I need a new PC, How does this look?

35chevy

35chevy

New member
I guess I reached the limits of my Pentium 4 Dell 8300. It was already struggling to run Pro Tools anyway, but when I tried to remove some programs to free up some space, somehow I caused XP to became unresponsive. I ended up having to reinstall xp. But, since it is getting old, microsoft has dropped support for xp, and my disc is service pack 1, I'm having difficulty finding the required updates, drivers, and whatever else to get it going. I'm going to get some help getting it going and just use it for something other than recording.

Ive been doing a lot of reading and I've put this list together. I havn't shopped around much, I got these prices and model #'s are from newegg.com to get a general idea. I'll be using it with PT M-powered 8 and a Profire 2626.



1) Western Digital WD Black 1TB 3.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive Item #:N82E16822136533

$99.99


2) Western Digital WD Black 500GB 3.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive Item #: N82E16822236345

ASUS 24X DVD Burner - Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Item #: N82E16827135204

Combo $97.98


3) Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit Item #: N82E16832116986

Kingston HyperX 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 2400 Desktop Memory Item #: N82E16820104293

Combo $189.98


4) ASRock X79 Extreme4 ATX Intel Motherboard Item #: N82E16813157282

Intel Core i7-3820 3.6GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 2011 Quad-Core Desktop Processor Item #: N82E16819115229

Combo $489.98


Grand Total: $877.93

I would still need a graphics card to run my dual monitors, a case, a power supply, and I have no idea what else. Oh, and probably some help. I'd like to keep it under $1000. How does this look so far?
 
Unless you're into building your own machine, why not just a buy a good pre-built one?

These days desktops are getting stupid cheap. Especially for what kind of equipment you can get in your price range.

Check this one out for instance... 16 GB of ram and a 2 TB HDD? Sweet god. I'm running a laptop with 2 GB of ram still... This is a 5 year machine in my opinion.

ASUS CM6870-US-3AB Desktop PC - Newegg.com
 
sixer2007 said:
Unless you're into building your own machine, why not just a buy a good pre-built one?

These days desktops are getting stupid cheap. Especially for what kind of equipment you can get in your price range.

Check this one out for instance... 16 GB of ram and a 2 TB HDD? Sweet god. I'm running a laptop with 2 GB of ram still... This is a 5 year machine in my opinion.

ASUS CM6870-US-3AB Desktop PC - Newegg.com
Click to expand...

Hey thanks for the reply. I'm trying to put together something that I know I won't have issues with. Apparently, PT is "picky" about some things and has issues with certain chipsets and motherboards. The ASUS you referenced has a 1155 socket which has been known to have issues with PT, it has a 5400 rpm hard drive and digidesign recommends a 7200 rpm minimum, I need two hard drives, it has no provision for my firewire interface and no pci slot for myy firewire card, and the 300w power supply is way smaller than any system I've seen that run PT well. I don't see provisions for dual monitors. It has a descent processor, a descent size hard drive, and a good amount of ram, but from what I'm reading, there's a lot more to selecting a proper system for PT than just those things. I would love to find one I could buy, but a lot of people say that you can build a system optimized for PT a lot less than you can buy one.
 
I don't know what sort of hardware Pro Tools wants, but your description would be a fine PC.

And as for your original problem: Microsoft is still supporting XP, but not for much longer. However to download any XP updates from Microsoft you must have SP3 installed. You can download SP3 by itself, install it, and then run the normal Windows Update or Microsoft update.
 
Your 1tb HDD is $100, while a 0.5tb HDD plus a DVD burner is also $100. A decent Sony DVD burner can be had for £15 over here, so that doesn't sound like a great deal on those two items to me.
 
I agree with those arguing for off-the-shelf boxes. I recently purchased a Lenovo 3.4GHz i3 box w/4GB RAM and a 1GB HDD w/Win8 for $270. Now while that was a screaming deal that sold out damn near instantly even at the pre-sale price of $360 I could not come close to building that box from parts for that price.

To be fair there was a downside... the power supply is only 280 watts (using a powered USB hub obviously), it only supports a max of 8GB of RAM, only 4 expansion slots (one x16), and four SATA ports (two used). Still, for the price, I'm very very happy.
 
