Buying a new computer and need some advice please

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JLM

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I've saved up and am going to be purchasing a new Dell computer. I've gotten excellent usage out of Dell I have now so am going to stick with it. Anyway, here's my requirements for audio recording/editing.

Basically, I'm looking for something that will support at least 24 track mixdowns with reverbs, compressors, eq plugins and other effects on every single track. My computer right now can barely handle one or two plugins on no more than about 10 channels before skipping and eventually freezing up from the processor overload. Even with optimal buffer settings it still happens. So it's time to upgrade.

Here's what I'm looking at as far as specs for a new computer. For the processor, I'm thinking of getting the Pentium 4 at 3.6 Ghz. For memory, I'm looking at getting 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz. I'm not sure what type of hard drive to get. I want to get something with at least 250 gigs and would like a 10,000 rpm drive but that's not a must. Would a 250GB RAID 1 (2 x 250GB SATA HDDs) fit my needs? Thanks.
 
i'm just a know nothing puter engr. but if were me
i wouldnt get such big hard drives. read up how windows works sometime.
 
Why would you not get larger hard drives? What about getting one of the 74 gig 10,000 rpm drives and then a big 250 gig one for storage? Where can I read up on how windows works in regards to hard drives, which seems to be what you're implying? Was the system I mentioned in my first post sufficient for serious audio recording? Lots of questions. Thanks.
 
manning1 said:
i'm just a know nothing puter engr. but if were me
i wouldnt get such big hard drives. read up how windows works sometime.
Click to expand...


And this is why people who don't know better shouldn't comment. :rolleyes:

I'm not sure if he's trying to remark on the swapfile or filesystem but they both can be easily managed.

Looks like a nice system to me but just remember your paying top dollar w/ Dell and you'll still need a sound card.

~R
 
there are lots of sites on the net to learn about windows.
if you want to understand why i dont recommend HUGE hard drives....
think about how a small telephone directory versus a massive one..
and youll get the picture.
this dumb engineer would look at a "white box" pc rather than a brand name.
 
manning1 said:
think about how a small telephone directory versus a massive one..and youll get the picture.
Click to expand...

And going w/ that analogy, how would that effect you writing down the information, page number then knowing where to look if you needed the number again?

I'm just stating with the fast seek times of the newer drives, IF you did notice any lag it would only be when you were loading the software, NOT during the operation.

~R
 
manning1 said:
nope. spaceboy.
Click to expand...

So what do you think happens when you start the program? Are you aware of what memory is and its function?

Look, I know there are plenty of ppl out there a heck of a lot smarter than me but at least make a point instead of just saying I'm wrong. geez

~R
 
Here's my take on a decent Intel rig ....

The processor .... get whatever you can afford. If it's the 3.6GHz 800 MHz FSB .... sweet.

Motherboard ..... Well your kind of stuck with what Dell is offering if you buy Dell. However, if you can, I would opt for the 875P chipset unless for some odd reason you really want PCI express and the higher cost of DDR2.
I could be wrong but one of the only audio interface that I know of using PCI express is the Layla G3.
This is not to say that the Intel 915 and 925 chipsets aren't going to be good performers in the DAW world. I haven't a clue. I'd just rather not be one of the early adopters and suffer any headaches from trying to optimize the newer architecture. Who knows, maybe it will perform flawlessly.

Hard drives .... get two SATA (not in RAID) and run them via the chipset controllers (not a PCI controller or Silicon Image chip). One smaller one (40 to 80 gigs) for the primary boot drive and the other (as large as you care to have) for the audio. Just be certain that the BIOS and OS support large drive capacities and be prepared for long defrag times. :rolleyes:
Myself, I just use 120 gig audio drives. There cheap enough. Plus I'll partition it to where I have a 40 gig partition as the working directory for the audio (think about those defrag times when you scrap a bunch of tracks) and the rest for archival purposes.
RAID 1 won't give you any performance advantage, it will just give you redundancy security.
RAID 0 will give a slight performance advantage, but if one of the disks fails ... ALL DATA IS LOST from both disks. :eek:
 
manning1 said:
there are lots of sites on the net to learn about windows.
if you want to understand why i dont recommend HUGE hard drives....
think about how a small telephone directory versus a massive one..
and youll get the picture..
Click to expand...

