I'm thinking on buying a new computer... any ideas?

since you brought it up.....

I'm thinking about building an Athalon machine based simply on price. Where would be a good place to check on incompatability issues between Athalon and different soundcards? How do these"clashes" generaly manifest themselves?
 
Pricewatch.com

Ola is correct that pricewatch.com is the way to go.

check out cyberpowerpc.com

I went to pricewatch and found powerstartpc.com
Pretty good deals.

I got a P4 1.4 ghz with a Abit TH7 RAID motherboard.
Abit and Asus are the best.

The TH7 board allows you to create a stripe set with two hard drives which will increase performance a lot. Only problem is that if one of the drives goes they both go. Price to pay for speed.

I also got 256K of RAM which I saw Ola recommend as well.

I would also recommend making all of your hard drives 7200 RPM.
This will reduce latency. I went with all Maxtor hard drives.

Don't buy your monitor over the Internet. Shipping is too high.
 
Definitely stay away from SCSI... Go with a pentium and save yourself alot of trouble. Get as much memory as possible and at 2 HDs with at least 45 Gig on one of them. Memory is going to be the most critical part of your second to second functionality. Check out the delta 1010 or the 66 with the omni depending on how many ins you need.
 
Remember, Motu's products were originally designed for Mac. I hear a lot of problems with Audio Interfaces and Windows. Also the technical support sucks big time. So If I were you I'd consider something else. contact Motu first and ask them what Mobos, Processors and Software they support. Then contact your software manufacturer. I hear the Motu 1224 doesn't work with Sonic Foundry products, don't know about 24i.
 
Re: Pricewatch.com

JerryD said:

check out cyberpowerpc.com

I went to pricewatch and found powerstartpc.com
Pretty good deals.
Click to expand...

Excellent site, JerryD thanks!!

Now onto the stupid question in this thread:

I obviously see the benefits of building your own pc.. The only thing I've ever changed out on a pc is the soundcard.. are the other equipment (drives, etc.) just as easy? I just don't want to blow stuff up..
 
It's really easy and you would actually have a hard time putting something in the wrong place as the connectors wouldn't fit. Just read the manuals and ensure that you get rid of static electricity (i.e. touch a radiator or the sink) and you'll be fine. Maybe you have some techie friend who'll do it for a pizza but then you'd miss out on all the fun.
 
Good one giaschel. That link used to be in every post here about half a year ago. It's a must read.
 
best motherboards

I work for IBM as a network engineer so you can take my advice for whatever it is worth.

The top three motherboards that you should think about purchasing are:

SuperMicro
Abit
Asus

As for the other things you were looking into, here are my suggestions. One, do you want to have to upgrade the computer in 6 months? A year? If not, then you might want to consider purchasing a higher powered CPU (900 Mhz) or even purchasing a dual CPU board. With the prices of CPU's now going down, you can purchase a 1.4Ghz Pentium 4 for 300 on pricewatch.com. As for RAM, you will need at minimum 256M simply because Windows eats up as many resources as possible. I would also suggest either purchasing a seperate HD for music or getting a 40GB HD and partitioning it to have one drive for Windows and software and one for music. CDRWs and CD-Rom are trival and aren't to hard to shop for. So I guess that is about it. Any other questions, please feel free to post.

Dorian
 
Also....GET AS MUCH NAME BRAND STUFF AS YOU CAN!!!!!!! ESPECIALLY RAM, MOTHERBOARDS, CD BURNERS (not readers), AND HARDDRIVES!!!! I personally, as a comp builder(nothing major, but like Dorian, take this for what it's worth) reccomend Seagate and IBM. As far as SCSI goes, it's thought to be faster, but as long as you don't run any more than 4 things, you won't need it (two HDD's, CD-RW, DVD...sounds good :)). It's expensive anyways (around $300) and can be a pain in the rear to set up...but so can a computer in general. Good luck!!

In CHRIST JESUS,

Brandon
 
EXCEPT....

For copying CD's. :) SCSI would make a difference there, but not a WHOLE WHOLE lot...but a noticible difference, none the less. :)

In CHRIST JESUS,

Brandon
 
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