A few questions

[Nick_Black]

ok, first I'll say what it's for:

it's for recording music, so it has to be quiet and able to multitask well

it has to be quite cheep (ish, round 1000 is about my budget, but less is better)

my plans:

dual core, ither AMD or Intell (what do you think is better for this purpose? pro's and cons of each would be nice)

2 gigs ram

512mb PCI plus vid. card

2x delta 1010lt (which I already have)

liquid cooling

DVD/CD rw cobo drive (which I already have)

I'm gonna mod it myself, don't rele need much help, maby some good logo things that are music related (planning to cut out a window, and ech something in it, and also paint the case. and some lights (maby I'll just rip them from my current rig)

any tips would be nice, thanks

[DaveW]

This is a pretty big question, and i don't see you getting any responses to it. Try browsing around then posting links to what you think you want, and people will repond to that.

for example, say "I'm thinking about this XFi sound card"

and people will say "Hey, that's great, but this one's better."

In general, "What should i buy" posts get ignored. Shop around, put together something you like, and we'll help you sort out the good from the bad. Only you know what you want at the end of the day dude.

-Dave

[Luke122]

If you are building this PC to record audio, then I wouldnt bother with an expensive gpu.. it'll only add cost and heat to the case. I'd put that money towards the fastest cpu you can afford, as that will help with latency issues when recording.

Avoid unneccesary fans and lights, especially cold cathodes or neons... they can play havoc with audio recording by generating all sorts of noise. Also, dont use a CRT.. guitar pickups will hum like mad around a CRT.

I would also get a UPS, for two reasons. One, to prevent loss of data in case the power goes out (which sucks after tracking a solo or something perfectly, then "oops, didnt save"), and secondly to help filter out noise from other appliances in your home. A good power isolator can help also.

*TIP* Dont plug in amps or PA's to the same circuit as your PC if you can avoid it. *TIP*

Another concern is the HDD's. A RAID setup will give you best performance, and help keep latency down, which is a big concern when multitracking audio.

Go for 4gb ram if the board supports it. More is always better.

What OS will you run?

[Nick_Black]

ok, thank you Dave for the kind sugestion, ok, here are my thoughts

Mobo:
Abit KN9 NVIDIA Socket AM2 ATX Motherboard here (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2244192&CatId=2320)

CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.0GHz
here (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2207238)

Case:
Power Up Black Corporate ATX Mid-Tower Case
here (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1698790&CatId=1509)

Ram:
Transcend JetRam 1024MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory
here (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2882705&CatId=1554)

vid card:
Biostar GeForce 7100 GS TurboCache
here (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2844042&CatId=1826)


I don't know what wattage pwr supply I should get

and I don't know if I wanna go for RAID (like suggested) or SCSI HDD's


and thank you Lukifer122, (even though I knoew this already, tis a pain, cuz I currently have a crt, which I have to turn off while recording guitars...)

regardless I'm still planning to go a bit for looks (using LED's for lights) and replaing the power conectors with ither 2 1/4 inch jacks or an odd XLR cable thing
and making the ribbon cables look like (cable) snakes.

oh and for avoiding un-nessasary fans, do you (or anyone) know of a $200 or less liquid cooling system for AMD's X2 socket?

EDIT: oops, I forgot, I'll be running xp pro, and maby linux suse on the side...

thanks

[Ichbin]

Usually a 500 watter will be fine.

Try going modular, it helps with cooling, airflow, and totally worth the extra bucks.

[.Maleficus.]

You can get much better RAM for much cheaper. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Category=17&N=2010170147+4027+1052108080+1052307858&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=147)

[Nick_Black]

You can get much better RAM for much cheaper. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Category=17&N=2010170147+4027+1052108080+1052307858&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=147)

don't forget those are US dollars and the other one was can. btw, do you think i should go with 800mhz. or do you think 667 is fine?

[Luke122]

Unless you are overclocking, 667 will be fine. :)

[Nick_Black]

I am toying with the Idea of overclocking the last time I did that was with a pentium 133. but I guess overclocking = more heat= more cooling= more noise..
so which btw, does anyone know of a liquid cooling system for amd socket types?

[Luke122]

I had the pleasure of setting up a Xalman Reserator system once, but it has it's drawbacks. Because the res is seperate from the PC, moving it becomes an issue.

Also, the res has to be within a certain height distance of the pc, or the pump wont move the fluid around. I think they recommend you keep the res on the desk with the tower.. which means less desktop real estate.

I dont know much about AMD, but I'm sure that there's a closed loop liquid cpu cooler available for it.. some small self contained one would be good value I think.

[Luke122]

I always worry about EMI from pumps in water cooled systems... may not be audible in regular speakers, but when recording audio, it can make a big appearance. Guitar pickups in particular are super sensitive to it. :)

[Luke122]

Whoops.. forgot to mention that a raid setup is great also. Not only do you get better performance (less latency for recording!!), but you get redundancy, so you have less worries about a drive failure losing your whole lifetime of music work. Ashley McIsaac had that happen.. delayed his album release by a whole YEAR.

[Airbozo]

Whoops.. forgot to mention that a raid setup is great also. Not only do you get better performance (less latency for recording!!), but you get redundancy, so you have less worries about a drive failure losing your whole lifetime of music work. Ashley McIsaac had that happen.. delayed his album release by a whole YEAR.

This will depend on _how_ you setup the raid device. Raid 1 will get you performance, but no redundancy. Raid 0 will get you redundancy but no speed increase. Raid 10 will solve both of these issues, but then you need twice the amount of drives. Regular backups will solve the redundancy issue so long as you actually do the backups. This is where a good dvd burner and some backup software will help you out. Set it up for auto backups nightly and you will only be out the data you were working on when it crashed. Raid 0 also has issues if it is done entirely in software since if your PS craps out or the power dies while you are working on something, the data will never be flushed to disk and depending on how much of a cache is setup, that is how much data you can potentially lose.

[Luke122]

Thanks for pointing that out! :D

Raid 10 is the way to go; have that here on our data server, and I tell ya.. the peace of mind is incredible. :)

Yes, 4 drive minimum but 80gb hdd's are pretty cheap, and for a completely mirrored 160gb volume, it can be pretty affordable. :)