"off the shelf pc's"

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NinthHour

New member
ok fellas, upgrade time has officially come!
my current setup is a crap dell dimension 2400 @ 2.4 gHz with 256 megs of ram (i know i know) belkin firewire card now upgrade time has come and my budg et is kinda slimmer than i'd like upon eyeballing some "off the shelf" pc's i've seen some with decent specs such as same dual core 2.4's or so with 2 gigs of ram and 160 on the hard drive side this would probably end up being a system drive only with an addt'l hard drive added for audio. now my question is this; how stupid am i for beliving that a new dell or whatever will be a decent choice? i realize that chipsets, cache' and several other factors play into the power of the pc for example you can get a 2.0 gHz processor with a 3 mb cache or something and your ram can be 3 gigs at 677mhz or something like that are higher end pc's with a 2 gig processor and 3 gigs of ram better in some way like that? i'm not a computer guy persay i just dig audio and its cheaper to record to disk than tape thanks in advance for any help
 
The biggest aspect of self build versus off the shelf is control.

When you self build you have total control over what goes into the build.

When you buy off the shelf you are at the mercy of whatver deals were the best to that manufacturer when that build was done.
Big box manufactureres switch manufacturers and as a result you could have 2 suposedly identical machines that actually gave different mother boards, different FW chipsets etc etc.

That doesn't mean an off the shelf PC can't do audio it just means you need to be paying attention.

I wouldn't buy from a website but would talk to them on the phone and ask the questions about FW chipsets, Drive manufacturers etc and if the answers are good then it could be ok

DELLS, HPs etc generally are loud though but on a tight budget you can get at least as good if not better than a low end self build. Once you get to the mid $800 dolar range you start to break even on components for self build vs. off the shelf
 
for what it's worth, I have a Dell 2400, which I put in 2gig Ram (what...$85 bucks or something) and use an Echo 3G PCI card. I run Sonar 7PE and get as many tracks as I want, and can run about 1/2 dozen virtual synths, EZ drummer a couple convolution reverbs and maybe another couple "heavy hitter" plugs and it works great. I don't see upgrading anytime REAL soon.

I realize my sessions may or may not be all that typical, but I'll run 10 vocal tracks, 1/2 dozen gtrs, couple synths, some VSTi....etc.. That seems kinda normal :)

Simple sessions with 10 tracks audio and EZ drummer it runs in the 'fast lane' without even breathing heavy.
 
budget is right around 500 bucks i've been looking seriously at building a pc, and keeping my current hard drive as a system drive, (still runs just fine) and basically keeping it to save myself from buying a new copy of windows and save a couple hundred bucks on the budget its sata and sata is sata is sata right? i've found some good deals on componets. i'm not totally dissatisfied with my present computer and what it does but at 16 tracks or so and a good few waves plugs running i have to push the latency through the damn roof it sounds to me like i can get this thing done i'm not being overly optomistic am i?
 
thought so i think i've decided on a intel core 2 duo 7400, 4 gigs of ram, and a 500 gb sata hard disk that should suffice for the times being any word on keeping my old drive for a system drive?
 
Using a old drive would be fine. I take it you're going to use the old case, PSU? Or would you want to get all you could new?
 
Thanks to the guys on this board, I built a quad core 3 weeks ago for only $553 shipped to my door. I did not get the cheapest processor so you can save a few bucks there, and I did get a 500 gig HD...you can get a smaller one and save a few bucks there. My case was about $60, and they had some around $40. I put in 4 gig of ram and you can drop to 3. There is plenty of room here to save your self a few dollars here and there to easily get a kick ass computer for $500...

I will copy and paste my order from Newegg.com so you can get an idea...again..Im not trying to take credit for knowing what the hell Im doing...this was my first PC build and I owe a lot to the guys here for helping me make my decisions...anyway here is what I bought...

case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147033

Processor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115207

mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128359

PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182031

HD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148395

RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122

for a total of $553.83 with shipping....
 
NinthHour said:
been looking seriously at building a pc, and keeping my current hard drive as a system drive, (still runs just fine) and basically keeping it to save myself from buying a new copy of windows and save a couple hundred bucks
Click to expand...
depending on whether your version of Windows is Retail or OEM, you might not be able to install the system drive into a new PC. OEM is only good for one PC.
 
thats true about the OEM thing....but if you can get your hands on an original copy of windows, you can use the key off of a junk PC...I have junked probably 8 to 10 PC's over the past few years and I always take off the OS key stickers...
 
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