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anonymous 29 June 2005

I'm trying to put together a PC for son - could sure use some help as i know nothing about PC's or even worse, DAW's.

He's very keen on being able to record his electric guitar on it, so this the performance priority for the PC ( sort of an ' all purpose " low - end DAW PC )

So, far I've only locked in only a couple of specs;

- AMD 939 platform
- Athlon 63 3200 CPU
- Antec SLK 3000 case
- Enermax 475w PSU
- getting a M-Audio 2496 Audiophile sound card *

* I chose the 2496 because my son's 14 and only been playing for about 2 years - thought it was a good 'starter' sound card.

My problem...which mobo to get ?

- he's not a heavy gamer at all ( only NHL, NBA, Madden etc, )
- overclocking is not needed
- would hope mobo to be ready for X2 down the road
- nForce 4 boards & pci - e don't work well for audio, so I'll avoid those mobo's

I was thinking either an NVIDIA nForce3 or Via chipset mobo from the following;

- ASUS A8V Deluxe ( A8V E is not X2 compatible)

- MSI K8N NEO2 Platinum

- GIGABYTE GA - K8NS Ultra 939

Have no idea which one is better in terms of build quality, stability, firewire, SATA etc.

At the end of the day, I just want to be sure that the M-Audio 2496 will be compatible with the mobo i choose, so those pops and crackling glitches i've read about don't crop up

Any suggestions ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks !

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Comments

Big_D Wed, 06/29/2005 - 14:17

Welcome to RO Thirtybench,

I would suggest either the Gigabyte or MSI for this. Asus makes a great board but the other 2 are just better in this application.

I choose the Gigabyte with the same processor for my DAW and Scott from ADK also highly recommends it.

Good luck on your build.

anonymous Thu, 06/30/2005 - 06:02

Thanks for the welcome !

I've been surfing the site and found it be the ' best ' for info and analysis audio specific issues - just a great site !.

I think I'm going to go with the Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra 939 mobo.

It was ' neck and neck ' between that and the MSI K8N NEO2 Platimum. I gave Gigabyte the edge due to the better TI firewire technology and the fact he's not an ' over- clocker - an MSI strength.

Going with a nVidia mobo knocked out the ASUS of cosnideration in the end.

On the topic of Gigabyte / nVidia....

- could anyone recommend the best ( brand ) of RAM ( 1 GB ) to go with the Gigabyte mobo - or provide a link if there's been a previous thread on this topic ?

- since I'm with nVidia , what a good 128MB/ 256 MB video card ? shoud I stick with nvidia ? - i.e 600 GT - again, my son's not what you'd call a hard core gamer.

Thanks

Big_D Thu, 06/30/2005 - 15:09

could anyone recommend the best ( brand ) of RAM ( 1 GB ) to go with the Gigabyte mobo - or provide a link if there's been a previous thread on this topic ?

IMO Corsair is the best. I have used their Value RAM on non critical machines but for Gaming and DAW's I would get their XMS, CAS 2 in matched pairs as it's a dual chanel board. Newegg has a great deal on it right now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145450

There are some great deals on ATI 9600 XT and 9800 Pro cards right now. They're last years model but are still some of the fastest around and because their AGP not PCI Express they'll work with your Mobo.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102286

Hope this helps

anonymous Thu, 06/30/2005 - 21:23

Big_D wrote:

could anyone recommend the best ( brand ) of RAM ( 1 GB ) to go with the Gigabyte mobo - or provide a link if there's been a previous thread on this topic ?

IMO Corsair is the best. I have used their Value RAM on non critical machines but for Gaming and DAW's I would get their XMS, CAS 2 in matched pairs as it's a dual chanel board. Newegg has a great deal on it right now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145450

There are some great deals on ATI 9600 XT and 9800 Pro cards right now. They're last years model but are still some of the fastest around and because their AGP not PCI Express they'll work with your Mobo.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102286

Hope this helps

Thanks Don - it does help - appreciate it

SONICA-X - glad to hear from another Gigabyte K8NS 939 fan as well !

Also pleased to hear Corsair mentioned. I was thinking i might need a CAS 2.0 latency to carry the load for a few years - was actually looking at OCZ. However, I saw a post on another forum where the Corsair CAS 2.5 was benchmarked against a CAS 2.0 OCZ - although the Corsair VALUE RAM is a lot cheaper , it seems it was only off from the OCZ by about +/- 5%. That said, I think Corsair will be a strong bet - how quiet is it ? i.e compared to samsung.

On the AGP video card I was close to what you mentioned as well.
I was looking at ATI / Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro ( 256 mb ) - the 9800 pumps up the price a bit , and given my son's not a big gamer, I'd rather put the $ elsewhere and focus on 9600 ( 128 or 256 ) level of performance - but, do you think the 9600 XT version is worth the few extra bucks ?

Last point - combo DVD/ CD optical drives - any favorites among the forum members that seems to get a lot of press ?

I've noticed that NEC and LG combo's get good reviews.

Thanks again for the info

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