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I'm planing to make this DAW, so I wanted your honest opinion :

Motherboard : ABIT IC7 - Intel I875 FSB800MHz
Processor : Intel Pentium IV 2.4GHz FSB800MHz
Ram : 2 x 512MB Kingston HyperX DDR400 CL2
HDD1 (system) : Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 60GB 7200RPM 2MB Cache ATA133 *
HDD2 (giga) : Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB 7200RPM 2MB Cache ATA133 *
HDD3 (audio) : Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache ATA133
Graphics card : ATI Radeon 9000 PRO Dualhead 64MB
CD-RW & DVD : 3 x TEAC CD-W548E & 1 x PIONEER DVD106S *
Case : CHIEFTEC TA-10B-D Bigtower (6x5.25+2+6x3.5) 360W

Audio interface : M-Audio DELTA1010 (for now, but soon planning to buy RME HDSP 9652 & Apogee ROSETA 96 converters)

Any suggestions ? Thanks in advance !

*-components that I already have...

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Comments

MisterBlue Fri, 07/11/2003 - 21:29

Can't comment on the MoBo but Asus seems to be the choice of a lot of people here (Abit usually doesn't get as many votes ... :D ) although I would personally encourage you to investigate Seagate drives. They are really the quietest out there and you will quickly appreciate that if you are serious about Apogee converters and the RME soundcard. A noisy DAW will drive you nuts.

Speaking of noise: I would recommend to get a case without power supply (maybe a rackmount) unless it is already a "Quiet Enermax" with controlable dual fans. I would also consider a speed-regulated Zalman fan for the CPU - the combination of CPU fan, power supply and quiet hard drives makes for a REALLY quiet machine. The few extra bucks are well spent! This is of course only a factor if your DAW will be in the controlroom and not inside a closed cabinet or iso-rack .

Finally, the public vote for a DAW graphics card tends to be the Matrox G550. I personally have also good experience with the ATI Radeon VE but I can't vouch for the ATI performance with Abit or Asus MoBo.

Your choice of converter box plus RME sound card should prove to be a good one. You might also consider RME converters. I own the ADI-8PRO and quite like it but I have not had the chance to compare it side by side with Apogees :roll: .

Hope this helps,

MisterBlue.

anonymous Mon, 07/14/2003 - 15:50

Thanx for the reply MisterBlue...

I'm a bit limited by the relatively small selection of diffierent components I can find here at the moment... Computer selling companies tend to import only the things that are sold well, so it is fairly hard to find esoteric stuff, espercially when power supplies are concerned. Chieftec & Macase are probably the best I can find at the moment, and I'm not in the mood to experiment with other "brands" that they offer for less money...
As far as Asus is concerned, there is a huge selection of Asus boards (asus is also very popular here), but they told me that the MOBO's Asus makes lately are not of the highest quality, and even though they sell ASUS as well, recomened me Abit... I also read some great stuff about Abit on the net, so I figured it would be a good solution... The best ASUS board with Intel I875 chipset I found here is the ASUS P4C Deluxe, which is "a bit pricier than the ABIT" (haha this sounds good, haha), but If you think that it would be a better solution, why not....
It is also quite hard to find the G550 since it an old card, and you can get only the "latest things" here (Like the G-FORCE 17 with 256GB of Ultra-turbo-giga-titanium 300GHz DAC Z-RAM)...
By what I have heared, it seems like RME makes some pretty good stuff, and that's why I decided to go that way with the interface, and was also considering their ADI96 PRO for the converters, but I've worked with Apogee, and I know it's sound, so for now I think I'll stick to the prooven stuff... Thankz again and CHEERS !