6
69ShadesofRed
New member
I third that about Dell. They are solid machines, and are a good value. Plus, sometimes building your own machine will cost you MORE if you factor in other peripherals such as Monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, cables, whatever.
About the case though... other than getting an ATX case, check the power supply rating, and get the one that supplies the most power... a 350W power supply should be minimum. In the case of the motherboard, get one with as many PCI slots as possible (five seems like a reasonable amount).
Another thing I haven't seen anyone mention is Video cards. Some ATI cards don't play well with audio. Matrox seems to make the most solid cards as far as audio purposes are concerned.
Before you buy the motherboard and other stuff, figure out what software, and what audio hardware you need, and then purchase the computer parts around those. Some audio cards don't work with all motherboards/CPUs.
Stay away from Celerons like the plague.
You want at least Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP. The faster the better. In the case of AMD motherboards, stay away from VIA chipsets like the plague. I don't care what set it is. Some say the older ones had issues and the newer ones should be OK. I say VIA doesn't know how to make chipsets worthy of audio. Period.
Lastly, I agree with A1A2 and bgavin about getting someone experienced to help you or better yet, build it for you. You at least want to have a good grasp of the computer components and what does what and why.
About the case though... other than getting an ATX case, check the power supply rating, and get the one that supplies the most power... a 350W power supply should be minimum. In the case of the motherboard, get one with as many PCI slots as possible (five seems like a reasonable amount).
Another thing I haven't seen anyone mention is Video cards. Some ATI cards don't play well with audio. Matrox seems to make the most solid cards as far as audio purposes are concerned.
Before you buy the motherboard and other stuff, figure out what software, and what audio hardware you need, and then purchase the computer parts around those. Some audio cards don't work with all motherboards/CPUs.
Stay away from Celerons like the plague.
You want at least Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP. The faster the better. In the case of AMD motherboards, stay away from VIA chipsets like the plague. I don't care what set it is. Some say the older ones had issues and the newer ones should be OK. I say VIA doesn't know how to make chipsets worthy of audio. Period.
Lastly, I agree with A1A2 and bgavin about getting someone experienced to help you or better yet, build it for you. You at least want to have a good grasp of the computer components and what does what and why.