new pc system - again

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MBusby

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Sorry to bother everyone again....but here is another quote I got.

Asus P3CE 750 Mhz Mother Board
Intel PIII 733Mhz 133 Mhz bus
256MB 133Mhz
Seagate 20GB 7200 RPM SCSI Hard Drive
HP 9200i Internal
Matrox G400 32MB SDRAM Dual Head AGP Adapter
Medium Tower Case
Windows 98

I really need help putting this system together - I'm getting somewhat disoriented trying to figure out every aspect of this system. Simply for home recording - nothing fancy.

Does anyone know about the Asus P3CE motherboard?

Thanks for all your help.
 
Oops...misprint - Actually, make that 2 Seagate 20GB 7200 RPM Hard Drives.
 
Can the win98. Go with NT. Also, you may look into using a IDE Raid card ( www.promise.com ) and go with some lower priced ATA-66 LV rated 7200 rpm drives. You will save a few buck here that can get you more RAM.

I am not sure that you really need that fast of a processor. Any P-III will do, but those over 600MHz ones are really spendy. You can save a few bucks by getting a P-III 550 and use the saved money for RAM.

But this is all just suggestions. I am not suggesting that you totally disregard SCSI. SCSI is wayyyyyyyyyyy better for music production. But I stand on the processor suggestion. More Ram will benefit you. You are probably not going to need as much processing at mix as you think, and a 750MHz processor is just maybe a little overkill. A friend of mine uses a P-II 450 with about 330 of PC-100 RAM, and that machine fly's!!!

But you should really think about NT instead of 98 for recording. It will work much more stable.

Ed
 
Yeah, slow your processor down a bit (but get a motherboard that will handle the faster ones so when you upgrade, all you've got to change is the chip).

The video card will rock - I think it was Cooperman that was waxing lyrical about the dual head Matrox - but get a second monitor. Life will indeed be good with two monitors ...

- gaffa
 
No it's not. You will not see better results with SCSI over ATA for recording. We've been through this 20 times in the last two weeks and several links have been posted to some great articles on the subject.

Anyway MBusby...if this is just a recording machine then why are you sticking that Matrox in there? Talk about overkill.

Also, you will not see much performance gain over 128MB unless you're doing a lot of MIDI/looping or running memory intensive applications. You *could* save some money by sticking with 128MB. But, there is nothing wrong with having too much RAM.

And, as Ed said, you might want to look into a slightly slower CPU and save yourself some money. For instance. If you buy a PIII 500 today for (say) $250 then upgrade to a PIII-700 next year for (say) $250, your total cost will have been $500 assuming you don't sell the extra CPU. But if you buy the 700Mhz today, you'll go down $680 and will have overspent $180. If you think that the difference in performance between a 500Mhz and a 700Mhz is that great these days your fooling yourself. Software is well behind the game.

Years of watching prices has helped me to discover the "golden" rule. That is, stay 1 year behind the latest greatest and you will always come out ahead moneywise AND see more than adequate performance. Just make sure that you have something to upgrade to (e.g., get PC133 memory even if you're buying a CPU that runs on a 66Mhz FSB like the Celeron. That way you can plop your PIII 733 in there when they're cheap and not have to upgrade anything else)

Finally, as Ed also recommended. Either go with WindowsNT4 or Windows2000 (be aware of driver support). You will thank yourself in about 2 weeks :)

Slackmaster 2000
 
Yeah, the matrox might be overkill for a recording machine, but oh, the sheer, unadulterated joy of running two 19" monitors for any program (recording included.)

Pure bliss... :)
 
The Motherboard issue is important. Upgradeable is good the Asus P3V4X seems to meet all the criteria necessary for tommorows and todays technology at least for the next 2 weeks. This one uses the less expensive 133mhz SDRAM rather than getting rammed on the new and expensive RDRAM. Get a Celeron 550 for now @$100 or less. Then when the giga chips come down move on up. Here's the link to P3V4X.
http://www.asus.com/products/motherboard/pentiumpro/p3v4x/index.html
 
Check out the ABIT BE6 Revision II motherboard (about $130). It can run up to Pentium III 700MHz. Plug in a Pentium II 450MHz to start (about $135 vs PIII 500MHz price of approx $280). Lots of nice features on this motherboard. It's a tried and true workhorse and revision II just came out last October. If you use www.pricewatch.com to find it make sure you read the detailed info. You might be buying an older version at the same price as the new revision.

I'm in the process of building a computer strictly for recording. Just got the motherboard in last week. Full tower case (I want a lot of room) is on the way. Considering IBM Deskstar 7200RPM drives.

Good Luck
 
* I don't know what software application(s) you plan to run on your new box, but Windows 2000 would actually be the ideal way to go over Win95/98 or WinNT4, unless your applications do not support NT4 or Windows 2000.


