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anonymous 1 September 2004

How's this for a music dedicated PC..

INTEL P4 - 3.2 GHZ - 800 FSB 1024k Cache
120GB or two 80GB SERIAL ATA 7200rpm - Seagate Barracuda harddrives
AOC 17 INCH TFT FLAT SCREEN BLACK/SILVER
300w Quiet Power Supply
Asus P4P800S Mainboard
1 GB DDR 400MHz RAM
ATI Radeon 9200 Dual Head Graphics
3 x Firewire Ports
6 x USBII Ports
Chieftec Silver & Black ATX Case
Zalman 7000AL CPU Cooler
...All for £990 (about $1700)

I'm going to be running Cubase SX, Reason 2.5 and a bunch of plugins and VSTis including some Waves plugins, Kontakt, Intakt and Lounge Lizard. Maybe moving onto Pro Tools LE too with the 002rack.

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Comments

Randyman... Wed, 09/01/2004 - 20:14

There are a few things I'd change - Like upping to a true Intel 875 chipset - like the Asus P4C800E or the P4C800E-Dlx. The 875 chipset is designed for the P4's, and the Prescott cores (The 3.2E that you are looking at).

Get some good, low-latency RAM (you didn't specify the exact RAM), and MAKE SURE it is "Matched" for dual-channel operation (Very important to get full RAM bandwidth).

Fair Warning on the Radeon 9200 (I have that same card) - the "Dual Head" is ONLY accessible through a single VGA and a single S-Video, so you can NOT use 2 VGA monitors for an extended desktop... Go with one that has 2 VGA outs, or a VGA and a DVI (that can be converted to VGA). S-video is 100% useless for Audio Editing (no resolution at all!).

You may want to look into a GOOD power supply - Like a Sparkle or a Enermax, and up the wattage a bit to 400Watts. The P4's will pull about 100Watts alone! Add your RAM, Video, HD and Opticals, and 300w is NOT enough IMO.

Also, I'd recommend a smaller dedicated OS drive (like a 20-40Gig), and having a second large HD for your Audio - SATA is the wat to go. A second storage drive is never a bad idea for an "on-line backup". This is what I do (My system actually has 4-5 HD's - 1 is removeble). I wouldn't bother wasting money on a Raptor 10,000 HD (I did, but it is my OS drive - $111 for 36 gigs is a bit ridiculous IMO). You can get VERY close performance out of the WD 7200 SATA's, and they are roughly 25%-50% cheaper. My 7200 200Gig spits out 48MB/s, and my Raptor BARELY edges it out at 52MB/S (but with quicker access times to its advantage - throughput is MUCH more important to HD recording than Access time)

Otherwise, sounds good... :cool:

anonymous Sat, 09/04/2004 - 22:00

David French wrote: Blade, do you not like the Nexus power supplies? I have an NX-3500 that i'm thrilled with.

I have not seen these here in Australia, that's why I won't comment on them. The ones I did mention I like and have had experience with. I'm actually trying to organise for a SilenX fanless PSU to be sent over from the U.S.

http://www.silenx.com/productcart/pc/viewCat_Z.asp?idCategory=20

Looks very promising for dB reduction in the studio. Not cheap though unfortunately. :D

David French Sat, 09/04/2004 - 22:12

Yeah, the SilentX models do look interesting. When I built my new machine, I went with the Nexus because of its unique bottom mounted 12 cm fan, which helps out with cooling the cpu. If you're still looking for a power supply, I would highly recommend the Nexus models. At about 1 meter from the computer, the power supply is completely inaudible.

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