building my own pc

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pandamonk

pandamonk

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I'd get an athlon 64 instead... better price/performance ratio. Videocards have been supporting dual display for ages.. i'd look for an older model nvidia or ati card instead. I would suggest getting dual 17" LCD's instead.. because of the higher resolution.
 
I just built this for a client and it flat screams:

Board EpoX EP-9NPA+ Ultra
CPU AMD/64 3000+
RAM 1024mb Corsair XMS Dual-Channel PC3200 as (2) 512mb

Disk1 Seagate 7200.9 SATA-II 160gb
Video PCIE Chaintech SE6600GT

This is a gaming machine, so I would replace the video card with a Matrox G450 Dual Head. That is what I run in my workstation and it plays flawlessly.
 
albumleaf said:
I'd get an athlon 64 instead... better price/performance ratio. Videocards have been supporting dual display for ages.. i'd look for an older model nvidia or ati card instead. I would suggest getting dual 17" LCD's instead.. because of the higher resolution.
Click to expand...
... and you'll be able to upgrade into Windows 64 bit OS with the rollout of Longhorn ... or whatever they're calling it these days. Hopefully, by that time, Microsoft will have nudged manufactures into producing 64 bit drivers, so all of our devices will work right.

Since AMD was first out of the gate on the 64 bit processing, I suspect they'll keep the price/performance lead for a while too.

That aside, Sonar 5PE ships with the 64 bit version alongside the 32 bit variety, so you'll be able to immediately gain performance efficiency with what you already have ... once the OS/driver thing locks stable.

Best,

Kev.
 
Could someone perhaps explain what all this stuff means :p I want to make sure it'll be compatible with the HD's I want to use. Right now I have two older 40gb HD's... and I was hoping to add a 10,000 RPM to use for recording.(i'd be doing an upgrade, not a full new computer)

Storage Devices
PATA 2 x ATA 133 up to 4 Devices
PATA RAID NV RAID 0/1/0+1 JBOD
SATA 4 x SATA II
SATA RAID NV RAID 0/1/0+1 JBOD
Additional SATA 2 x SATA II
 
Rocket Boy said:
Could someone perhaps explain what all this stuff means :p I want to make sure it'll be compatible with the HD's I want to use. Right now I have two older 40gb HD's... and I was hoping to add a 10,000 RPM to use for recording.(i'd be doing an upgrade, not a full new computer)

Storage Devices
PATA 2 x ATA 133 up to 4 Devices
PATA RAID NV RAID 0/1/0+1 JBOD
SATA 4 x SATA II
SATA RAID NV RAID 0/1/0+1 JBOD
Additional SATA 2 x SATA II
Click to expand...

PATA is simply IDE, your older hard drives will be fine. Just a note, the new Hitachi 250GB SATA drives are faster than the WD Raptor and they cost the same if not cheaper. Not to mention that they run cooler and are much quieter.
 
Ok, so what would you reccomend i change in my setup, and to what, staying at about the same price? And i know 2 17" monitors would be better, but i dont' have the budget, or the space, lol seriously. Plus, i use a single 15" at the moment, and it does me just fine.
 
I noticed your sound HD is a SATA, and your software HD is IDE.

This is good; SATA is fast. However, it's worth noting that Windows sometimes has trouble aknowledging SATA drives. (It did with mine.) It's not too hard to fix, but it can be frustrating until you figure out.
 
Loose the BS no name memory, you will not regret it. Get something decent at least (I'm a fan of corsair TWINX also, but it is pricey)

WD raptors: The whip. I dont know where the Hitachi is better comment came from but for an audio drive, smaller and faster is always better. Raptors only come in 35 gig and 70 gig version, have 5 year warrenties and are 10K (and quiet). I run 4 of them and could not be happier. I will NEVER go near a hitachi drive again after the whole "deathstar" debacle, their quality is bullshit and if it goes, you can join the class action lawsuit against them but dont expect to have it fixed for free. The Segate Barracudas and Cheetahs are pretty solid also (i know they make a sata barracuda, not sure on the cheetah). Pretty much any enterprise class HD will be a very good choice for a DAW

sata2 is worth looking at since it does offer some pretty good performance improvements but I have not read up on them recently so I cannot really say where they are at ATM.

Case: Make sure that this cases power supply will be compatable with your mother board, I personally seen some of those cases that come with ATX1.0 spec PSUs in a 2 space size which will not work with modern mainboards and finding a 2u PSU that works will cost you more than the case did. If you want to play it safe get a 4 or 6u case, then you can get whatever PSU for it since it will hold a standard size one

For a mainbaord (on intel) I would look at the 955 chipset and a pentium D. That probably the best bang for the buck and you get EMT64 and multiprocessing on a solid Intel chipset. I am no big fan of AMD since my experience with them and their chipsets have far from good and I find the intel based boards to be much more stable and reliable even if they are slower. I would stay away from VIA chipsets also, some work, some don't
 
Last edited:
An AMD X2 CPU would be good for Sonor as it makes heavy use of multithreading.

They're cheap these days too :D
 
Ok, confussed about processors. How come the AMD is £300ish for 2.2GHz, and the pentium 4 is £100 for 3.2GHz, with the AMD being conisdered the better option? Also what motherboard will work well with AMD X2 that isn't too expensive? What changes would everyone mine, for the same or not too much more than it?
 
Which AMD and which Intel are we talking about (there are several in the clock range)?
 
Ok,

here are the current P4's on the market

$995 - pentium d 840 extreme
$537 - pentium d 840
$318 - pentium d 830
$245 - pentium d 820
$213 - pentium 4 730
$541 - pentium 4 670
$395 - pentium 4 660
$255 - pentium 4 650
$209 - pentium 4 640
$173 - pentium 4 630
$487 - pentium 4 570j
$487 - pentium 4 570
$415 - pentium 4 561
$356 - pentium 4 560j
$344 - pentium 4 560
$222 - pentium 4 551
$233 - pentium 4 550j
$100 - pentium 4 550
$157 - pentium 4 541
$210 - pentium 4 540j
$197 - pentium 4 540
$173 - pentium 4 531
$159 - pentium 4 530j
$162 - pentium 4 530
$176 - pentium 4 521
$179 - pentium 4 520j
$150 - pentium 4 520
$160 - pentium 4 519
$135 - pentium 4 515
$100 - pentium 4 505

Which one are you looking at?
 
It's at the top of the page, but Intel Pentium 4 Processor 640
 
It says "This CPU supports Intel EM64T 64-bit" isn't that what I'm looking for?
 
It will allow you to use it with 64 bit windows but beyond that, I dont think it has that much relevance now since there are practically no drivers for win64
 
Ok, now you've confussed me. As i said, i have never built a computer, and although i know a bit, i don't know a lot. Could you maybe explain. People have told me that AMD supports Sonar because it supports 64-bit, so i thought because this said 64-bit, it might do the same. :confused:
 
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