V
VFsticks69
New member
Can anyone tell me the best motherboard for pc recording? I was thinking an AMD dual core 4400 x2
aaroncomp
1-20-2009
Before someone tackles you on this...there is no best one.
J
jdavidb
New member
and we don't need the best motherboard anyway. You can even do great stuff with an Epox 58mvp3c-m motherboard sporting an AMD k6/2 350 mhz and 256 sdram with a 10k scsi hard drive. 
GOODLAND
New member
Audio recording doesn't require that much from a motherboard, usually.
J
jdavidb
New member
oh there are some pitfalls to avoid, definitely. Choosing a motherboard does require some attention.
One thing to look for is: if you want to use scsi hard drive, definitely get a mobo with at least one 64 bit pci slot so you can take advantage of the 64 bit ultra160 scsi controllers. Ultra 320 controllers are out there too, so the more speed the slot can handle, the better. 32 bit scsi rigs with 32-bit compatible u160 components are great, but for a DAW, 64 bit is better. The hard drive is the slowest kid in the class, so that's why I point out scsi possibilities as being more beneficial than dual 3+ gig processors in DAWs.
One thing to look for is: if you want to use scsi hard drive, definitely get a mobo with at least one 64 bit pci slot so you can take advantage of the 64 bit ultra160 scsi controllers. Ultra 320 controllers are out there too, so the more speed the slot can handle, the better. 32 bit scsi rigs with 32-bit compatible u160 components are great, but for a DAW, 64 bit is better. The hard drive is the slowest kid in the class, so that's why I point out scsi possibilities as being more beneficial than dual 3+ gig processors in DAWs.
A
ap
Member
ASUS A8V deluxe
gigabyte GA-k8ns ultra 939
I wouldn't be so cavalier about your mobo choice.
As I understand it, stability problems are often caused by motherboards- either through poor quality or incompatability issues.
You also need a socket 939 board for that CPU.
You need to make sure your soundcard and other audio related stuff won't have a problem with the chipset. Used to be VIA chipsets were problematic but I think it's been resolved with their newer stuff.
You also want to make sure the video card format won't be problem. The new PCI-E format is causing some problems for certain setups. I'm sticking to AGP for now and don't see any need to change any time soon.
Want onboard firewire, AKA IEEE 1394?
I've done alot of research lately and narrowed it down to ASUS A8V deluxe with a 3200+. This is a popular board so in addition to meeting all the above criteria, there's lot's people out there to help. Pretty sure it works with the CPU you mentioned too.
If you're afraid of VIA, the gigabyte GA-k8ns ultra 939 uses nforce 3 chipset and also is highly recommended.
gigabyte GA-k8ns ultra 939
I wouldn't be so cavalier about your mobo choice.
As I understand it, stability problems are often caused by motherboards- either through poor quality or incompatability issues.
You also need a socket 939 board for that CPU.
You need to make sure your soundcard and other audio related stuff won't have a problem with the chipset. Used to be VIA chipsets were problematic but I think it's been resolved with their newer stuff.
You also want to make sure the video card format won't be problem. The new PCI-E format is causing some problems for certain setups. I'm sticking to AGP for now and don't see any need to change any time soon.
Want onboard firewire, AKA IEEE 1394?
I've done alot of research lately and narrowed it down to ASUS A8V deluxe with a 3200+. This is a popular board so in addition to meeting all the above criteria, there's lot's people out there to help. Pretty sure it works with the CPU you mentioned too.
If you're afraid of VIA, the gigabyte GA-k8ns ultra 939 uses nforce 3 chipset and also is highly recommended.
A
ap
Member
How many tracks does it take to overload a typical UDMA 7200 drive? I know it's a shizzle load.
J
jdavidb
New member
using scsi isn't about avoiding overloads though. It's about how much a hard drive can read and write all at once, and daws have to read (playback of many tracks) and write (record, often multiple tracks) a lot at once. Scsi is ideal for that even though IDE can be convincing. Ide also has all that slower initial loading of multiple tracks and slower catching up with mix or dsp changes in the multitrack software. Scsi just does a lot more at once alongside their rather large caches. So, it's more about how much it can do right now rather than how much it can do all total.
P
plonkersaurus
New member
I would suggest an N-FORCE 4 board, manufactured by MSI Or ASUS (or maybe gigabyte)
Just get the most expensive one you can which has all the features you need (ie enough pci slots, graphics card to match (pci express), firewire, lan etc)
Its still a bit hit and miss though, just because you get an MSI or ASUS it doesnt guarantee you with rock solid stability, but the chances are alot higher than if you get a low quality board. MSI and ASUS are generally the most reliable board makers. Alot of overclockers go for Abit boards, but i trust MSI and ASUS the most.
