New System Build (opinions and queries?)

jamtheguitarman

jamtheguitarman

New member
At the moment, im running an old socket 754 AMD64 3400+ 2gig RAM system and need to build a new one. My plan is to build the new system and use my current system as a slave.


Antec Sonata Designer - With 500W EarthWatts PSU - £76

ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP AiLifestyle Series P35 Socket 775 Socket eSATA 8 channel Audio ATX Motherboard - £94

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache (2x4MB (4MB per core pair) Retail Boxed Processor - £168

Corsair 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory C5(5-5-5-18) - £80

Sapphire HD 3850 Pro 256MB GDDR3 Dual DVI TVO PCI-E Graphics Card - £104

Seagate ST3500630AS 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 16MB Cache 7200RPM - OEM - £67

Samsung SH-S203B 20X DVD±RW/RAM / DL Serial ATA Black Bare Drive - OEM - £18

Zonet 4 Port KVM Switch with 4 Cables - £15



Thoughts?


My current soundcard is an Maudio delta 44 which i would keep and use FX teleport to join the systems.

Im a bit fuzzy as to what to do with my hard drives. I currently have 1 system drive, 1 audio drive and 1 samples drive (with EWGXP and Reaktor being my main instruments). Should i transfer the audio and samples drive to my new machine and then use a brand new system drive and just reinstall Cubase....etc leaving my current system drive in the old machine to run as the slave.

Im undecided over which OS to get, Vista 64bit? stick with XP?
I wont be running 64 bit applications right away, not until EW Play comes out.


Thanks for any help :)
 
Im undecided over which OS to get, Vista 64bit? stick with XP?
I wont be running 64 bit applications right away, not until EW Play comes out.
Click to expand...
you dont need (nor will windows address) 4 GB ram with a 32 bit OS. for me, xp is still more practical, but there will be a day when microsuck quits supporting it. IIRC, sales of xp will cease this summer.

2 GB kits of crucial ballistix are highly recommended, especially if you will be overclocking (which the q6600 does very well).

also, didnt i read of some issue with m-audio vista drivers?
a
 
toobalicious said:
you dont need (nor will windows address) 4 GB ram with a 32 bit OS. for me, xp is still more practical, but there will be a day when microsuck quits supporting it. IIRC, sales of xp will cease this summer.

2 GB kits of crucial ballistix are highly recommended, especially if you will be overclocking (which the q6600 does very well).

also, didnt i read of some issue with m-audio vista drivers?
a
Click to expand...

I do a lot of Orchestral stuff which means utilizing all available memory, so i will be using the 3gb switch if im running in 32bit. No point in not getting 4 gigs for me.
 
the service packs coming out for both vista and xp allow windows to see all that ram, the other thing about that is even if it didn't, they don't sell memory in 1.5g sticks so as things stand it isn't that big a deal if you get 4g and only use 3g. at least until the service packs are released.
 
huh? i hadnt heard that. i was under the impression that the addressable ram issue was inherent in the 32 bit OS, and that was that. a workaround would be great.

shit, i still remember *upgrading* to two sticks of 128MB, which at the time (IIRC) was around 2 bills, lol. that high performance rig was clocked past the 400MHz barrier, lol. of course, i also remember my first pc, with its 640k ram, 10MB hard drive, 286 processor @ 6 or 8 MHz, and greenscale monitor. it too cost a small fortune. and i am not even *that* old.

a
 
ASUS -- good. Seagate -- great.
I'd recommend getting some better memory, though. Kingston is very reliable. I use OCZ -- good perfomance, good reliability.
Also, why Intel? AMDs are cheaper and in my experience (I work part-time for a computer shop, mostly building gaming machines) just as good, if not better.
Biggest problem I see here is your soundcard. Why build a supercomputer but not upgrate the soundcard? Not that there's anything wrong with a Delta 44, but this computer you're working on would be wasted with a 44.
As for the hard drives -- I'm not sure what would work for you -- also, I don't have a slave system. What I have, though, is one 40 GB disk for the system, one 40 GB disk for plugins, samples, etc., and two 500 GB disks -- one with everything I'm working on, and one backup of everything I'm working on. And then when I finish a project I dump it on my external 750 gig HD and burn the files to DVD.
As far as the OS goes -- I really seriously would not recommend getting Vista. Yes, it's 64 bit, but... it's also Vista. Not a fun OS.
Anyway, that's my two cents or so.
 
