Look what I did.... :op

[WATYF]

I just built this,....


AMD Athlon XP2800+ (T-Bred B)
Asus A7N8X
Koolance PC2-601W WaterCooling Case (w/Gold Cooler)
ExoticPC SilenX 350W PSU
512MB Corsair XMS3200 DDR
128MB Radeon 9700 Pro
Maxtor 80GB DiamondMax+ 9 8MB cache (System Files)
Maxtor 80GB DiamondMax+ 9 8MB cache (Audio Files)
Pioneer 16X DVD (Slotload..! whoo hoo!!)
Lite-On LTR-52246S 52X CD-RW


Just thought I'd share....

Tried it out with Pro Tools. Works great. Just for a stress test, I loaded a channel full of plug-ins and duplicated it. I was able to record 17 tracks, with 5 plug-ins (D-Verb, Compressor, etc) on each channel, simultaneously. Yeah... I know that'll never happen in real life... I just wanted to see how far I could push it.


WATYF

[M.Brane]

What are you using for data backup?

[WATYF]

Luck.











WATYF

[whattaguy]

How much was that screamin' machine?

[badassmak]

Originally posted by WATYF
Luck.











WATYF

ditto on that...BTW thanks for pointing me in that same general direction (mobo link) sometime back. That whole water cooling thing sounds really appealing in light of my "silent" fans.

To sortof reiterate whattaguy...how much *yike$* was the water *yike$* cooling system?

...And if you ever do decide to go not with Luck , what backup system will you use?

[M.Brane]

Originally posted by WATYF
Luck.











WATYF

I like big 'ol FW drives myself. Good bang for the buck.

Your method is cheaper in the short-term though....

[jake-owa]

Building a computer these days is about as hard as a $40 lego set 70% of the time. It's that ominous 30% you don't want to be stuck in.

Luckily the actual disaster rate is around %2.67884.

[JFogarty]

Hey, you should try out the DaveC test on the digidesign user conference and see how it performs on that. Thats really the standard way of measuring how a PC perfroms on PT

[WATYF]

Just to answer all the questions...


1) The whole thing cost aboot 1700 bucks. Not bad really, considering that buying a "gamers" machine from somewhere like Alienware would've cost twice that much... and I got to hand-pick each part I wanted based on my research of what was the best components.

2) The watercooling (which comes completely assembled in the Koolance case) was only 200 bucks. That price includes a nice looking case. I spend 25 more bucks to get the GPU water cooling heatsink, so that there are no fans whatsoever in my case. The assembly (which only involves putting the tubes on the heatsinks) was a bit of a bear, but now that I know how to do it right, it wouldn't take me nearly as long to do it again. I got the case at Info Tech, where they have it on sale (including the CPU cooler). It's a great deal, so if you're in the market for a watercooling case that's pre-assembled, then that's the place to go.

3) I kinda have already started a backup "system". While transfering files from my old computer to this one, I decided to burn each session to it's own CD (or two if necessary). I just figured that from now on I'll just burn a session every time I'm done with it, and that'll be a good enough backup for me.

4) I used to have a firewire drive for audio, and frankly, didn't like it that much. Maybe once Firewire Ver.2 becomes more available, and they start putting 10K RPM drives in it, then maybe I'll go back to firewire... but until then, the Maxtor DM+ 9 series (with 8MB cache) is the fastest IDE drive around (for most applications).

5) I actually did try the Davec test on the DUC... but I tried Davec Ver 2.0. (also known as the Jayman test) His old test was conceived back when most PC's could barely handle PT (about two years ago). My system would have been able to do all 32 tracks and who knows how many AUX's with the old version of the test... I remember reading about it a little bit ago and seeing how everyone can pretty much max the test out now... so I found a thread that's up there now which lays out a new version of the test which uses more CPU consuming plugins... I scored 17 tracks. (which was the highest of anyone on there, btw. ) Honestly, I thought the machine would have done a bit better.... but oh well.



WATYF

[jake-owa]

Sounds cool...pun intended.
Post a pic of the guts!

[WATYF]

I wish I could man... but no digicam.



WATYF

[jake-owa]

Crack it open and scan it!

Nah..