Building a New computer

K

Kianoosh

New member
Hello everyone

I am new to here and had a question of what kind of specs should I go into for wanting to produce on FL studio?

I have a budget of around $1000-15000.... and I am planning on building my own computer (first time), heard its not really that hard and you save alot of money doing that

Planning on producing EDM, house/dubstep... my labtop is too slow at the moment

if you guys could give me pointers on what processor, whats a good audio card, video card wont matter much at most Ill be playing league of legends every now and then and some photoshoping, but if you guys could help me out that would be awesome

Thanks
Kianoosh
 
Are you taking this out or just recording. Looks like FL has some Live performance features? Are you going to use the touchscreen feature (from what I could tell of the demo, it supports touch screens) or going to use a controller?

Desktop is a bit harder to take out to do live performances, but it can be done.

Also, do you plan on needing more than two inputs? I assume lots of VSTs and VSTis. (Processor heavy, but there are workaround to this as well).

Just checking first some quick questions.
 
just recording... its going to say in my apartment.... if by touch screen u mean as in actual touching screen like ipads the no, im going to have a alessis midi keyboard connected to it and for the most part all my editing/producing is with the mouse/keyboard... and yes im going to have many vst plugins in use... massive, slynth, nexus, etc

thanks man
 
Not sure if FL has it, but many times you can reduce CPU load by "freezing" a track. $1500 should get you a pretty decent desktop. Do you need an Interface? Onboard sound usually doesn't cut it and most prefer sound devices dedicated to making music.

Then there are monitors. To get a good mix, headphones usually don't do the trick. I am asking because, will get you a nice computer, but if the budget is for "other" things, actual money for the computer start to go down.

Here is what you may need:

DAW software (you have)
Computer (getting the specs)
On first blush - i7 or AMD FX-8120 (Something in the F series)
Buy a good MB, don't go cheap here
Low end graphics card to do light duty graphics (you could use onboard, but it does reduce resources)
16 Gig RAM (8 would work, but more is better)
7200 RPM HD for OS and Apps (Some say SSD, they are good, but I really can't say to use them, but they won't hurt for sure)
7200 RPM for projects (You could use just one, but ...)

Interface for music
Monitors for mixing

I suggest some moderate sound treatment, do it yourself for your mixing improvement.

I am sure others will provide more information, but high level, I think that should get you started.
 
i just need the actual computer... got the DAW, speakers, monitor, and rest of the stuff

and how hard is it honestly to build you computer? only thing im worried about is if I buy a certain cooling system and it doesnt fit the tower box too big or something.... might just go threw the preset packages new egg has and pick one of them so I know everything is compatable

thanks for the reply
 
Not hard at all. Just wanted to make sure you were going down the right path.

The only problem with pre-built is the grade of the components. The people who build them for a living can usually do it for less that the rest of us. But, most of the time, they cut corners somewhere. When you build it yourself, you know what is going into it.

Only other advice is to make sure you get a decent power supply, high grade, 650 watts. But the specs I gave should get you there, you just need to determine the grade of what you buy.
 
alot of them have good graphics cards which I would substitute for a cheaper graphics and a hard drive with alot more room... pref 1 TB... if anyone else has gone threw this or has any suggestions let me know
 
I like these two:

Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, LED LCD TV, Digital Cameras and more - Newegg.com!

Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, LED LCD TV, Digital Cameras and more - Newegg.com!

Graphic cards a a bit over the top, but should make sure the graphics isn't touching your CPU. The second one with the SDD would really be rather fast for your needs.

I don't think you could go wrong with either of those two. Also, the i7 chip would work as well. I just lean towards AMD but have no issue with Intel other than "bang for your buck".
 
Some months ago I bought the ..
Asus M5A97 LE2.0 MOBO which was bundled with the AMD FX-6300 six core CPU.
Can't find that deal again quickly( you might) but the same MOBO is sold with other AMD processors, a quad core and all up for less than 80 euros.

I have not had the opportunity to stretch the combination but the set up (6G ram) seems very slick and has not given any bother at all in 6 months. Running Win 7/64. Do not bother with 8, wait for 10!