Rust E-Z said:
the service packs coming out for both vista and xp allow windows to see all that ram, the other thing about that is even if it didn't, they don't sell memory in 1.5g sticks so as things stand it isn't that big a deal if you get 4g and only use 3g. at least until the service packs are released.
Click to expand...


Um, how about a 1 gig and a 2 gig stick?:D I have 3 gigs running dual channel (2x512, 2x1g)
 
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zacanger said:
ASUS -- good. Seagate -- great.
I'd recommend getting some better memory, though. Kingston is very reliable. I use OCZ -- good perfomance, good reliability.
Also, why Intel? AMDs are cheaper and in my experience (I work part-time for a computer shop, mostly building gaming machines) just as good, if not better.
Biggest problem I see here is your soundcard. Why build a supercomputer but not upgrate the soundcard? Not that there's anything wrong with a Delta 44, but this computer you're working on would be wasted with a 44.
As for the hard drives -- I'm not sure what would work for you -- also, I don't have a slave system. What I have, though, is one 40 GB disk for the system, one 40 GB disk for plugins, samples, etc., and two 500 GB disks -- one with everything I'm working on, and one backup of everything I'm working on. And then when I finish a project I dump it on my external 750 gig HD and burn the files to DVD.
As far as the OS goes -- I really seriously would not recommend getting Vista. Yes, it's 64 bit, but... it's also Vista. Not a fun OS.
Anyway, that's my two cents or so.
Click to expand...

Ive used only crucial memory in my systems so far and had no probs with it, good brand, figured id stick with it. You dont rate it?

Intel because the Q6600 is way ahead of the AMD range at the moment, price and performance wise. As much as it pains me to say that, i was an AMD guy.:)

At the moment im not really recording much live source material so I didnt really see the need to upgrade it. Its actually the Delta Omni studio thing, so its my pres/monitor control hub thing all in one. Ive had no problems with it considering what im doing at the moment. I dont really see the benefit of upgrading at the moment, would i gain much considering my situation?


Yeah i was reading the giant Vista thread, seems like i should stick with XP. If the time comes to upgrade to Vista, would i have to reformat the whole drive again to install it?
 
jamtheguitarman said:
Ive used only crucial memory in my systems so far and had no probs with it, good brand, figured id stick with it. You dont rate it?

Intel because the Q6600 is way ahead of the AMD range at the moment, price and performance wise. As much as it pains me to say that, i was an AMD guy.:)

At the moment im not really recording much live source material so I didnt really see the need to upgrade it. Its actually the Delta Omni studio thing, so its my pres/monitor control hub thing all in one. Ive had no problems with it considering what im doing at the moment. I dont really see the benefit of upgrading at the moment, would i gain much considering my situation?


Yeah i was reading the giant Vista thread, seems like i should stick with XP. If the time comes to upgrade to Vista, would i have to reformat the whole drive again to install it?
Click to expand...



Looking into it, yeah, there really isn't an equivalent to the Q6600 by AMD that's at all affordable.

As for the memory -- I can't rate Corsair honestly, having never used it myself. I've always used Kingston and OCZ and never had any problems. OCZ makes the same spec RAM cards for the same price as the Corsair package, though, so I personally would go with that one.

I'm not sure if there's a way to just migrate to Vista easily without having to backup all your files, install Vista, and then put everything back on. That'd be a question for someone who's done it already, I guess. I'm probably going to try to hold off on switching over until I really need to -- or have an excuse to. (Like when I get my next rig built and need an OS that'll support 16 GB of RAM and a PPU).
 
XP: at least for the mandatory 2 years it'll take for Vista to become user friendly - & even then I don't know what it is about Vista thant makes it worth the Gig of Ram to run it.
 
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