* The dual-monitor capability is a very nice feature, but the Matrox is ALSO a very stable graphics card (i.e. -- the drivers are well engineered) and will keep up handily at generating 2-D graphics at high resolution with the fastest Piii processors. Professional graphics users have known about Matrox stability for aeons (Matrox has been around making graphics cards since 1975! ).

* IDE is fine for general purpose applications, but SCSI is very very good in a multi-tasking environment like audio / music production. An IBM or Maxtor ATA/33 type hard drive in the 30GB or higher range would be sufficient for multi-track audio recording.

With 2 SCSI drives, you COULD do hardware RAID if you wanted to. With a high-quality USA-made mobo like the Supermicro P6DBU, you could add a $250 Ultra2 SCSI RAID adaptor (the Adaptec RAIDPort 3 card) and configure a RAID-0 volume with your 2 SCSI hard drives for a total of 40GB of *fast* RAID-0. This would be a bootable RAID volume (only under NT4 or Windows 2000). The P6DBU also supports dual processors as an option. A Slot-1 650 MHz "Coppermine" Piii processor would be the best price/performance solution that you could do right now, and would be more than fast enough for general audio/music production.

P6DBU info at: http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/MotherBoards/440BX/p6dbu.htm

Picture of P6DBU at: http://www.supermicro.com/images/Imag_html/P6DGU.htm

They are available from several retail sources. Just check price search websites like Price Watch at:
http://www.pricewatch.com/

...for Supermicro mobo vendors and prices.
 
OK, maybe this system is too powerful - but I purchase a system about every 6 years, so I don't want to fall behind too quickly.

In addition to recording, I will be running basic programs - i.e. Word, Excel, Outlook, internet, MP3 files, etc...is Windows 2000 compatible with all these applications now?

Regarding the Matrox - I didn't realize it was suited for 2 monitors, something I will not be using. If I don't need this feature and I'm not playing high tech graphic games -is there a more resonable sound card I can get? The price differences seem to be moderate, so should I stay with this card?

What is RAID?

Again, I am still learning.

Any additional advice about this system would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks everyone for all your help.
 
RAID stands for either Redundant Array of Independant Disk or Redundant Array of Inexpensive disks (it all depends on who you talk to).

It is basically different ways of configuring hard drives to achieve either faster disk access, redundancy (leading to better data protection) and in some RAID configurations, transaction logging.

There are three or four basic RAID configurations (but there are a number of other). These are known as RAID 0, RAID 1 RAID 0+1and RAID 5

In a RAID 0 config, the disks are 'striped'. This means that they operate in tandem - a byte is written to disk one, then the next byte is written to the disk two, the third is on disk one etc. This means that the read/write speed is effectively doubled. RAID 0 provides the fastest version

RAID 1 is used for data security, and is also known as 'mirroring'. This is pretty easy - what you have is two disks that contain identical data, so if one disk fails, the system doesn't fall in a heap (the machine keeps going cos it can still get the data of the drive that didn't fail)

RAID 0+1 (which has another name that I can't remember right now) is basically a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1 (it requires a minimum of four disks), combining a striped set of disks that is mirrored by a second striped set.

Lastly, RAID 5 uses a third (5th etc) disk to create a transaction log of all the actions that have happened recently. This means that if there was to be a catastrophic failure (ie. both disks in a mirrored set), provided that you had a recent backup of the mirrored set, you could use the data on thr transaction disk to recreate the data that had been lost.

There probably isn't a lot of need for RAID 0+1, RAID 1 or RAID 5 in recording applications, but it is _very_ common (read: basically a neccesity) to have a good RAID config in all but the most basic of servers. A full RAID setup wouldn't go astray if you were running a pro studio and needed the data security to protect your clients tracks.

As a side note, generally RAID configurations are used primarily for data stroage - the OS would be kept on another disk(s) that is not part of the RAID setup.

There is probably heaps of excellent articles around on RAID, but it was quicker if I just typed it out.

Cheers

- gaffa
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by MBusby:
...In addition to recording, I will be running basic programs - i.e. Word, Excel, Outlook, internet, MP3 files, etc...is Windows 2000 compatible with all these applications now?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes. Office 97 (SR-1) and Office 2000 are fully compatible with Windows 2000. The freebie Media Player 6.4 that comes with Internet Explorer 5 can play back MP3 files, which is included on the Windows 2000 CD-ROM.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Regarding the Matrox - I didn't realize it was suited for 2 monitors, something I will not be using. If I don't need this feature and I'm not playing high tech graphic games...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The good thing about the Matrox card is that it is fast and stable. You actually can buy a "non-dualhead" version of the 32MB Matrox G-400 -- ususally referred to as the "OEM version," but they only cost about US$10 or US$15 less. You could save even more though by going with the 16MB "non-dualhead" (OEM) Matrox G-400 card. These are about US$45 to US$60 less than the full-up dualhead G-400 with 32MB of display RAM. You still get every gram of speed and stability with the 16MB OEM Matrox G-400 that you would get otherwise!


