sorry for posting this question yet again, but advice is greatly appreciated

  • Thread starter Thread starter minofifa
  • Start date Start date
minofifa

minofifa

New member
hey everybody,
Let me start by saying sorry for posting another "is this computer good" question. I know there is a ton on here that i can search through. the thing is i can't see to find any info on the specifics of what i'm looking for.

I'm planning on buying a new system exclusivly to be used as a media computer (audio, mp3, some dvd's). I'm looking for the best performance/quality for my canadaian dollar (your american penny). On my search tigerdirect.ca has the cheapest prices for performance. This is the computer i'm looking at http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/configdetails.asp?Base=710860
I'm gonna load it up with a 3 gig p4 and 1 gig of ram, and a large hard drive. I cannot seem to find anything about the other parts of it though such as the mobo, fans, power, case etc... i was wondering if any of you techies could give me a thumbs up or down on this thing before i go in blindfolded. I like the price and all the specs i can find seem to be in order.
I don't want to build anything myself as i don't have time and am definately not a "hand's on" guy. Any suggestions?

Thanks again everybody, you are really doing me a huge favor.
 
As a personal note I'm not too fond of TigerDirect.

With that said... to answer your question about the quality of the parts I think you've answered it yourself i.e. you cannot find info on them. That's how they keep the price of the machines down. You don't know the quality level of the products that you're purchasing. Usually the price is kept low because you are getting bargain basement prices on bargain basement products.

The original price of $839 does not include the upgrades you're chosing. For the price you looking at I think you could do better having someone build one for you. At the very least... take a deep breath and search the web a bit more. You can find plenty of great offers for barebones computers that you can finish off yourself.
 
thanks for the heads up easto, may i ask what is wrong with tigerdirect? is it their service? shabby quality? shipping hassle? all good things to know.

I knew with the upgrades i wanted it would be around 1300, that is fine with me. It is hard to search for the right pc. Maybe i'll just go into a store and have em buiild me one (gulp).

buying a computer is so hard!
 
Yea.. I think the custom route is still the way to go but I'm biased since I have a computer biz, and also build computers when I can. ;) I dunno of the speicifics of what you're looking for but $1300 will build a pretty serious custom machine. Judging by what you get for $840 at Tigerdirect, I'd say you can do alot better. Nice thing about buying a local custom is you're gonna have an easier time getting ahold of a human when you need some help...
 
yup i will agree with ye now.

i guess my next question is, is there some sort of table available which describes the proper components to suggest when custom making my pc for a DAW? i know a lot has been said in the various posts around this site but they are all strewn about and more important out of date now. I am paranoid about getting a computer and having something new come out next week. I know that is the point of computers but what i mean is i dont want to get excessivly old technology.

help is hugely appreciated gents. Thanks a lot
 
The motherboard is where it's at.

Get yourself an Asus mobo (like a P4P800) and everything else falls into place.

However remember new technology is always around the corner. The Next Big Thing will be the new pci bus which will see speeds move from a few hundred MB/sec to several GB/sec
 
The nice thing about getting a custom is you're not screwed if you buy something today and something new comes out tomorrow you have to have. Just add it... or worst case you can always yank the motherboard and toss something new in (although you may have to reinstall windows)
Personally I'm biased toward AMD Athlon XPs since they're so cheap and can be overclocked to get impressive performance on a shoe-string budget. At any rate, regardless of whether you choose Intel or AMD, it's alot more cost effective to be about 6 months behind the curve. State of the art is a waste of money. First thing as you pick your stuff out is to get a case with the most intense power supply you can. A nice ATX case with a quality 450 watt PS will make it through several revisions of your computer before it's in the trash...
 
I'd recomend to get you started:

-Asus or Intel Board
-Pentium or Athlon Processor (I'm partial to pentium myself)
-1 Gb Any brand name memory (I use Kingston)
-Any cheap AGP video card (I don't recommend using integrated ones because they sometimes eat up system resources)
-I highly recommend Antec cases. I was very surprised at the quality vs. price and mine is very quiet too. Make sure you get at least a 350 watt power supply If you get a pentium processor
-Fast Western Digital or Maxon hard drive with an 8mb cache (get something with a good warranty, hard drives can crap out)
-Stay away from creative cdr drives. I've had two die on me. My old sony cdr drive has lasted me forever. Check the online reviews for more current recommendations.
-Any USB keyboard will work
-Spend the extra few bucks on an optical mouse, they are well worth it.
-It's a good idea to also get a second smaller hard drive to run your OS so that your largest one is free'd up for strictly audio.
-don't get roped into buying a creative labs audigy sound card. No matter what the sales guy tells you, they suck for recording.
 
exactly the kindof info i was in search of... thanks a bunch. I agree with the staying behind the curve by 6 months at least. I know i can't afford state of the art so i'm very content with a 2.8 gHz processor. I still have a couple of questions.

1. i got a magazine in front of me and it is going on about picking the proper chip set. I rarely see this as an option in customizing my comp. is it important or do they generally come built with a good chipset. it says the intel 875P is the king of chipsets right now, is this current? agree?