You do not need an i7 cpu... an i5 quad ivy bridge will cost you $100 less. The sweet spot on RAM with Win7 64 is 8gb, any more is superfelous. Dump the 500gb spinner for a 128gb Sold State drive. - 10 times faster read, 3 times faster write - and NO MOVING PARTS, and NO HEAT. Use it for Win7 and Apps ONLY. Pricing wise, it's about $40 more, but will be blazingly faster, cooler and more reliable.
 
RWhite said:
I don't know what sort of hardware Pro Tools wants, but your description would be a fine PC.

And as for your original problem: Microsoft is still supporting XP, but not for much longer. However to download any XP updates from Microsoft you must have SP3 installed. You can download SP3 by itself, install it, and then run the normal Windows Update or Microsoft update.
Click to expand...

I ran the xp disc that came with the pc and ran the repair install. I got it up and running and when I went to the Microsoft site to download sp3, I got a message saying that Microsoft update could not be accessed from Windows XP. So, I downloaded it to a disc on my Win 7 laptop and ran it on the XP machine. It did fine but there are several problems. I still can't access windows update because the repair install reinstalled internet explorer 6 and now I get a message saying that I had to download IE8 before I can proceed. I can download it, but the pc can't open the file to install it. When looking at the device manager, there is a yellow exclamation point next to anything that had to do with video or sound. So, there are a lot of problems that I have to get worked out, and I'm learning this stuff as I go. I'm recruiting a friend's help tomorrow with this thing.

jonny deep said:
Your 1tb HDD is $100, while a 0.5tb HDD plus a DVD burner is also $100. A decent Sony DVD burner can be had for £15 over here, so that doesn't sound like a great deal on those two items to me.
Click to expand...

You are on to something there...less than $20 more will get me 2 1tb hard drives.

wheelema said:
I agree with those arguing for off-the-shelf boxes. I recently purchased a Lenovo 3.4GHz i3 box w/4GB RAM and a 1GB HDD w/Win8 for $270. Now while that was a screaming deal that sold out damn near instantly even at the pre-sale price of $360 I could not come close to building that box from parts for that price.

To be fair there was a downside... the power supply is only 280 watts (using a powered USB hub obviously), it only supports a max of 8GB of RAM, only 4 expansion slots (one x16), and four SATA ports (two used). Still, for the price, I'm very very happy.
Click to expand...
That is a good price, but totally the wrong pc for a Pro Tools rig. After reading on some of the Pro tools forums, there's a lot more to choosing the right pc than I thought. When I saw where at one time in history, PT wouldn't open on a machine with internet explorer 8, I knew this software was picky and I'd better do my homework.

michaelst said:
You do not need an i7 cpu... an i5 quad ivy bridge will cost you $100 less. The sweet spot on RAM with Win7 64 is 8gb, any more is superfelous. Dump the 500gb spinner for a 128gb Sold State drive. - 10 times faster read, 3 times faster write - and NO MOVING PARTS, and NO HEAT. Use it for Win7 and Apps ONLY. Pricing wise, it's about $40 more, but will be blazingly faster, cooler and more reliable.
Click to expand...

Looking into the SSD's now....
 
michaelst said:
You do not need an i7 cpu... an i5 quad ivy bridge will cost you $100 less. The sweet spot on RAM with Win7 64 is 8gb, any more is superfelous. Dump the 500gb spinner for a 128gb Sold State drive. - 10 times faster read, 3 times faster write - and NO MOVING PARTS, and NO HEAT. Use it for Win7 and Apps ONLY. Pricing wise, it's about $40 more, but will be blazingly faster, cooler and more reliable.
Click to expand...

What this guy said. I'm using an i7-2600K, and running Pro Tools with 30 tracks, several convolution reverb plug-ins, several Guitar Rig plug-ins, EQ and compressors on around 10-15 tracks, and miscellaneous other things, my processor has never hit 20% while running PT10 exclusively. I can have Firefox open running Netflix and have Steam open playing a video game and the thing doesn't even touch 50% (why I'd do that, I dunno, but the point is, the 2600K is overkill and that's clocked at 3.5GHz).
Unless you're going for a gaming rig, you don't need THAT much processing power. An i5 quad-core will be plenty of power. =]
 