Bonus! The MOBO does not have on board graphics. Bugger to me but you will not be paying for something you don't want. You have a bit of a conundrum however in that powerful vid cards have noisy fans. I paid 30quid for a passively cooled (another Asus product as it happened) card but you might need better? Others here can surely advise.

Budget for an SSD for the system and DAW drive (may be even more important for video?) and I would have said up to 3 months ago, another, 1 -2TB internal spinner? But the MOBO comes with 2 USB 3.0 ports and I bought a Seagate USB 3.0 external drive for £70/ (~100ees? ). Soooper fast!

AI. Yes, the World HAS gone external and they are many and legion but If you can find it in the budget I would still fit an M-Audio 2496 sound card. So useful to have a selfcontained audio/digital/MIDI interface of very acceptable quality and really low latency. They can be found very cheaply now on evilbay and are so reliable you are very unlikely to buy a pup. The Asus has two PCI slots.
The inclusion of a PCI sound card in no way impinges on the use of an external. I just plug in me KA6 or 8i6, select in DAW and bish-bosh-bash.

CD/DVD burners are cheap as chips.

Power supply: Folks go on about these...A LOT! Never been an issue for me in 10 years of 'puting but maybe go for a decent make and 600W min? Above all you want QUIET!

No doubt you will be told to go for an i7 or at least i5 setup but if cash is tight it is easy to forget all the extra costs. Case, PSU, burner, ram, software, graphcard, drives and have a stonkingly fast MOBO and CPU sitting there doing nothing coz you can't afford the support bits!

Dave.
 
These are the original specs for my system for animation and music. The guy who built it upgraded some of the components. Not the minimum requirements to run modeling programs, but not the maximum, either, and these are all top-quality components that prices like Dell and HP mark up significantly, because the average consumer doesn't know what to buy or where to buy it.

The answer is Newegg.com.

Part number

(Case) 11-129-086 CASE ANTEC| SONATA PROTO RT 1 $64.99

You’ll need an Antec Matching power supply, get a green one, a power saver

(Motherboard) 13-157-264 MB ASROCK Z68 EXTREME4 GEN3 R 1 $189.99

(Video card and GPU chip) 14-121-446 VGA ASUS|ENGTX560 DCII OC/2DI/1GD5 1 $199.99

(Processor) 19-115-070 CPU INTEL|CORE I7 2600K 3.4G 8M R 1 $314.99

(RAM) 20-233-143 MEM 4Gx4|CORSAIR CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9 1 $104.99

(New hard drive) 22-148-681 HDD 2T|SEAGATE ST2000DL003 64M % 1 $79.99

(CD/DVD burner/player) 27-106-334 DVD BURNER LITE-ON | IHAS-324-98B R 1 $19.99

(Operating system) 32-116-992 MS WIN 7 PRO SP1 64-BIT 1PK - OEM 1 $139.99

*See if they’ll install it for you, and just give you the disk for backup

(Special cooling system for chip) 35-103-065 CPU COOLER CM| RR-B10-212P-G1 RT 1 $27.99

4 gb flash drive for power boosting-ask about this; you can’t just use a $10 off the shelf from KMart

Hard disks? Three would be great, settle for two get sata 6 standard, not 3

2 good surge protectors. From a computer store, not a hardware store. Belkin is a trusted name. A friend had a thunderstorm, stupidly didn’t unplug her PC, in the morning a completely new motherboard and processor were needed. In contrast, we had a thunderstorm here 14 years ago, I wasn't home, the storm hit the suppressor, ruined it, replaced it for $15, PC was just fine.

2 monitors. Instead of one large one. Windows 7 lets you configure the set so your workspace is on one, and all your palettes are on the other. I use a Samsung 19” and am happy with the color fidelity and calibration, and I’m quite picky. Color gurus and fanboys crap on Samsung occasionally. Seems it’s easy to find someone who will crap on just about anything: Samsung, IBM, Catholicism…
Rod Norman
Engineer
 
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