2. For a mobo i'm looking at the ASUS P4P800-D. This a good choice or overkill?

3. I'm wondering about RAID. is it a new protocal for hard drives? is it worth looking into?

4. INtel or AMD!!! haha sorry to ask but i'm just looking for insight. lets not turn this into a crusade. I'm looking at the prices and the Intel P4 3.0 ghz with 800 FSB, as well as the AMD ADA 3000 64 bit socket 754 are BOTH $350 (canadian). Is there a better choice STRICTLY from a DAW point of view. Since price isn't an issue, i'm about performance. would you agree that both chips are equal in performance (the specific models i have chosen that is).

Again i really appreciate all of the help and advice gents. if my daw ends up making me millions i'll give each responding person a slice of the pot.

thanks.
 
well i was doing some browsing on the ASUS website and found some info that was the opposite of what i thought i knew. I though the P4P800 was their flagship mobo but that is made for the 865PE chipset. I thought that the 875P chipset was the leader right now. To run the 875P, I would need the P4C800. Is this a good mobo choice?
thanks
 
Athlons run music software better than intels at the moment, and you can pick up an athlon 64 which will do scary things to intel when 64bit XP is released.
 
shutupandshave said:
Athlons run music software better than intels at the moment, and you can pick up an athlon 64 which will do scary things to intel when 64bit XP is released.
Click to expand...

So what? Unless Cakewalk and Steinberg start writing 64 bit versions of their apps, you won't see a dramatic speed increase.

I'm doubting current software would even run on XP64.
 
DAFFYDRUNK said:
Yea.. I think the custom route is still the way to go but I'm biased since I have a computer biz, and also build computers when I can. ;)
Click to expand...
I'm not in the computer biz, and before this computer I'm using I had never put a computer together. I had installed ram, and put in a new hard drive on other computers, but that is about as far I had been with installing computer parts.

With that said, I'd highly recommend building your own custom PC because you can save a lot. I say can, because it really depends. A PC magazine, (forgot which one), did a test where they built up a custom PC and compared it with buying a retail prebuilt PC. The problem with this test was that they were going for a "mid range" PC, while I went for a higher end route. I ended up spending just a tad over $2000, but for what I ended up getting I would have paid probably closer to $3000, and then I most likely wouldn't know half the components inside my computer.

To answer your questions, I'm not sure about the chipset thing, but I know 875 is better which is why I chose a motherboard with that.

Raid is basically 2 things. Basically you will have 2 hard drives of identical size and model, and one method is when one hard drive will act as a mirror, copying everything from the other drive. This is good if you have important files you want to ensure doesn't get destroyed in the rare case that you have a drive failure. The other method takes 2 drives, and makes them act as one drive on your system. This is supposed to speed up file transfers, while also giving what seems like one larger hard drive, but it does require some CPU usage to do this. You can also have 4 drives set up to do both methods, where you not only have 2 drives each acting as 1, to give you 2 virtual drives, then you have one mirroring the other. I don't remember which method is which, but one is called Raid 1 and the other is Raid 0.

I don't think I'd say the Asus P4P800 is overkill, because I'm using the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe. The primary difference, (besides price), is the P4P800 uses the 865PE chipset, while the P4C800 uses the 875P chipset. Don't ask me why one is better, I'm not that smart ;)

You might want to be aware of some new stuff coming as soon as this fall like PCI Express, DDR2, and even Sata 300 might be something to look into. Although for that I would recommend a site more directed towards computer stuff such as AnAndTech.com, or my favorite, TomsHardware.com.
 
Yes it does run on 64 bit processors.
The decrease that you'll see from OS overheads will make a difference in the number of tracks you can have under the 64 but system.

edit: raid 0 = striping (which is making two disks appear as one disk, and increasing access times and speed, but lessening reliability), raid 1 is mirroring (your second disk keeps a constant backup of your data)
 
minofifa said:
well i was doing some browsing on the ASUS website and found some info that was the opposite of what i thought i knew. I though the P4P800 was their flagship mobo but that is made for the 865PE chipset. I thought that the 875P chipset was the leader right now. To run the 875P, I would need the P4C800. Is this a good mobo choice?
thanks
Click to expand...
The P4P800 is quite a bit cheaper than the C800 and performs just as well, or so close you'd never notice. Do a google on those models & check out the performance tests.
I currently use the P4P800, solid as steel
 
thanks bullshit uhhhh... i mean bulls hit (man i can't believe it took me that long to notice that.....). I was thinking that the p4P800 would serve my purpose and it's 100 bucks less or even more. Raid kindof sounds neat but not something i need right at the moment. I want to get two hard drives, is SATA the way to go these days?
 
SATA is slightly faster than PATA, and you get the nice skinny serial cables.

That P4P800 also supports Raid 0, if needed in the future
 
Some soundcards dont like you using raid as it uses up too many resources.
It's best to get an 80gb sata drive as your system drive, and a further 160/200 sata (big) drive as your music drive.
The prices are very similar.

You dont want to be saving music onto your system drive.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top