Also try and get a board without a fan on the northbridge as they tend to either fail or become noisy.
Just get the most expensive one you can which has all the features you need (ie enough pci slots, graphics card to match (pci express), firewire, lan etc)
Its still a bit hit and miss though, just because you get an MSI or ASUS it doesnt guarantee you with rock solid stability, but the chances are alot higher than if you get a low quality board. MSI and ASUS are generally the most reliable board makers. Alot of overclockers go for Abit boards, but i trust MSI and ASUS the most.
Also try and get a board without a fan on the northbridge as they tend to either fail or become noisy.
A
ap
Member
One of the best places to look for problems is often on bbs's dedicated to specific software i.e. cubase.net or sonicmatter.com for Logic.
seems some people on the cubase.net board are having trouble with nforce4.
seems some people on the cubase.net board are having trouble with nforce4.
R
Rstiltskin
New member
yup....rme tech support has posted about some firewire...
interface problems with nvidia nforce4 glue chipset. if i had to have a amd chip motherboard today i would go with nforce3, i think.
7200rpm 8meg cache ide/sata raid0 is faster than scsi unless/untill you have 4 to 6 or more simultaneous processes. the newest sata spec has native command queing also, so more and more ide/sata is edging up on scsi, even in enterprise solutions.
scsi is the gold standard, but I would never (hardly ever) suggest to someone that does not even have an idea what motherboard to get to try installing a scsi interface/drive. unless i had a lot of extra minutes on my cell phone!
oh, yeah, www.videoguys.com/diy.html has three diff systems for do it yourselfers at 1, 2, and 3 thousand dollars. most video info is good for audio cause its both streaming data.
www.tomshardware.com another good site.
ap said:
interface problems with nvidia nforce4 glue chipset. if i had to have a amd chip motherboard today i would go with nforce3, i think.
7200rpm 8meg cache ide/sata raid0 is faster than scsi unless/untill you have 4 to 6 or more simultaneous processes. the newest sata spec has native command queing also, so more and more ide/sata is edging up on scsi, even in enterprise solutions.
scsi is the gold standard, but I would never (hardly ever) suggest to someone that does not even have an idea what motherboard to get to try installing a scsi interface/drive. unless i had a lot of extra minutes on my cell phone!
oh, yeah, www.videoguys.com/diy.html has three diff systems for do it yourselfers at 1, 2, and 3 thousand dollars. most video info is good for audio cause its both streaming data.
www.tomshardware.com another good site.
C
christiaan
Active member
To put everything a bit in perspective about what you *NEED* for recording, you should take a look at this article from April 2000 (especially the paragraph 'Road Test')
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/files/FB6EAECAE4AECE82862568D20005C6C1
It's a review of the Motu 24i recording interface.
My point is that they were able to record 32 tracks at 24/44.1 flawlessly on hardware that in 2005 we wouldn't want even if someone gave it to us for free.
In other words: In this day and age overall computer performance is not the bottleneck for hard disk recording.
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/files/FB6EAECAE4AECE82862568D20005C6C1
It's a review of the Motu 24i recording interface.
My point is that they were able to record 32 tracks at 24/44.1 flawlessly on hardware that in 2005 we wouldn't want even if someone gave it to us for free.
In other words: In this day and age overall computer performance is not the bottleneck for hard disk recording.
H
Havoc
New member
What about the Tyan K8WE S2895UA2NRF:
dual opteron (accepts dual cores)
dual scsi U320 controller sitting on a pci-x bus
dual 16x pci-e slots
dual gigabit ethernet
sataII (4 drives and raid)
usb2
firewire
Need anything else?
dual opteron (accepts dual cores)
dual scsi U320 controller sitting on a pci-x bus
dual 16x pci-e slots
dual gigabit ethernet
sataII (4 drives and raid)
usb2
firewire
Need anything else?
lukgier
New member
I've switched to Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra 939 (mentioned above) with AMD64 3.2 and 2x 1gb Geill ram. it works very well, is stable and quite fast and the small chipset's cooler is quite silent. The latest bios (8) supports x2 processors.
I thought about asus A8V Deluxe which seems to be a very good MBs but I've been using Aardvark DP 2496 which dislikes Via chipsets that's why I try to avoid them.
nforce4 doesn't seem to be a good solution for audio now.
Good luck
lG
I thought about asus A8V Deluxe which seems to be a very good MBs but I've been using Aardvark DP 2496 which dislikes Via chipsets that's why I try to avoid them.
nforce4 doesn't seem to be a good solution for audio now.
Good luck
lG