HELP!! with DAW build

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fedz84

New member
I absolutely had enough of my HP Pavilion Athlon 1.66ghz laptop. Just won't cut it these days. I was trying to record Vocals and Guitar w/ my toneport plus ez drummer playing in the background with Sonar 4xl and every time after 20 secs in it would dropout on me. Way to bogged down so i did a clean install but even still this computer is too outdates probably going on 6 years. Upgrade NEEDED badly.

1. So, I'm thinking of building a new computer that can handle my needs.
Probably going to base the DAW around Core 2 Quad Q6600 or higher. The Q6600 is 2.4GHz and has FSB of 1066MHz or do think it is worth to get the Q9550 with 2.83GHz and a FSB of 1333MHz. Both say they come with heatsink fans. Are those good or would i need to buy a better one?

2. I'm also kinda confused on which MOBO would be compatible I mean what are the key specs i should be comparing. I heard ASUS are good boards to go along with Intel.

3. What is needed for a Video card? I see 128 bits to 256 bits whats the difference? Also how much memory should be more then enough in a DAW, 128, 256, 512MB. What should i be looking for in compatibility with the Mobo

4. Power Supplies, which ones are good out there and how much Watts would be enough 500? less/more?

5. Cases, I kinda was eyeing an Antec nine hundred or twelve hundred. Any experience with these

6. I see a lot of people using dual monitors is this really worth it or would a widescreen LCD 22 or 24 inch suffice. What monitors are good out there?

Im gonna def put in 2 seperate hard drive (7200rpm). One for the os, apps, vst and another for saving my work on

Gonna stick to XP home and use 4 gigs of ram and i know it only uses about 3.2 but incase i upgrade later to windows 7 when it comes out ill be ready.
Is 800 a good speed for the ram or do i need to go higher to 1066 or 1333

I know its a lot but its hard to find specific answers when doing a search. Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
1.) the Q6600 will be fine. the heatsink that comes with it is made by intel, and it will be fine unless you are overclocking, which you won't need to with 4 cores.

2.)asus boards are great. for the q6600 i would recommend the Asus P5N-D. but anything with a LGA 775 socket type will fit that processor.

3.) video card isn't as important, 128 and 256mb represent how much memory the card has installed on it as flash memory. generally the larger the better. the asus board takes SLI type video cards, and those can be had fairly cheaply. Video performance isn't as necessary in a DAW system unless you are editing video as well. any variant of the GeForce 9800 will be fine.

4.) power supplies, 400-500 watts. Antec is a great brand for those, as well as cases. some antec cases will come with one.

5.) like i said before, antec is a great choice for a case. a friend of mine has the 900 and loves it. keeps everything real cool. which is good for quad core machines.

6.)dual monitors are awesome. personally in sonar i have the multitrack window on one side and the channel faders on the other.

the faster the RAM the better. the fastest the board can support. this is key besides a fast processor to getting great performance. but if your board can't go faster than ddr 800, than you have to stick with 800. faster chips will be clocked down to 800.

i hope this helps you a little bit. my real job is in the IT field, so this is all normal information for me. let me know if you have any more questions, i'll be glad to help.
 
Thanks for the reply. So i did a quick shopping list and this is what i came up with......please critique and give suggestions. By the way what are some good monitors out there?

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3750640AS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

ASUS EN9600GT silent/HTDI/512M GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

Crucial Ballistix 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT25664AA80A

ASUS P5N-D LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
(Memory standard is DDR2 800, will there be a noticable difference to get a board that supports a higher memory standard)

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model BX80562Q6600

Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Antec Neo Power 500 500W ATX12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready Modular Active PFC Power Supply
 
you will see a difference with a faster speed. the fastest DDR2 speed is DDR2-1066, which is about half as fast again as ddr2 800. so if you want the highest speed, go for a different board that can support higher.

a note on speed: it's very hard to see differences in speed and clock rates and whatnot at the higher specs (800 vs 1066) until you are doing something very intensive like bunches of plugins at once or bouncing a track down, or even when you just have lots of tracks going at the same time. just my .02 on that.
 
you can go ahead and update, but something else is causing the problems you described...
 
Dang, dude. These are good questions, that require good answers for you to really understand what you are trying to understand...I believe I can help you a lot here. I'm actually waiting on several massive file-transfers to complete, at the moment, which leaves me unable to part from my PC, but also unable to do anything productive on it, so this will be a good time-killer for me.
edit: This is mostly expanding on bassmonkey144's good advice, but there are a few points I disagree with him on. My relevant background is in computer science/programming, more specifically - programming 3D applications. While this isn't necessarily "superior" to an IT background, it does differ in necessitating a more thorough understanding of how some specific hardware handles low-level instruction sets...hence my differing opinion on a few things.

