Of Black Origin? :lol:
excuse my ignorance, but whats a mobo?
nevermind, just figured it out...mobo = motherboard, i am stoopid
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Post by huge »

lolmax.

motu are pretty sexy things.
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Post by a1studmuffin »

Direktor wrote:
a1studmuffin wrote:Yeah I was eyeing off the Audio Kontrol 1 as well. As a bonus it comes with two master outputs, so you could set up a nice pair of monitors and a pair of shitty ones and switch between them while mixing down.
Most units around $400 come with a min. 2 stereo outs.
While that's true, not all of those units have a dedicated selector button on the audio interface to switch between them instantly. Most of them require fiddling around in a soft configuration utility to change it over.
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Post by Lephrenic »

Really wish the Duet had four outputs. But then I guess it would be a Quartet.
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Post by a1studmuffin »

And I've just realised, if you can't be fucked messing around installing all the parts for this new computer (or you lack the expertise), just go to somewhere like CentreCom, select your parts, and pay them $55 to do it for you.

Man, if past-me heard present-me talking like that, he'd clip me around the ears. But to be honest, with a decent salary, I'd be happy to pay someone $55 to bolt it all together for me, rather than mess about for a few hours catching up on how PC internals have changed since I last upgraded my machine and making sure I plug the right things into the right bits. :)
Last edited by a1studmuffin on Fri Sep 21, 2007 12:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by huge »

or you can pay me $50 to do it!
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Post by almax »

a1studmuffin wrote:
Man, if past-me heard present-me talking like that, he'd clip me around the ears.
yeah but then present-you would just click your fingers and have your personal goons dripping in gold come n drag your broke ass past-you to the curb
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Post by a1studmuffin »

What about a silent CPU cooler? Or do you reckon the Antec Solo rubber sealing would be enough to deaden the noise?
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Post by huge »

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Post by a1studmuffin »

Reckon you could run that without a cooling fan attached to it?

Sorry for the 3rd degree, but think I'm basically gunna buy the system you've recommended (except gunna get a different mobo + GFX card), so wanted to iron out the details. ;)
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Post by huge »

you can deffo run that without the fan attachment. it will drop it about 5-10 off the stock cooler too.

glad to know ive helped!
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Post by a1studmuffin »

Wicked, cheers.

And should I put thermal paste between the CPU and the Thermalright?
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Post by almax »

lol, im seriously considering it also, we will have to get the case with a picture of Hugh on it, everyone knows the pic, the one with his big ass cheesy smile, makes me laff every time.
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Post by diode »

YEa don't skimp on the thermal paste..go for the arctic silver for the win.

http://www.pccasegear.com.au/prod2970.htm
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Post by a1studmuffin »

Jesus, sounds like a Zoolander expression.

EDIT: Thought of a better reply: "Needs more boron."

;)
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Post by diode »

:lol:
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Post by huge »

check the dimensions of the case and that HS before you buy. it might not fit.
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Post by a1studmuffin »

Hmm...

Dimensions of heatsink: L110 x W60 x H159.5
Dimensions of Antec solo case: L469.9 x W205.7 x H444.5

So the heatsink would be 159.5mm of the width 205.7mm, which leaves 46.2mm for the side panels and the motherboard being in place. I'm guessing the motherboard would add 20mm, and the side panels might be 5-10mm each... phew, that's tight. There's no real easy way to find out if it fits except trying it out though, right? Could always swap it over for something smaller if that was the case.
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Post by almax »

a1studmuffin wrote: Could always swap it over for something smaller if that was the case.
Pun intended?
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Post by a1studmuffin »

:D

Well I just ordered all the parts, so we'll see what happens when I try to ram it all together. :)
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Post by Lephrenic »

It just occured to me that one could always take another approach. You could get a DSP based option like the Creamware Scope card and run it on a fairly average PC with far better sound and performance than the monster-PC/cheap-soundcard option.

Route all the Cubase (or whatever DAW you use) channels to the card and let it do the summing rather than it happening inside Cubase. The improvement in the sound is incredible.
Last edited by Lephrenic on Fri Sep 28, 2007 1:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by a1studmuffin »

I still reckon you'd get better value for money out of a quad core system though, since that's going to speed up everything you do, not just the audio processing side of things. I imagine plenty of the "number crunching" tasks that happen on your DAW that aren't all offloadable onto a DSP card. eg. What would happen if you tried to freeze a track in Live (it may actually help with this), or convert a mix to a 320 MP3, or zip up 600MB of remix parts etc?
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Post by Lephrenic »

True, I can't argue with that. My tired old iMac couldn't handle more than one audio app at once. Rewire? Forget about it. That was probably why I went MacBook Pro. But I'm just surprised that I never thought to factor the DSP option into my more recent decisions about what gear to go with.

And once again, the sound of mixing through the Creamware is really something.
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Post by huge »

The new intel 45nm CPU Prices/Models/Dates have been announced. those of you waiting for something but didnt know what. this would be it. makes it a pain in the arse for upgraders now tho hahah.

the q6600 is still the chip of choice for me tho at the moment so dont worry if you just bought one lol.

http://www.tcmagazine.com/comments.php? ... 93&catid=2

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Post by a1studmuffin »

Yeah, that's reassuring to see those prices are crazy high. How much faster are they than the Quad cores?
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Post by Shadowgames »

are those prices AUD?
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Post by huge »

us
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Post by nic »

unless your app supports quad cores its better to get a higher clocked dual core

thankyou
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Post by huge »

^^^ that's more true of games rather than number crunching apps such as audio apps. its unlikely they will use all the power of even 2 cores, even then you can have another app open using the other 2 cores.

multitasking nic!
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Post by nic »

thankyou huge
im only inter3sted in max numbers of firefoxy tabs
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Post by JAMESSSS »

If anyone is interested in a 25K I can quote.

72CPU dual core.

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Post by system »

nic wrote:im only inter3sted in max numbers of firefoxy tabs
then all you want is 16gb of ram.
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Post by fooishbar »

jbs wrote:If anyone is interested in a 25K I can quote.

72CPU dual core.

Come on.
only 72? come on, remember the glory days of e10k? you can do better than this!
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Post by fooishbar »

system wrote:
nic wrote:im only inter3sted in max numbers of firefoxy tabs
then all you want is 16gb of ram.
assuming his architecture can actually address more than 3. :P and he has to be running 64-bit windows, which i hear is still a no-go.
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Post by nic »

...
Last edited by nic on Sat Sep 29, 2007 12:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by mrj »

Thanks to everyones replies on this thread, all helpful info and has helped a great deal in making some decisions.

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Post by a1studmuffin »

huge u fucking cunt1!!! the whole thing didn't work I bought all the parts and none of them fit together.

Nah just kidding, put it all together today and the machine runs like a dream. ;) Fastest PC I've ever worked on, and Ableton Live really eats up the Quad cores! Thanks for the tips mate, helped out loads. I thought about naming my PC "HUGE" in honour of you, but ended up choosing the more conventional "MUSIC" instead. ;)
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