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>...-is there a more resonable sound card I can get<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I think you meant video card, but now that we're talking soundcards... I keep recommending over and over again the LynxONE soundcard. It's very very quiet and has superb A/D convertors. It's also FULLY compatible with Windows 2000. Street price is under US$500. Also has a fast low latency MIDI interface on the soundcard as well. Check it out at:
http://www.lynxstudio.com/


Independent audio tests of the LynxONE at:
http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/LynxONE/
 
gaffa ,

thank you for the very good explanation of RAID... i also tinker with digital video production so RAID comes up alot in that field , and now i see the benefits of it..

so really , if you connected 4 9 gig scsi drives in RAID-0 "formation" (i dont know what to call it), you in theory would have a 36 gig scsi drive 4 times faster than one drive working by itself?

how do you go about this ? where do you put 4 hard drives or 2 hard drives in a computer or do you keep them externally? and do you need an adapter card to make it all work? i guess im still full of questions.. anyone know any good resources for RAID info ?

- eddie -
 
Thank you to everyone for all your help. I have a lot more information now. I am very grateful.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Eddie N:
...so really , if you connected 4 9 gig scsi drives in RAID-0 "formation" (i dont know what to call it), you in theory would have a 36 gig scsi drive 4 times faster than one drive working by itself?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


4-each 9GB drives in a RAID-0 array with 1 data stripe would have a 36GB capacity and would have 4 times the read/write throughput of a single 9GB drive. Track-to-track access would be about the same as a single drive though.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>...how do you go about this? where do you put 4 hard drives or 2 hard drives in a computer or do you keep them externally?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


You can mount the drive mechanisms externally or internally. If you go "internal" (inside the CPU chassis), you'll have to make sure you have a large enough power supply to adequately handle the power demands of your motherboard + peripherals AND the drives. Going with an external RAID chassis is probably equally as popular as going with an internal installation.

As for myself, I have 3 SCSI busses in my system and a combination of individual "external" SCSI hard drives that I use for various purposes (booting to Linux, Solaris, Netware, or SCO-UNIX) that are in self-contained drive housings, as well as a pair of 9GB IBM Ultra2 10kRPM SCSI hard drives housed in hot-plug RAID modules. The 2 IBM 9GB Ultra2 drives are configured as a RAID-0 array and work off of a dedicated SCSI RAID channel. These drives can be quickly unplugged from the front of my Supermicro SC-760ATX chassis... http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/Chassis/sc760A.htm
I will soon be replacing these 2 IBM drives with a pair of Quantum 18GB kRPM Ultra-160 drives, also as a RAID-0 performance array. The RAID adaptor I use is the Adaptec Ultra2 RAIDport iii, which plugs into the motherboard's Ultra2 SCSI channel via a special slot. If I need to, I can also boot from the four other older Wide/Ultra SCSI drives I have in external housings (a pair of 4GB IBM drives and a pair of 2GB Quantum drives) from a different SCSI channel than the RAID channel. I also have a narrow SCSI hard drive (an older Quantum Fireball 1.2 GB) that I use to copy WAV file to for my Akai sampler to utilise via its SCSI port.

Just toget an idea of what I'm talking about when I mention *external* SCSI RAID chassis hardware:
http://www.scsipro.com/


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>and do you need an adapter card to make it all work?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


The *preferred* method is to have a hardware RAID solution -- most popularly done these days with a PCI host controller card. There are also software RAIDs -- like the free RAID-0 and RAID-1 in NT4 and Windows 2000 -- but you can't boot off of a "software RAID" volume. To some, this is not a real problem. Another drawback with software RAID is that it hogs some of your processing power. Doing RAID-3, RAID-4, and RAID-5 as a software RAID is even worse. So, the preferred method is to use dedicated hardware for RAID because these controllers can perform all the I/O handling and RAID parity calculations without taxing the host CPU (like yer Celeron or whatever).

I mentioned my RAID controller above (the Adaptec RAIDport iii), which is a relatively inexpensive SCSI RAID controller designed to work ONLY with motherboards that have a built-in RAIDport slot. If you don't have a RAIDport slot on your Supermicro, Iwill, Asus, Tyan, etc... mobo then you will need a PCI RAID host controllers. A couple of SCSI RAID host controller manufacturers:
http://www.megaraid.com/
http://www.dpt.com/


As a viable alternative, an IDE RAID controller manufacturer:
http://www.3ware.com/index.shtml
 
Eddie N,

I got off my arse and found a RAID article for you. I haven't read the entire thing (it's reasonably long), but it does contain pretty pictures, and seems to explain RAID quite well. I'm a big fan of pictures in articles :)

Once you get to the bit about the Dell RAID solutions, you can probably stop, cos the info stops and the marketing starts

Anyway, it's at http://www.dell.com/us/en/biz/topics/vectors_1999-raid.htm
 
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