fedz84 said:
q6600/Asus questions
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My q6600 spanks audio work as if it was simple word-processing. The stock heatsink/fan keeps all four cores very cool...but I haven't really messed with overclocking it, which would certainly change things. I have a P5N-D, the same one bassmonkey144 suggested. No problems at all, and the most feature filled (true 2x16 SLI, onboard firewire and nvraid) Asus socket 775 mobo for the money. This link to a Newegg "Power search" shows the steps I went through when narrowing down my choice to the P5N-D. If gaming is not important to you, you can click the x next to "PCI Express 2.0 x16 : 2" to remove the SLI aspect, but the P5N-D is still the cheapest board listed. :D
fedz84 said:
3. What is needed for a Video card? I see 128 bits to 256 bits whats the difference? Also how much memory should be more then enough in a DAW, 128, 256, 512MB. What should i be looking for in compatibility with the Mobo
Click to expand...
I have to disagree with bassmonkey here. 2D rendering requires a negligible amount of GPU (video card) power. The geforce 9800, or even the 9600 series cards mentioned are ridiculous overkill. This card will render a DAW window just as fast as my beastly 9800GX2, for about 1/20 of the cost.

128 bit/256 bit part of your question:
This rating refers to the bandwidth of the memory bus, not the amount of VRAM, as suggested by bassmonkey. This factor has an enormous impact on the speed of 3D rendering, but again, for 2D audio work - completely not important.

Size of the video ram: (which is not flash memory, as previously stated, but actually volatile, dynamic RAM :p )
Consider this: 1 frame of a "32" bit 1680x1050 image requires a framebuffer of (24+8)*1680*1050/8/1024/1024 MB (24 color bits+8 alpha bits per pixel * # of pixels, then converted from bits to bytes, to kilobytes, to megabytes). That's only 6.7 MB. As far as I am aware, all 2D applications use 2 buffers, flipping the frame between buffers for each refresh cycle, meaning you only need 14 MB of VRAM to hold the 2 frames required for hardware-accelerated 2D rendering (at 1680x1050, less for lower resolutions, more for higher obviously). There's no texturing, complex geometry, extra buffers, or anything else that raises the necessary VRAM when 3D is involved...

Note: Aside from gaming, the required GPU power would also change to use Vista's Aero interface, or something like Compiz/Beryl in Linux, because they incorporate some 3D rendering, but the use of XP was specifically mentioned. Also, there's no such thing as an "SLI-type video card", so don't waste your time looking for one, lol. If you have 2 cards with the same nvidia chipset, you can probably use them in SLI, it's as simple as that - an advantage to buying more than one card. Further, if you have two cards with almost any differing nvidia chipsets, you can probably use them in hybrid-SLI.

I'll be back in a little bit to address the other questions...gotta change a stupid IDE drive out, which requires shutting down. :mad:
 
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Ok, I'm gonna jump straight to the RAM question, in hopes you haven't already wasted money:

fedz84 said:
Is 800 a good speed for the ram or do i need to go higher to 1066 or 1333
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I have to sorta disagree with bassmonkey here, too. I would have agreed completely with his comments a few years ago, but a few things have changed since then. FSB and RAM speed are no longer locked together like they used to be. They can be run out-of-sync with no performance loss on current systems. That said - I seriously doubt, and can practically guarantee, you will not ever notice a performance difference in ram speed/timings.
If you Google for RAM benchmarks, you'll see that:
A: It is extremely hard to even find any, despite there being a million threads where people are asking to see them
B: The ones you do find show negligible differences
C: The ones you do find are old

Explanation? After seeing results like this: http://www.slcentral.com/ddr-ram-comparision-corsair-ddr400-transcend-ddr500/UT2003.jpg , most people pretty much stopped caring. This is why the charts at Tom's Hardware, easily the most-referenced and arguably the most respected source for hardware performance comparisons on the Internet, completely lacks a RAM section. It's just not very important anymore.

However, Tom's did do an excellent, 17 page article over DDR2 here. Everything you could ever want to know about current RAM is in that article, including 4 pages of thoroughly exhaustive benchmarks (all showing negligible differences :p).

This quote, from the conclusion on page 17: "we really have to ask ourselves if spending hundreds of dollars on sophisticated, heat pipe equipped memory to achieve performance gains in the very low single-digit range make any sense", and this quote, from their introduction on page 1: "If you are not into overclocking, you can simply get any memory product that matches your platform's requirements: any branded DDR2-800 memory kit should work with today's Athlon 64 X2 or Core 2 Duo motherboards" really sums-up the entire situation.

The motherboard's chipsets designate the necessary memory specs...going beyond the designated specs yields performance increases that are laughable or, in many cases, completely non-existant. See pages 13-16 for evidence of this. The only benchmark that showed significant differences with memory speeds/timings was a synthetic memory benchmark that tests memory speed just for the sake of testing memory speed. This evidently has no practical real-world correlation, as shown in all of the other benchmarks.

Gotta shutdown again, be back in a bit to address the questions I skipped over.
 
