Skip to main content

Hi All, I'm new, great board

I'm thinking of upgrading to a somewhat more powerful DAW.
I work with heavy VSTi's and Cubase SX3 which supports dual core if I'm correct.

Here's what I had in mind:

Motherboard: P4P800 E Deluxe
CPU: Pentium 3,2 Ghz Dual Core
Videocard: Radion X300SE
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS9500-CU LED
RAM: 2 Gig DDR2/533
Audio/VST DRIVE: SATA 300 Gig Diamondmax
C: Drive: PATA 80 Gig
Promise: SATA 300 TX2 Plus
Power Supply: Spire Rocketeer V ATX/BTX PSU 500 Watt

Your comments please. Thanks in advance ;)

Thanks
Carillion

Topic Tags

Comments

cfaalm Sun, 05/28/2006 - 07:48

I suppose this will give you plenty of power. The only thing I'd reconsider is the c: drive.

Is the 80GB an oldie you have lying around? In that case you'll be fine.

If you have to buy that new I'd consider that a waste of money. The sweetspot for GB/$ is 250 - 300 GB depending on what you're looking for. I'd make that a SATA too, which is cheaper today than PATA.

Why would you do that? You can use the rest of that disk as backup space for anything you have on your data disk and vice versa.

Though the Diamond Max is a popular HDD for DAWs ( I have 2 of those 300GB monsters myself) I'd also consider a WD3000KS. Very quiet and also available with 16MB buffer and NCQ. This baby accepts both special SATA power cable and the old molex.

anonymous Sun, 05/28/2006 - 09:16

Howdy cfaalm,

Is the 80GB an oldie you have lying around? In that case you'll be fine.

-> As a matter of fact I have 3 old Maxtors (20 gig each) but they are noisy as hell.

If you have to buy that new I'd consider that a waste of money. The sweetspot for GB/$ is 250 - 300 GB depending on what you're looking for. I'd make that a SATA too, which is cheaper today than PATA.
Why would you do that? You can use the rest of that disk as backup space for anything you have on your data disk and vice versa.

-> I was told it was wise to use a very small PATA system disc (c:) and a large SATA both on
-> separate buses, you say I'm safe with 2 sata's on separate buses?

Thanks

Randyman... Wed, 05/31/2006 - 16:40

P4P800E-Dlx is a Socket 478 MoBo - and it will not support Dual Core (although the 865 Chipset WILL support dualcore, it will not work with a 478 socket MoBo). Like ADK said, look for a CONROE READY MoBo if you want the ability to pop a new CPU in there. FYI - the Conroe chips are smoking ANYTHING else that is available, and will be available in July. When pushed hard, people have been surpassing AMD in Super-PI benchmarks by roughly 50% (10 second times for 1million digits on Super Pi :eek: ).

Not all 975 MoBo's support Conroe (a power section upgrade IIRC, 8 Phase power), so make sure you get a good "Conroe Ready" MoBo if you want this Conroe upgrade path.

To be totally honest, I would wait, and start off with a Conroe rig opposed to upgrading from a P4. At the very least, get the Conroe ready MoBo and a Pentium 930 or 940 CPU. Dual Core is amazing for DAW applications :) , and puts the old P4 to shame IMO. The 930/940 also runs cooler, and has 2x (or 4x) the L2 Cache of a P4.

:cool:

anonymous Thu, 06/01/2006 - 13:16

Carillion wrote: Hi All, I'm new, great board

I'm thinking of upgrading to a somewhat more powerful DAW.
I work with heavy VSTi's and Cubase SX3 wich supports dual core if I'm correct.

Here's what I had in mind:

Motherboard: P4P800 E Deluxe
CPU: Pentium 3,2 Ghz Dual Core
Videocard: Radion X300SE
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS9500-CU LED
RAM: 2 Gig DDR2/533
Audio/VST DRIVE: SATA 300 Gig Diamondmax
C: Drive: PATA 80 Gig
Promise: SATA 300 TX2 Plus
Power Supply: Spire Rocketeer V ATX/BTX PSU 500 Watt

Your comments please. Thanks in advance ;)

Thanks
Carillion

Hello,

change the P4P800 to a P5P800 and get a Dual Core 900 series processor.

Regards,

Guy Cefalu
Sonica Audio Labs