Hardware overkill?

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senidge

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Hi. i'm sure this question has been asked thousands of times on here, but i'm saving my hard earned cash to build myself a decent pc that i'll use for music for years hopefully and i'm just wondering what you thought of the spec
I'm surrently recording to an older pc through a mixer with built in Mic pre and mostly using guitar/keyboard/vocals but i'm thinking of using more samples and virtual instruments/plug-ins.

Intel i5 processor
ASUS P55 Chipset motherboard
4GB 1600Mhz RAM
1tb Samsung Spinpoint SATA HDD
and emu 0404 pci card (possibly open to new sound card/external interface)
windows 7

Now, i know there are going to be other things like silent power supplies, graphics cards and sound proofing the pc but based on the specs of what i see is the most important parts on the PC, will it suffice. I mean, i know it will run what i need, my old Cubase LE (first version) does, but is this spec overkill? or is there something that'll do just as good a job but lower spec. I've been trying not to ask this question and just research for ages, but i just need to know what kind of spec you lovely people use or would consider using if you were building a newsystem.

Cheers
 
I wont build a computer anymore without putting in a second backup hard drive. You can do RAID or download a free backup utility software. I use Ezbackitup- does an incremental every night while i'm cozy in bed. I don't think your specs are overkill. I'd keep shopping for a soundcard other than that Emu card. Soundcard or interface drivers for Windows 7 are still an issue too, so make sure you research that.
 
Yeah, thanks. I saw that there are some issues between the 0404 and windows 7 on another site, that's why i said i was open to other ideas. was actually thinking of an external interface next time but since there is a driver issue with the 0404 pci and windiws 7, i'm guessing i should stay away from the 0404 usb. Any suggestions?
 
Its a top notch spec, but then in 4 years it wont be so its not so much overkill as planning ahead ;)

And Jeff'as right, all the money and time you spend will be worthless if your only hard drive packs in, get two, or an external one that you can hide away incase you're studio gets robbed. Nothing is more valuable than you're work.
 
yeah i was thinking of getting an external hdd at some point but for now i was goingt o focus on the basic system. Money is a bit of an issue and i'm about half way to having enough for the system. To be honest, by the time i can afford it, there may be something better on the market anyway. Never before has a hobby i love so much, caused such frustration.
 
My opinion, go with an external interface. There are so many good options out there these days. With USB2.0 and firewire, it's easy to get overloaded with all the choices.

I think the 0404 is excellent, just limiting. I had an EMU1820 for years and loved it, but i got tired of the patchmix software.
 
Not a huge Fan of ASUS boards myself. Last time I checked they weren't using TI firewire which is a consideration if you are looking at external interfaces maybe.
Also from personal experience I've had 3 back to back quality problems with their boards on builds I did about 7-8 months ago so I'm currently steering clear as I don't have faith in their QA.
Personally I am using Gigabyte boards as they do have TI firewire and I have had zero quality problems with them

I'd Go with Western Digital and Then Seagate drives (2 drives 1 for system OS and apps and a separate recording drive) before I looked at Samsung. quality and performance has been better in my experience.

I'm not sold on the i5s myself and have found that I get better system performance out of a core 2 quad for about the same price (there's a lot more to it than the rated gHZ frequency)

As to whether it's overkill.... how close are you to maxing out your current CPU setup? If the answer is nowhere near then it's probably massive overkill. If your at 100% CPU load all the time on your current system then it is only mild overkill
 
Well, the system i'm using is an old pentium 4 2.4 processor. it's only an E Machines system so both the power supply and motherboard aren't great and i'm not even sure how fast the hardrive is. The Ram is only 266mhz so whenever i use plugins the system has a bit of trouble. I'm still learning how to record, but i can get a tune out. But as i'm still learning, i'm finding more and more things that i want to look into, If not now then in the future. The only problem is, some of these things require some specs that are close to exceeding mine. So i think it's best to build the best system i can and make it as 'future-proof' as i can. but as for the specs of the pc, i'm still learning what would be best. I chose the I5, simply because it's one of the newest processors out there and it would hopefully be longer before i wanted to upgrade. The case on my current pc is just a bog standard emachines case and i'm looking to buy a silent case when i build the system. I know it would probably just be easier to buy a ready made system but to me, they seem over priced for the specs. At least in the UK, i'm not sure what sort of cost it would be elswhere.
 
Don't get caught up in PC lust. You can build a perfectly adequate system for $800 for recording... not gaming!... that will serve you well into the foreseeable future. Whatever you buy today will be obsolete within a year. I've been in I.T. for thirty years now and I see no sign of things slowing down.

Throw all the money you can at your signal chain and monitors.
 
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