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fedz84 said:
4. Power Supplies, which ones are good out there and how much Watts would be enough 500? less/more?
Click to expand...
Consider this: My PC has a q6600, 9800GX2 , & 6 hard drives (4 in raid-0, & 2 in raid-1), yet it has never drawn more than 3.0 amps, as measured by the power-conditioner it's plugged into. 3 amps @ 120V is only 360 watts. There is a ton of misinformation out there suggesting that a system like this would need 700, 800, 1000, 10,000,000 watts or more...that's just plain wrong.

Not to mention that the 3 amps were drawn while I was playing Crysis, which is significantly more system-intensive than audio work, and a large amount of the power drawn was from the 9800GX2. A video card draws almost zero current while during audio work. Of course, a raw amperage measurement doesn't take into account the different requirements of the different voltage rails, but I would hazard the same guess as bassmonkey about any recent-model, reputably-branded 500 watt power supply being amply sufficient.
fedz84 said:
5. Cases, I kinda was eyeing an Antec nine hundred or twelve hundred. Any experience with these
Click to expand...
Antec makes great stuff. You could also take a look at handy-dandy rack-mount cases. I have this one, and my review of it is right there on the product page.
fedz84 said:
6. I see a lot of people using dual monitors is this really worth it or would a widescreen LCD 22 or 24 inch suffice. What monitors are good out there?
Click to expand...
Dual monitors is arguably a necessity for things like 3D animation, where you need to see the full-screen output of the animation as you manipulate animation-curves/graphs on another screen. I can't think of any similar situation that would be a real necessity for audio work, but it is kinda cool to see the mixer on one, and the editor on the other. That said - I have found that using shortcut keys to switch views is actually faster for me than dragging a mouse around. So, I guess it would be a personal preference...and personally, I switch to a single display for audio work. As far as which to get, I can vouch for Westinghouse LCDs being reliable, despite being dirt-cheap (especially during Best Buy's Black Friday sales...). I used 3 19s for about 4 years before switching to the 2 22s that I've been using for about 2 years now. Of the 5 I've bought, the only issue, ever, has been one of the 19s developing a single dead pixel. There are surely other cheap monitors out there that are just as reliable as these, I've just never used them.

... to be continued
 
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fedz84 said:
Im gonna def put in 2 seperate hard drive (7200rpm). One for the os, apps, vst and another for saving my work on
Click to expand...
Smart move. Further, you could take advantage of the P5N-D's onboard nvraid, and use two drives in raid-1 for saving your work on. The likelihood of both drives dying simultaneously is very, very low. Also, since you mentioned the rpm of the drives, I'll add this comment: My laptop, with it's single 4200rpm HDD, can handle recording at least 8 tracks@24-bit/44.1khz (never tried more than that while using the laptop, as the mobile interface I use with it only has 8 analog inputs...). It can also handle mixing/playback of enormous, (as in 100+ tracks@24bit/44.1khz) projects without a hiccup. I don't know the exact science behind it, but in my experience, HDD performance, in regards to audio work, has been completely negligible.
fedz84 said:
Gonna stick to XP home and use 4 gigs of ram and i know it only uses about 3.2
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I use 32 bit XP for audio, too. There are, pathetically, no 64 bit drivers for some of my hardware. In my experience, however, even the most outrageous of audio projects don't even come close to maxing out the 3.whatever GB that 32-bit XP supports.*1

fedz84 said:
I know its a lot but its hard to find specific answers when doing a search. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
I hear ya, brother. Everybody was there once. You asked reasonable, intelligent questions, and I hope you find my responses useful. My transfers are all done now, too. Win-win for both of us. :D

*1 - This might be a product of my workflow, as I mix in several stages, destructively committing processing at each stage to newly rendered audio files, which gives me a blank slate, RAM/CPU wise, at each stage. (A habit I developed through years of working with systems that didn't piss all over audio work like current ones do. :p ) People who use a ton of processing and don't ever commit until final rendering may need significantly more RAM, I don't know....lol @ a footnote on a forum post.
 
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Thanks TyphoidHippo for taking the time out and answering every question it was very helpful and when i have some extra time ill read into those articles. And for everyone else who pitched in thanks also.

Just one more....what's the best all around place to order these parts? I've seen so far Newegg and Tigerdirect. Which one out there gives the better service especially if i run into a dead mobo on arrival lets just say. I dont need any headaches since this will be my first build.
 
buckkillr8 said:
Newegg hands down.
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+1. Customer service is fantastic. They've never asked any questions or delayed anything I wanted to return...even when I accidentally forget some trivial accessories/piece of paper that came in the box.

That has NOT been the case at zipzoomfly or tigerdirect, who have thrown hissy-fits over 2cent adapters or meaningless promotion cards that were included with stuff. zipzoomfly actually sent a whole shipment of parts to the wrong friggin address a few years back. The scumbag who lived there happily accepted the packages, and would have likely sold the stuff for crack had I not practically beat down his door to confront him. Newegg=DreamRetailer

@fedz84: No problem, I would have pulled my hair out sitting here for hours with nothing to do but wait 1-5 minutes to enter the next command. :p
 
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