35chevy said:
I ran the xp disc that came with the pc and ran the repair install. I got it up and running and when I went to the Microsoft site to download sp3, I got a message saying that Microsoft update could not be accessed from Windows XP. So, I downloaded it to a disc on my Win 7 laptop and ran it on the XP machine. It did fine but there are several problems. I still can't access windows update because the repair install reinstalled internet explorer 6 and now I get a message saying that I had to download IE8 before I can proceed. I can download it, but the pc can't open the file to install it. When looking at the device manager, there is a yellow exclamation point next to anything that had to do with video or sound. So, there are a lot of problems that I have to get worked out, and I'm learning this stuff as I go. I'm recruiting a friend's help tomorrow with this thing.

..
Click to expand...

Ah yes, a 'chicken or the egg' problem. The yellow marks mean the drivers for those devices are not loaded, or not working properly. You can click on them to get more detailed information.

If you decide to keep XP you will need to find drivers for those devices. Many of them may be associated with your motherboard. if you longer have (or can't find) the disk that came with your motherboard, you may still be able to download them from the manufacturers web site.
 
So, I went ahead and ordered the parts for my new PC. I'm pretty excited about getting it up and running. Here's what I ordered...item numbers are from Newegg.com. This baby is going to scream I hope.

1) 2 Western Digital WD Black 1TB 3.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drives Item #:N82E16822136533

2) ASUS DVD Burner Model DRW-24B3ST Item #: N82E16827135240

3) Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit Item #: N82E16832116986

4) Kingston HyperX 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Memory Item #: N82E16820104169

5) ASRock X79 Extreme4 ATX Intel Motherboard Item #: N82E16813157282

6) Intel Core i7-3820 3.6GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 2011 Quad-Core Desktop Processor Item #: N82E16819115229

7) Rosewill CAPSTONE-750-M 750W 80 PLUS GOLD Certified power supply ... Item #: N82E16817182264

8) COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 EVO RR-212E-20PK-R2 Continuous Direct Contact 120mm Sleeve CPU Cooler ... Item #: N82E16835103099

9) ASUS GT 610 Video Card Item #: N82E16814121422

10) Antec P280 Black Super Mid Tower Computer Case Item #: N82E16811129179
 
I ran the xp disc that came with the pc and ran the repair install. I got it up and running and when I went to the Microsoft site to download sp3, I got a message saying that Microsoft update could not be accessed from Windows XP. So, I downloaded it to a disc on my Win 7 laptop and ran it on the XP machine. It did fine but there are several problems. I still can't access windows update because the repair install reinstalled internet explorer 6 and now I get a message saying that I had to download IE8 before I can proceed. I can download it, but the pc can't open the file to install it. When looking at the device manager, there is a yellow exclamation point next to anything that had to do with video or sound. So, there are a lot of problems that I have to get worked out, and I'm learning this stuff as I go. I'm recruiting a friend's help tomorrow with this thing.
Click to expand...

Look at all that. And people wonder why I hate Windows. :mad:
 
You forgot the SSD drive for your OS. Less than $100 to speed up OS reads by a factor of 10!!!

and, you're going with onboard sound?? Hmmmm... an Asus Xonar would be adeqaute, or M Audio 2496 (on sale now). I'd avoid Creative cards.

The rest looks awesone :)
 
michaelst said:
You forgot the SSD drive for your OS. Less than $100 to speed up OS reads by a factor of 10!!!

and, you're going with onboard sound?? Hmmmm... an Asus Xonar would be adeqaute, or M Audio 2496 (on sale now). I'd avoid Creative cards.

The rest looks awesone :)
Click to expand...

Looking in to the SSD, I was kind of wanting 3 drives anyway, but I'm already over my original budget I set.....as far as the sound built in to the card, sound is going to be routed through my firewire card to my profire 2626 out to my monitors. I won't be connecting any speakers to the motherboard.
 
Oh yea...it's awesome. The template that I created for Pro Tools that was causing my old pentium 4 pc to hit 100 percent cpu usage, now runs at 7 percent cpu usage on this pc with a paused youtube video pulled up as well as homerecording.com in another window. bahahahaha!!!! Just remember kids....i7, 2011, x79, and 16GB is Pro Tools friendly if you are looking for a good pc. :listeningmusic:
 
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