
wheelema
Boner-obo
Yeah, I actually screwed up pretty bad when I built my first PC. It was a horrible, horrible experiment. Remember in Alien Resurrection when they find that lab with all the failed Ripley experiments? That.
Basically, long story short, it came out as a Mac so I took it out behind the shed and shot it. It was a mercy killing.



I'm probably the only pro system builder (former) to respond in this thread.
Buying from a system builder... or a faux system builder like Sweetwater... is a fast path to expensive overkill. A digital audio workstation (DAW) is not a power hungry application; you don't need kick-ass video, a massive CPU, and tons of memory. You are far far far better off purchasing... or assembling... only what you need and spending the savings on things that actually make music. To that end...
- Splurge on the case, but focus on cooling, not size. Throwing a huge case around gets really old, really fast. Leave the ATX motherboards to the gamers, Micro-ATX motherboards invariably come with integrated video that gives you all the video power you will ever need. You need to keep the CPU cool and you REALLY need to keep the hard drives cool so cases that mount fans in front of the HDD cage are great. Make sure your CPU cooler will fit inside your case. Look at cases that provide for large fans (that turn slowly and quietly), and move as much air as small fans that have to turn fast. Personally I love Lian-Li but they're hardly the only game in town.
- It's almost impossible to purchase single core CPUs. The Intel dual-core Celeron is an inexpensive kick-ass CPU that'll provide all the processing power you'll need.
- As noted prior Micro-ATX mobos come with integrated video. Make sure the mobo has the functionality you need, but don't splurge. Buying a pricey mobo make sense for a gamer, not for you. On-board Firewire (1394) is more reliable then using an after-market adapter though some interfaces are picky about what Firewire chipset they like. If you need Firewire make sure your components will play nice with each other.
- Personally I wouldn't go over 4GB of RAM but get the fastest RAM your motherboard supports. This allows you to pop in a faster processor after a year when prices drop if you really feel strongly about it.
- Stay away from Glyph and similar HDD... the name buys you little you can't find elsewhere for much less. SSD HDD are great, but the tech is still evolving whereas conventional SATA HDD are proven, huge, and cheap. I'd use a SSD for your boot drive if you're impatient but elsewhere it's an expensive waste. 7,200RPM is fine, 10,000RPM is nice but hardly critical. I prefer multiple 'small' drives in a RAID array to individual 1TB or 2TB drives. When I got into this game the Seagate ST225 was considered large at 20MB... MB, not GB. eSATA allows you to move huge amount of data around for corroboration or backup.
- If your mobo does not include video get the cheapest video adapter that you can. The only caveat here is to make sure that the card you buy will plug into your mobo.
- Splurge on your keyboard and mouse. These are components that you'll use day in and day out.
- Buy whatever display you want but keep in mind that money saved on a modest display can be used towards that ribbon mic you've had your eye on.
- If you want the most bulletproof Windows OS extant purchase Windows Server 2008 and gut out the server functionality. There's a web site out there that explains how but I don't have the link.
I'd worry quite a bit more about keeping the computer cool then I would about noise. There are ways of isolating the DAW if you are worried about keeping it quiet that don't involve trying to plaster 'sound damping foam' into the case.
Multiwave (www.mwave.com) will build your custom computer for $80. Just choose the components. They're prices are competitive and if you've bundled incompatible components they'll let you know.
Luck.
I'm probably forgetting something.
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