building a computer

[bryan_kilco]

After much frustration with an older Toshiba laptop with only 1GB RAM, and me scared to death to record my bands first full-length on the POS, I've decided to build a desktop. Our bassist offered to do it for me as I know nothing of the sort. From what he tells me, it will be fairly inexpensive and be a boss computer. Here's what he is talking about so far:

16gb of ram
256 bit 2gb video card
500gb hard drive
3.8ghz 6 core processor
plus a good power supply and case

We will also need to install firewire but he says that's no problem at all.

Can you guys recommend anything else that would be particularly important for, basically, a machine that will be set up for recording and maybe (light)gaming?

 

[ForHerDeadEyes]

Depending on your needs, I'd say skip the gfx-card if the motherboard have onboard graphics..
A lot of todays onboard graphics, wether it be on the motherboard or CPU can handle at least low settings on modern games.. and higher settings on older..
I recommend the Western Digital Black-series as harddrive, since they have a 5-year warranty..
For the OS I'd get a SSD.. Software, OS, and reading times from the drive will be waaaay faster..

 

[arvoitus]

Yeah, skip the graphics card and go for an SSD.

 

[blue_fAng]

1. Whats your budget?
2. What OS?

First, 16gb of RAM is too much...even 8gb is too much. If you go for 32 bit then you can use a maximum of arround 4gb and in 64 bit arround 8gb. 4 gb is more than enough for games, in audio it depends on the quality of your tracks and how many plugins you use at once,4 to 8 gb will be ok. Save that for an SSD for the main boot drive.

EDIT: I don't know what video card you are getting but I'd recommend the PSU to be at least 500w. If the card is consumes too much you'll need a strong power supply like 600w or more.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Budget isnt really a concern. But I'll say for right now, maybe $1k-1.5k.

Win 7 most likely.

I'd rather have too much RAM than not enough, really. My current laptop has 4GB RAM and I can run like 20 tracks in REAPER with a good amount of FX but that's about it.

Also - there's the chance that I may want to play some current games with high settings. I honestly don't know how to build a computer and our bassist and other guitarist are going to do it for me. I will pass on this info to them. But couldn't I get the graphics card as well as the SSD?

 

[GeertSamuel]

Make sure to get a SSD. That speed is useless if you're just putting a 7200rpm HDD in there.

 

[colonel kurtz]

building your own PC is easy as shit...i made my own for audio a couple years ago, and it's been 100% rock solid

i would recommend having a separate graphics card though...i didn't get one at first for mine, and the system didn't seem to have the type of performance i expected - so i went into best buy and found some sorta-outdated ATI card on clearance for $40. of course it's far from the best available, but was the hottest shit on the planet at one point, and more than satisfied my needs...the whole system also sped up noticeably after i installed it.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Thanks for the input everyone. I'm passing this stuff onto them. Keep it coming!

Apparently a SSD is way more expensive than a regular HDD. And they talked about getting another graphics card because the one on the motherboard is basically junk.

I don't know enough about the internal workings of computers though. I just want to be able to utilize all the power and not have a pile of useless computer parts.

 

[Line666]

1. Whats your budget?
2. What OS?

First, 16gb of RAM is too much...even 8gb is too much. If you go for 32 bit then you can use a maximum of arround 4gb and in 64 bit arround 8gb. 4 gb is more than enough for games, in audio it depends on the quality of your tracks and how many plugins you use at once,4 to 8 gb will be ok. Save that for an SSD for the main boot drive.

64bit can use a lot more RAM than 16gb so thats a fallacy; for plugins with a small footprint less RAM is fine but for things like large sample libraries and projects with big track count having the extra ram cannot hurt. Plus it's cheap as shit right now so for a 1k+ budget its a non issue.

That said Bryan, the limitation of your current laptop is mostly going to be processor overhead and speed limitations of that rather than the amount of memory it can draw from so it's good not to cheap out in that area overall as this will mostly determine the longevity of your PC: I'd recommend you get an Intel build over an AMD one as they are definitely offering the best speeds at the lowest temps/power usage at the moment albeit at a slight price premium.

Technically for audio you should have 2 hard drives - one to run the OS from and the other to save/utilise project data from - this means the computer doesn't try to run both off the same hard drive and bottleneck. SSD is also a bit of a non-issue at the moment, prices are still high and you most likely won't see the immediate benefit of investing in it at this stage. Other than this just make sure your firewire card has a Texas Instruments chipset obviously and you will be gold.

 

[sjcortese]

^This^

I have a 64 bit system and 16gb of ram. so yeah, x64 can see a shit load more.

