kidkage's PC build thread (read: kidkage's request for PC build help thread)

kidkage

kidkage

Bored of Canada
[There's a TL;DR version at the bottom underneath the ______]
A few years ago I cannibalized the off the shelf HP desktop I had.
It was a nightmare process for me. I was limited to using AMD processors, the PSU was crappy, and the machine kept hitting me with the BSOD every time I opened Cubase. I was beyond frustrated with it so I switched to Mac after a year of dealing with that while I was in the middle of working on stuff.

I like macs. I'm sure I'll always have a macbook in my arsenal just cause. But the storage on these really sucks. It wasn't so bad a few years ago when you could pick up a stock macbook for ~$1,000 and upgrade the RAM and storage on your own instead of spending $500-$700 to move from a 128GB SSD to 1TB. But I'll stop with the mac talk here :D.
Over the last few years I've had a couple of Dell latitude laptops that have been great. Tons of space, fast drives, no compatibility or BSOD issues. So I know that Windows is great as long as the hardware is up to par.

I really want to get a Windows PC again for a few reasons:
-I use a few different DAWs and beta test a few things that are only Windows compatible.
-I've got some awesome qwerty keyboards that are craving windows.
-I want to get into coding and learning C++. Which a mac is less than ideal for.
-Storage space! I want to have 2 or 3 storage drives in there. An SSD and two 7200 rpm drives.
-Basic video production in Adobe Premiere elements.
-I'd like to be able to game casually if possible.


______________________________________________________________________________________
I'm looking to spend under $1,000 on a PC build (or a solid off the shelf computer if you know of one) and would like your help :o

I've already got the monitors, keyboards, and mice covered; so I'm just looking to put together the actual desktop.
All I know at this point is that I want Windows 7, 3 internal drives, 8GB of RAM*, an Intel quad-core, and a reasonable amount of ports (A few USBs, maybe a firewire or thunderbolt port...)
Ideally I'd like to be around $700 (give or take $100. Preferably take lol).
At least on the initial components (meaning, I can wait on the other drives that aren't the boot drives if needed) if not the entire thing.

If I can save by avoiding components that aren't critical for audio work like the case style, GPU...whatever else, and sacrifice the ability to be able to game or do video work on it I'll survive.

*I've had 16GB of RAM in my computers before, but I think realistically 8GB is more than I've ever used.
 
I have a list on this site somewhere of my exact components that have been totally stable for 3 years.

Where that is I don't know. I will try to find the receipt. :)
 
Found it.

Wasted $140 on that stupid service crap. Subtract that from cost and add another drive.

Also subtract that KVM switch. That was when I was sharing monitors with another PC. O Fuck Me! I just noticed they charged me twice for that shit!!!
 

Attachments

  • Receipt0001.pdf
    359.5 KB · Views: 26
Have a skank around eBay at the refurbished PC's as well. Some good ones come up with what you're looking for. All you'll need to do is add the extra drives.
 
Hmmm you can definitely do what you are wanting for under a thousand. Here are my old prices for my stuff I bought 2 years ago. Won't bother listing the actual stuff because most of its like 2 generations behind now :D

Wifi adapter $20
DVD drive $20
8 GB DDR3 ram $66
600 watt power supply $65
graphics card $295
tower $97
intel processor $220
mobo $140
1 tb HD $78

So that all adds up to $1,001 if I'm doing my math right :) I like gaming, so I got a nice graphics card and a bigger power supply to sustain it. You could probably get something well below both of those and be fine! Do you have any certain builds in mind yet?
 
Mr Clean said:
Have a skank around eBay at the refurbished PC's as well. Some good ones come up with what you're looking for. All you'll need to do is add the extra drives.
Click to expand...

I want to find me an HPZ800 with dual Xeon processors. we have one at our company headquarters I've been trying to get sent to me silently.
 
Chili said:
I want to find me an HPZ800 with dual Xeon processors. we have one at our company headquarters I've been trying to get sent to me silently.
Click to expand...

Damn, that'd be killer.
I'm on 2 xeon x5570 chips right now and it's crazy fast. Your setup would be about a year younger and a lot faster.
 
Even as someone who uses eBay quite a bit, I still feel hesitant about looking for a computer on there.
 
If you can get better prices, go for it man.
I'm genuinely struggling to think of anything I own that didn't come from ebay.
 
kidkage said:
Thanks for the help d00ds!

The receipt is awesome jimmy! I'm gonna start making a list of necessary components now and start trying to fill in the blanks.

I haven't even mentally sketched out a build really.

Do you guys know of anything inherently wrong with the barebones kits sold on sites like Tigerdirect?
Intel Core i7 Barebone PC, Intel Core i7 Barebone Kit at TigerDirect.com

they seem appealing enough.
Click to expand...

A barebones kit is fine, as long as the parts are good stuff. I'd definitely cross check individual pieces on sites like NewEgg and the like. You definitely do not want a crappy power supply!!
 
Chili said:
I don't buy too much stuff from eBay, but why would you draw the line at computers? Genuine question.
Click to expand...

Just because I feel like since there are so many components that an issue could unintentionally be overlooked.

