New Cpu for my hom studio

[kyleycoyote]

i have been building up a stdio for sometime, have presonus firestudio, monitors, programs, and mics, but i've using a sony vaio laptop and it's getting old. my band mate has now got a super cpu. a mac of coarse, but i just don't like macs, it's just my preference. and i'm thinking of building a cpu like have been thinking about for a while, but i'm skeptical. need some advice on things i need for it(a desktop). i already have monitors so a desktop computer is all i really need. price isn't really an issue, but i'd say 2,000 is the max preferably cheaper haha. but i'm just recording one band(my own) and whos knows might spawn off and record others.

thanks for any help and suggestions. i'm thinking new egg or frys to build it up, but if there are better prebuilts i'll head that way.

 

[Kingofpain678]

your best/cheapest bet would be to order the parts from new egg and build it yourself.

for the time being youll want to stay away from multi core processors since there arent TOO many programs written to use the full potential of the processors. youll want 3 to 4 gigabytes of ram, a good audio interface, probably 3Ghz processor and a dvd/rw drive.

so if you get a motherboard that supports all that then youll be well on your way. but remember this is just a general idea of what youll need and im a newb idiot so dont take my word only for this.

 

[Bristol Posse]

With your budget I'd take a look ar ADK Pro Audio (Google em) they build systems specifically designed for audio and do it very well and will tailor it to your needs if you call them and tell them what your needs are (assuming you're in the US)

If your not comfortable with the research needed to build you're own well executed, broadly compatable audio PC that is the way to go IMO

As to the Multi core statement, with all respect to king of pain, virtully every mainstream DAW in their most recent versions do take advantage of multi core processors pretty effectively. i5/i7 hyperthreading softwware is still a little way from being mainstream but a core 2 dual or core to quad or AMD Phenom is very well capitailized on by audio software in general

 

[Kingofpain678]

As to the Multi core statement, with all respect to king of pain, virtully every mainstream DAW in their most recent versions do take advantage of multi core processors pretty effectively.

wasnt aware, last i knew quad cores were close to useless.

i guess this is what i get for staying holed up in my house for so long

 

[Bristol Posse]

wasnt aware, last i knew quad cores were close to useless.

i guess this is what i get for staying holed up in my house for so long

As a general statement for the "average" home user, yes thats probably true. doing a home budget on Excel, updating your facebook status, emailing pictures around, booking flights on expedia, picking netflix movies etc will be (almost) completely uneffected by a multi core. it may even be fractionally (although probably not perceptable) slower since the individual core speeds of a mid range multi are slower than those of a mid range single core and these kind of applications are probably only going to use one of the cores

For processor intense applications such as video editing production, Audio productions and some gaming, the devekopers have been relatively quick at taking advantage of the power of multi core so that most of these applications do take addvantage

And it never hurts to get out more

 

[noisewreck]

your best/cheapest bet would be to order the parts from new egg and build it yourself.

Why does everybody automatically go to Newegg.com? Sure they have good prices, but not always.

I say use www.shopping.com to search for the particular product and buy from the store that has the best price/service. A lot of online shops subscribe to this server (including newegg BTW, but you got amazon.com, tigerdirect, directron, etc. as well), and they are all rated. So you can create your list, and then use this service to get the best prices.

 

[noisewreck]

As for hardware, I'd say go quadcore, at least 3GB of RAM, 4GB is better, however Windows XP will not "recognize" all 4GB, it will report something like 3.5GB... without going into the deep technical details as to "what and why", you don't need to worry about this, as the "lost" memory does get used by some background processes.

I would also get at last 2 separate drives, one for the OS/Programs, the other for Audio project. My machine has 4 drives, one for OS/Programs, one for Audio projects, another one for samples, and the 4th one is my "My Documents" folder, yes, I've redirected "My Documents" folder to use a drive on it's own