Armistice
Son of Yoda
So I don't currently record on PC... but the old AW4416 is going to die soon and in order to avoid Win 8, I'm thinking now's the time to buy a PC just for recording. I'm talking PC here, not Mac, BTW. I use Reaper on my laptop to do drum tracks and export them back into the AW, so I'm familiar with how that works and don't want to change.
I have a cousin who works for one of the major PC manufacturers and gets serious staff discounts, so I've been looking at the specs of his company's stock machines. They seem roughly to be either work or play configured. For a few reasons, the "work" ones seem to be better for audio, from what I'm seeing... they don't include fantabulous Beats International sound cards and flashing lights... etc.
I also have very little interest in modding a PC unless I absolultely have to, outside of adding RAM. Note that I can't change the specs on the machines I'm looking at, I have to buy the box as is.
Question 1
On the top two of this particular range (of four machines), the processor switches from Intel Core-i7-3770 to Intel Xeon E3-1245v2. Are there reasons I wouldn't go Xeon? I know jack about processors, really.
Question 2
The top machine in the range has a 128GD SSD NCQ + 1 TB 7200 rpm SATA. I get that SSDs are super fast etc. but don't really understand how having this additional drive comes into play with audio... do you put your OS on it? Your programs? Samples? How would I use it? The other three in this range just have the single 1 TB hard drive.
The top model also has 16GB memory and the other three have 8, so I'm leaning towards it, especially considering the pricing available to me, but don't really understand the ramifications of such a decision.
Any info useful... I've had a bit of a search with Mr Google, but not turned up anything useful as yet.
Cheers
I have a cousin who works for one of the major PC manufacturers and gets serious staff discounts, so I've been looking at the specs of his company's stock machines. They seem roughly to be either work or play configured. For a few reasons, the "work" ones seem to be better for audio, from what I'm seeing... they don't include fantabulous Beats International sound cards and flashing lights... etc.
I also have very little interest in modding a PC unless I absolultely have to, outside of adding RAM. Note that I can't change the specs on the machines I'm looking at, I have to buy the box as is.
Question 1
On the top two of this particular range (of four machines), the processor switches from Intel Core-i7-3770 to Intel Xeon E3-1245v2. Are there reasons I wouldn't go Xeon? I know jack about processors, really.
Question 2
The top machine in the range has a 128GD SSD NCQ + 1 TB 7200 rpm SATA. I get that SSDs are super fast etc. but don't really understand how having this additional drive comes into play with audio... do you put your OS on it? Your programs? Samples? How would I use it? The other three in this range just have the single 1 TB hard drive.
The top model also has 16GB memory and the other three have 8, so I'm leaning towards it, especially considering the pricing available to me, but don't really understand the ramifications of such a decision.
Any info useful... I've had a bit of a search with Mr Google, but not turned up anything useful as yet.
Cheers