For instance I bought an awesome Dell E6410 laptop on ebay earlier this year. All of the basic things are great - cosmetics, cpu, storage, etc. But when I went to replace the optical drive with a second hard-drive, the compatible drive caddy (the laptop has this modular set up so you can swaps things in and out) wouldn't fit completely because there's some sort of internal issue caused by the optical drive being jammed in there too rough or something :(
 
That's sucks. I've got the same laptop, 2 actually, and put a 2nd drive in the dvd bay, no problem.

Don't want to derail your thread any further.
 
I just built a system from NewEgg a few months ago. Let's see if I can format my invoice in a readable way...

Code: 
item#        Description                                        Qty  Price       Notes
11-148-063	SERVER CHASSIS LOGISYS| CS4803BK R	1    $66.99     4-space rackmount chassis.  It's ginormous.  Too freaking big...check dimensions before buying a chassis!
12-119-273	CBL RW SATA3 BL 19.7" R	                2    $3.49       SATA cables.  They were both junk.  Used the ones in the mobo box instead.
13-128-710	MB GIGABYTE|GA-Z97X-UD3H Z97 ATX R	1    $139.99    Motherboard.  Good features and performance, but noisy onboard sound.
17-438-016	PSU EVGA 100-W1-0500-KR R	        1    $44.99      500-watt power supply.  No regrets.
17-812-011	ACC HDD MUSHKIN|MKNSSDBRKT2535 R	1    $7.99        The bracket to adapt the little SSD into a 3.5" drive bay slot
19-116-900	CPU INTEL|CORE I7 4770 3.4G 8M R	1    $309.99     Intel Core i7 processor.  Love it, but it was pricy.  Could save big $$$ here.
20-147-248	SSD 250G|SAMSUNG MZ-7TE250BW R     1    $139.99     250 GB SSD.  Love it.
20-148-661	MEM 8G|CRUCIAL BLS8G3D1609ES2LX0	2    $84.99       2 x 8 GB memory sticks.  
22-236-339	HDD 1T|WD WD10EZEX SATA6G %	        1    $59.99       1 TB data drive.
32-416-806	MS WIN 7 HOME SP1 64BIT SLM - OEM	1    $99.99       Win7 install disc.

Total Amount: $1068.82

Well it's not exactly readable, but I tried to put in some notes about what I bought and what I think of it now that I've been using it for a while. Most likely you can save $$$ on most of these components and end pretty close to your $700 budget. The item numbers are all from NewEgg.

An AMD processor will save you a ton of $$$ if you like. I prefer Intel myself (my last 2 builds were AMD, wanted to go back to Intel this time). I highly recommend the SSD system drive. Pricier than a platter drive but SOOOOO much faster booting and program loading. You can probably find cheaper RAM, and for only 8 GB that'll shave off some cost.

On top of the items above, I bought a Samsung optical CD/DVD drive from Amazon for something like $35. I still like to install things from disc and not thumb drives.

I decided not to go for a graphics card. It'd be yet another cooling fan making noise inside the box and an added expense that it's necessary. The Core i7 has plenty of horsepower to refresh 2 monitors at 1080 resolution with its onboard graphics chip.

My gigantic rackmount case came with 2 120mm cooling fans, so I didn't have to buy those. With cooling fans, the bigger they are, the slower they have to spin, and the quieter they are. Try to find a chassis that accomodates 120mm fans.

My CPU was a retail package, so it came with the cooling fan, heat sink, and thermal paste in the box. Be careful, some are sold as OEM and not retail, in which case they'll be sold only as the processor itself (no heat sink/fan included).
 
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Hay Kidkage,

This is a great place to start the price for build process. System Build - PCPartPicker I used it to get a general cost for both our studio work station and the Pc I use at home studio. I opted to buy all the parts from the same vender ( newegg.com ) so if I had to return or exchange it would be easier. I lost out on a few $ of savings (58$) but I felt is was worth it. I use a intell 4770k at home with 32 gigs of ram and the Asus Z97 mobo with thunder bolt, also an Asus 660ti video card. The Black pearl silent case has worked out very well. I can still hear it run when I have it under heavy load but not at idol.

If you have any questions, I would be happy to help.

Jojo
 
Well, I had to cancel that $400 SSD I bought. The guy said he wouldn't be able to ship it out until December... wtf?!
It was a blessing in disguise though. I decided that I'll be able to get away with using my Glyph Portagig that has Komplete 9 on it as my recording drive as well. Sure, it's the same drive and I'll have to connect it every time I fire up Ableton on my mobile computer, but it's 7200 rpm and it isn't $400 so I can bump my build budget up to $1000 :D

I've been a bit busy with studio renovations still so I haven't gone too in depth in sketching it out beyond comparing the i5 and i7 CPUs.
I've checked out the benchmarks on a lot of the quad core i5s and they seem to be more the capable. I think as long as the CPU I pick has a score of ~7000 on cpubenchmark.com I'll be ok.
The only thing is that my project files get pretty big because I never delete anything while composing stuff - I just copy and paste every changed version throughout one session until I've settled on the final version (know what I mean?).
But I'm not sure if that's RAM, Drive, or CPU critical. Because I feel like I don't use a lot of processing power. I render all virtual instruments to audio while tracking, and I don't think processing is particularly CPU heavy.

Any input?

Realistically, I'll probably continue sketching it out until December and then start gathering the stuff so that I can hopefully have it build by the new year.

Thanks for keeping up dudes!
 
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