Ok. So what would you recommend then? What about my idea of the smaller 74 gig hard drive at 10,000 rpm and then the larger 250 gig one for storage?

manning1 said:
this dumb engineer would look at a "white box" pc rather than a brand name.
Click to expand...

Well, it sounds like you're against name brands. That's fine. For me, I would rather have certified people putting together my "brand name" computer than trusting myself to build one properly myself.

VSpaceBoy:
Yeah, I realize that it's a top dollar system and that I'd still need a soundcard. I'm planning on getting the Apogee A/D 16-X converter box and using their card. Would that be fine or is there another sound card that I should consider?
 
jlm. heres what i recommend. look around the net and youll see folks are getting great track and plug in counts.
sure go brand name. up to you. but not for me.
heres for me...
amd 64 with 512 ram to 1 gig.
small fast hard drive for windows. fast 120 gb for example for the tracks.
8 mb cache drives are good. make sure drives are on own channels.
nvidea chipset. if your going with a pci sound card solution dont put any other junk in the pci slots other than the pci sound card so you get full benefit of the pci bus speeds.
heres the REAL REASON for not putting in BIG monster hard drives.
i'll keep it "non tekkie" SIMPLE. think of an office with one filing cabinet with
an index in the front to a thousand files. now imagine an office with a million filing cabinets in with each one with an index in the front. ie...a million index cards. as you can see in the former it doesnt take much time for a person to
go through the index and find a file on "joe bloe". in the latter case it does.
simplistically - its the same with operating systems like win (ive designed OS's in the past)...the bigger the hard drive in essence and stuff on it...
the more time win has to take ploughing thru' the indexes to find stuff.
now - this is all simplistic. but you get the idea. 120gb drives are about "just right" in this dumb engrs opinion.
 
Another reason for smaller drives is that it will force you to backup. If you have enough space to do 40 CDs worth of stuff, there's a tendency to say, "TWTH, I have plenty of space...." If you use a smaller one you'll find yourself archiving older projects (i.e., backing them up) more frequently to make space on your HD.
 
excellent point IP. if you have one huge monster drive and it goes bad on you, youve lost everything. your down hard.
what i do is have two drives. andthe sessions i'm working on on one
drive get backed up to the other in case o loose a drive.
 
The small drive vs. big drive thing was true 5 years ago, not so much today. Run SiSoft sandra file system benchmarks on a big drive and a small one. There's really no difference. Especially with SATA. And no one should be building a new computer with EIDE drives.
 
JLM, that looks like a pretty good setup.

Gut feels says the DDR2 memory should work well in a daw as the prefetch should always 'hit' the right bits and not need to throw any away. 2GB is probably overkill though

I agree with crankz, stay away from Raid. 2 SATA drives will work fine.

PCI Express should give you some measure of future proofing.

The bottleneck is still the chip. I clock my P4 to 3.45Ghz and it still maxes out at 20-something tracks with serious plugins like Drumagog
 
ATA/133 drives are still decent performers.
An ATA/133 as the primary boot drive and 2 channels of SATA in a RAID 1 will ensure that you always have a backup of your audio. :cool:
 
FWIW,

I would think that getting a monster drive and partitioning it would make everyone happy.

That's what I do, anyways. I think the largest parition i have going is 50GB.
 
Having a dedicated audio drive on its own controller is preferable to partitioning a single drive, as the controller is never required to perform some OS or application request while streaming audio
 
hey I'm glad i looked at this.....I'll be building my own computer again i was looking at a 200 gig hd for an AMD 64 3400 1gig ram system...so having 2 SATA hds would be the way to go because one of the hds doesnt have to have the OS loaded on it?
 
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