Buying new PC - please help

[RichyRich]

Need advice. Getting new PC soon

I'm a musician (drummer mostly) who jumped in to recording. I know little – year or so in to it - but have really come a long way. Getting great results and having tons of fun.

this is what I currently have...
Presonus FireStudio Project - 10 x 10 Firewire interface – 8 XMAX PreAmps
Cubase Studio 4
ToonTrack - EZ Drummer - dfh Expansion (Drumkit from Hell)
Behringer B2031A external monitors

I've been using my home PC - Long story short I need to get a machine dedicated to only this type of stuff. I'm not a computer wiz - troubleshooting, when the need arises, is very painful. So, I'd like to do this and keep it simple and painless.

I've done a little homework. Also, I'm trying not to spend over $1200. It will run on XP (32 or 64?)

This is what I've come up w/ for a wish list so far...
Asus P5Q-EM intel g45 chipset
Core2 Duo E8400 3.0G
MWave 4GB DDR2 800
WD 500gb WD5000AAKS SATA2 16mb 7200rpm

Other component include…
LIAN LI PC-V350B (black) mini micro atx tower
ZALMAN cnps7700-cu pure copper base cpu cooling fan
COOLER MASTER extreme power 500w ATX 12v v2.01 ul & fcc ATX power supply
(x2) KDS K-22B2W 22" widescreen LCD 1680x1050
LITE ON IHAS220-08 20x superallwrite SATA+lightscribe

I have little knowledge with this. This list is from what I’ve gathered previously on these forums – don’t know about compatibility but was told this stuff is compatible.

I’d also like to get an another internal HD – not sure how many Gigs - was thinking 80 ???
Do I need XP64??? Or is 32 okay

All help is greatly appreciated. Please advise. Thanks in advance, rick

 

[wheelema]

MWave will also assemble the box for you for approx. $75 which is money well spent if you have never done it before.

 

[357mag]

I don't think you need a 64 bit operating system. You can use more RAM with one but if you do decide to get one make sure there are 64 bit drivers for all your hardware.

I just use 32 bit XP Professional and it works just fine. Maybe when I rebuild again in about 4 years I will buy Windows 7 64 bit provided I can find all the necessary drivers. And provided there will be a 64 bit version of that operating system.

Good idea to build your own computer. You can pick all the components yourself and end up with a dynamite system. That's what I recently did and I'm very happy.

 

[RichyRich]

I do plan on going to mvav to have it put together.

357 - What did you get? how much?
what do you think of what I've picked out so far?

 

[357mag]

Here is what I assembled:

Intel DP35DP Motherboard
Intel Q6600 2.4 GHZ Processor Quad-Core
Western Digital Velociraptor Hard Drive
Seagate Hard Drive
3 GB Crucial RAM
nVidia GeForce 8800 GT Graphics Card
E-MU 1212 Sound Card
Antec Power Supply

I wasn't keeping track of the cost but the original cost before I decided to upgrade to the Velociraptor was maybe between $700 and $900. Not really sure.

The Velociraptor is a 10K Hard Drive. I just was so damn curious that I had to go out and buy one. I would now recommend to anyone not to buy one. They are very quiet of course and perform fine, but any speed increase you get over a normal 7200 RPM Drive is small. But I do like the smaller 150GB size because I really don't like huge drives.

My graphics card is also excessive. I bought it because I originally intended to game on my machine. But then I later decided not to. So you wouldn't need a fancy graphics card.

I don't recognize many of the components you selected, but I am not a computer geek and there is so much out there to know about. But you should get good performance.

 

[fritzmusic]

Just make sure with that Presonus interface, you have it going through a Texas Instruments or VIA firewire chipset that supports a 400MB/s connection or you're going to be going crazy trying to get that thing going right in between the clicks, pops and droputs.

The Nvidia chipsets as well as a host of others default these days to the lowest speed of 800MB/s and don't "down shift" properly specific to the Presonus products which demands a strict 400MB/s connection- which is like the lowest speed of Firewire. I've had troubles on my own system here with that.

http://www.presonus.com/media/pdf/interface_comparison.pdf

I skimmed over the specs you gave us at Asus and it doesn't specify the exact chipset specific to the Firewire although historically, Intel ultilized with TI chips on those integrated IEEE 1394 busses so you should be fine so long as it's strictly Intel. Just keep in the back of your mind if it doesn't work right the first time you plug the Firestudio in then that's a likely culprit. Worst case scenario, you pop in an aftermarket card for like $20.

 

[NeveSSL]

Also make sure everything will fit into that micro case. It sounds like it may be made for short boards (m-atx I believe). Also make sure that your cooler will have clearance in the case.

In fact, I wouldn't get that case. Lian-Li cases are one of the absolute best cases (in fact, I plan on buying one... one day ), but they are expensive and you probably need to get something other than a micro case.

Just a thought.

You should be able to build a killer PC for $1200... you can build a really good one for $500.

Brandon