I'd also recommend a separate vid card. On board video uses system memory and how much depends on what kind of onboard gpu you have. If you mic amps and are recording in the same room as your pc get a vid card that has a heat sink rather than a fan because some can be quite loud.

Ram is cheap, load it up. A graphics card can be had cheap to if you buy one that's just to off load the duties from the cpu and system memory. If you want to run modern games its gonna cost you a bit more so consider the needs and decide if you want to get a vid card that's been out a year to maximize price and performance.

Good luck, it's a piece of cake! Setting up software can be harder than building a computer sometimes.

~scott

 

[Jrich4967]

http://amzn.com/w/1SZWSBPPA1JJX

This is my setup right now, plus one extra hard drive. I was able to get the i7 processor for 230 from microcenter (if you have one, go there and buy everything!!) Either way, i have this running as hackintosh with win8 and osx 10.8. It is extremely easy to set up! I got this all for 800-900 bucks, plus an extra 200 for monitors(Make sure your computer monitors have the proper connect, like vga or dvi-d! makes a big difference). Of course, you can add a blueray drive for not that much. My geekbench stat was 13.7k in mac and close to that in windows! The computer will last me a long time, for sure.I can run assassins creed III on full settings and skyrim on max settings and it is beautiful and smooth. You can get the 650ti for a little more and it is even better. PLUS, i can have 4 total monitors running (It is really nice to have, one for mixer, one for the tracks, one for plugins, and one for porn!)

and a main plus to this is that you can install Mac OSX on it, as everything is compatible.

edit:Watch out for the wireless card i put on the amazon wishlist. if you install the driver that is in the disk, you will get a bsod. Just use the one that windows automatically installs

 

[blue_fAng]

Oops sorry about that. I was super busy to do some actual reasearch before posting. 16 is overkill for me even with a crazy amount of vst's but I guess that it could be helpful in some situations like many heavy plugins at once. If money is not an issue then it's ok to get a lot of memory. Haven't bought memory for a long time lol. As already said one ssd for the os and hdd for storing and installing the other stuff is the way to go.

 

[bryan_kilco]

one ssd for the os and hdd for storing and installing the other stuff is the way to go.

Another friend of mine told me the same thing and said that 40-60GB is plenty. If that's the case, I may as well go that route. Money is slightly in issue but I'd like to keep it at or under $1,000 if possible.

 

[Mashreef]

even with 16gb ddr3 power i get crackle sometimes...
bryan i would suggest skip the graphics card for now...
if you are really into gaming you can check out the i5 2500k it has hd 4000 very cool for gaming stuffs

 

[3tuxedo]

Make sure to get a SSD. That speed is useless if you're just putting a 7200rpm HDD in there.

+1 I have a hackintosh with a 60gb SSD drive that I boot from and have my OS/DAW on. Then a 1tb drive I keep most non-important programs, my music library, and whatever else on.

 

[bryan_kilco]

+1 I have a hackintosh with a 60gb SSD drive that I boot from and have my OS/DAW on. Then a 1tb drive I keep most non-important programs, my music library, and whatever else on.

But doesnt the SSD drive get filled pretty quickly if you're saving audio sessions to it? I was thinking maybe 40-60GB SSD for the OS and 500GB or terabyte drive for Reaper and any session files.

I wish I knew more about this. I don't want to be kicking myself in the ass down the road.

I may want to add - I'm not constantly (or ever, for that matter) recording bands except my own. Maybe one day, but for now it's strictly for my bands recordings and any demo stuff I make at home.

 

[blue_fAng]

I'm guessing that your DAW installed in the SSD should be faster and you can set it to grab/save files from another drive.

 

[Sethis]

16 is overkill for me even with a crazy amount of vst's

+1

Even if you load every vst kontakt library known to man at once you'd probably still have enough RAM to work with. In most PCs the bottleneck is the CPU.

 

[Josh Burgess]

Give yourself a little bit of space to play with and get a 128gb SSD along with a standard 7200rpm hdd.

Don't even question the memory and just get 16gb, because it's cheap as hell. Just do it.

Make sure you get the best processor you can. CPU power is the most important component by far.

 

[hurdy]

If you get a SSD for OS then also get a 10,000 RPM HDD with high amount of cache.
Get a graphics card, screw the people that are saying that you will not need it.
Get 16gb RAM, software is progressing a lot these days, you may need it in the future.
Get RAM with the highest MHz speed that the motherboard can support and with the lowest CAS Latency
Make sure you get a CPU with a high amount of L3 Cache.
These will give you a high-performance system