Anyone wanna help Uladine shop?

Uladine

New member
Hopefully this will be my last post about my future DAW. Here's the deal:

I've settled on Sonar, Cakewalk's pyro CD burning software, and ST Audio's C-port audio interface. Now I need my system. My spending limit is $1,100.00. I can't go a penny over that, so it must cover shipping as well. Would anybody be kind enough to place themselves in my shoes and talk with me about what kind of system they would buy? Heres basically what I'm looking for:

An AMD Athlon XP 1600 Processor
at least 512mb ram
one 20 gig 7200 drive and one 40 gig 7200 drive
floppy, cd rom, and cdrw drives
a fairly nice graphics card (I may do a bit of web site work on the system as well)
17" monitor
all the accessories (mouse and keyboard, cables, fans, etc.)
whatever else I need but forgot to put on the list


If anyone here is like me they like to shop with money they don't have. The problem is now that I have the money I don't know what I want to get. :confused:
 
case with power supply and fan (AMD's run pretty hot)
motherboard
CPU
Ram
floppy drive
hard drive(s)
CD-ROM
CDRW drive
Video Card
Keyboard
Mouse
Monitor
Operating System

what am i missing?....
 
Yea that Roll your own article is what inspired me to go with a PC Daw in the first place. I based my original idea around that system, but its a bit above my limit. After juggling a few things around (switching from the thunderbird to an athlon xp, from a rack case to a tower, etc) I came up with a decent system. Then I talked to a few people that said AMD sucks, so that kinda made me want to go with a Pentium, then I read an article about the AMD's out-performing the pentiums, so now I'm back to the AMD Athlon xp.

When I thought I found a good system, I started reading bad things about the via kt133 chipsets. So now I have to admit I'm getting a little frustrated. I'm still fairly new to "Computer gut research", so its all a bit confusing to me.

I have the Windows 98 installation CD, so I'm not going to buy a new OS just yet. I do plan to switch to windows 2000 in the future though.

I'm mainly just stuck on which motherboard to buy.
 
Uladine,
At least you're doin' your homework BEFORE you spend the $$$. You don't know how many people plunk down the cash on this and that to find out when it all arrives that this don't work with that. :eek:

Problem is, in the gamerz world, the AMD beats the pants off the current Intel setups. We DAWgies need a LOT more stability. Problem is, most of the AMD supporting MOBOs are built upon the dreaded VIA chipsets. There's a few with AMD chipsets, but apparently the 750 series wasn't so great (if you ask Aardvark). Someone mentioned the NForce chipset in one of your other threads, but that's pretty new, so the jury is still kinda out on that one. I'm going for the SiS 735 chipset, which is also gonna be a crap shoot, as the only boards that use that chipset are not among the top MOBO manufacturers (Abit, Asus, ...these are the good names...)

I'll let you know how things go with my rig, but if you're itching to get moving, then I'm not sure which way you should go...

Queue
 
Thanks for the advice everybody...

Does anybody know anything about the ALi M1647 chipset? Its in the ASUS A7A266A Socket A SDR/DDR mobo I'm currently looking at. It looks like a cool board because it supports pc133 sdram and ddr sdram, so apparently if I start with pc133 and want to go to ddr later on I could do that. I think I'm going to go with pc133 ram at first because from my research it seems I would have less trouble with it with my minor experience level. As I learn more I will be more adventurous with my upgrades.

Anyway, the ASUS A7A266A is catching my eye right now. Have I finally reached the system I have sought for so long? :confused:
 
Uladine,

There’s a UK based computer music mag that I get sent to me out here (Dubai) that has recently done a full “Build your dream PC” tutorial.
www.computermusic.co.uk

They actually build two, one is built round the Pentium chip and the other around the AMD chip with comparisons for both systems. The AMD gets the vote on speed (just) but wins by a mile on the bang per buck scale.
Don’t be put off when it comes to building your own, I’ve put three together over the last few years, it’s not a biggie. Trust me, if I can put one together and have it running smooth anyone one can. The trick is, take your time, if you can assemble a model plane you can put a PC together. It gets tricky when you come to formatting and partitioning the hard drives but thankfully most hard drive manufacturers provide bootable floppy disks that have a software program to pretty much do the job for you. (Just the usual, tick a box and click next deal) So you wont have to go into the dreaded world of DOS and fdisk.

Remember 99% of all PC problems are software related. The physical aspect of putting it together in the right way is not a big issue if you read the tutorials, take your time and focus on compatibility of components. Plus you get a great sense of achievement and satisfaction from building your own, not to mention a better idea of what goes on inside the box that is about to become your studio.

Suggestions:
Make it a dual boot system, this basically means two hard drives and two different operating systems. Say a 20gig for your normal day to day stuff and all the associated issues that come with it. Then a 40-80 gig (budget??) just for the studio software and all your precious project details. This keeps your DAW a good arms length away from anything that wants to f**k with it, and there’s plenty of that on your average day to day hard drive.

Save money on graphics cards (32mb TNT or similar is more than enough)
Spend money on Ram (its cheap now so go for it) remember, if your going for 512mb don’t get 2 x 256mb, get 1 x 512mb therefore leaving you more slots to play with and upgrade later. I know you can’t imagine needing more now, but you will. Plus it’s an easy upgrade later when you have a few more bucks to through at your system.

Spend money on the monitor, this alone can gobble up a huge chunk of your budget but it just one of those things that if you don’t go big, you will kick yourself later. 17” is OK but 19” is much closer to the mark. Remember this is going to be your work desk and once you get into it, your gonna have all kind of windows and screen layouts you want open at the same time. You will need the space!

Anyway hope this helps and good luck.

Alan.
 
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