Another "Help me with comp specs" thread.

[DaveBlack]

In the market for a new PC [will not switch to apple lol] . I'm looking to do the barebones thing and have one of these local mom and pop places build it. What specs should i be aiming for? 85% mixing, 15% light recording - no more than 2 or 3 tracks at a time. Won't be hooked up to the internet, don't need to run anything other than the usual. I usually get about 3 years outta my PC's before they start not being able to handle new programs and plugins. So i'm trying to think ahead a little here too. Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Vinny]

Apple if you want the longest life.
Yes, I read your whole post. But seriously.
There are well known engineers still running on a freaking Apple G5.
Pricey, but they will last your far more than 3 years.

 

[DaveBlack]

i know i know - all the bells and whistles but honestly, i got too many financial responsibilities to justify dropping that much on a computer. Besides I don't feel like using workarounds for all the great free plugs i have that aren't available for mac.

The studio I work at is all mac so I use them all the time. Still prefer PC though.

 

[Morgan C]

3 years seems like a fairly short lifespan for a PC? Maybe not if you want a REALLY good computer all the time, but my mixing computer is 4 years old AND a laptop and it still runs really well. Do you just find the specs not good enough, or is Windows itself too slow (if it's 3 years old you probably should have reformatted or something by now, just to get a clean slate and erase all the rubbish programs one installs over the years).

 

[DaveBlack]

yeah i cleaned house on it about a year ago and never abused it anyway. I really just think i'm under-spec'd and ready to upgrade. It wasn't necessarily top of the line when i got it anyway. more like middle of the line lol.

I mean basically it's like, what's gonna allow me to work smoothly without having to worry about my processor melting because i drop a delay plug, ya know?

4 gigs of ram?
type of processor?

and obviously, I plan on tweaking windows to strip it down to the minimum as well.

 

[XnaySaturo]

What's your budget?

 

[DaveBlack]

low-balling around $400 (I dont need a new monitor or anything), expecting more like $600. Hoping for maybe a middle ground around $500 because i gotta couple things on the car that need to be fixed, need a new interface and this may be the engagement year.

 

[Notuern]

Im sorry to say though that you wont get far with 400$.. ;/
I personally prefer Intel(Especially for "real" processing.), they just seem to run far more stable to me then AMD.

If you want a computer that will really hold for long, you need to get a high performance Intel i7(Not sure about the best model at the moment.) and 8gb of ram running at ~2000mhz.
The motherboard is extremely important as well, but i haven't stayed up to date for a while, so i cant recommend anything at all in this department.

But if you on the other hand want a computer that will last more then enough for the purposes you intend, you wont need more then a high performance i5 and 4gb of 1333mhz ram(Which might be possible for about 500$.).

Apple if you want the longest life.
Yes, I read your whole post. But seriously.
There are well known engineers still running on a freaking Apple G5.
Pricey, but they will last your far more than 3 years.

In case you didnt know, both Mac and PC lasts just as long, the difference is that while PC's constantly releases new parts, you have to wait for a whole new series of Mac's to get an upgrade.
So yes, PC's gets outdated faster, but they dont "loose" more performance compared to Mac at all.

That being said, the optimal solution would be running a Mac if possible(I still wouldn't though.).

 

[DaveBlack]

Nice! Thanks man, thats what I was looking for. Anybody else, feel free to add.

 

[XnaySaturo]

You can probably get 6gigs of ram for about 100$, a decent 1366 motherboard for 200$, and an i7 for 300$. That's if you have everything else from another system, and you can scale down depending on your needs (4gb memory, i5 instead of i7, etc). This would last you more than 3 years though.