Please, help me building my much awaited NEW SYSTEM!!!

[Nestor]

Well…, it’s time to upgrade my system!!!

Very happily I can tell you I’ve been given the opportunity to upgrade my system thanks to a close friend of mine. My friend is giving me a loan so I can to do this much needed upgrade, as I did almost 6 years ago when I bought my present system, which is going to be used by my wife in multimedia matters from now on.

I need to say I live in a rather poor country and so my economical situation is not great. Really, there is no margin for me to mistake; I MUST buy the right system!

I have many questions for those willing to help me. I have been for quite a while out of touch with the technological world of latest PCs, so I don’t really know what is going on and what to buy… All I know is that PC possibilities have multiplied several times and again, since 1999, there are too many different items to choose from to build a system nowadays. The difficult thing I guess, (as it has always being), is to make them match together: the all-important COMPATIBILITY issue.

The System I would like:

The Sound card I already have: Pulsar I Plus.

CPU: Pentium VI 3.53

Case: Shielded case 400 Watts. (don’t know which one)

Ethernet Card: 10–100 (or something like that)

HDD: One for programs with 20G at 5200RPM, and the other for audio only with 80G at 7200RPM with 8MB cache.

512 DDR333 of RAM.

Motherboard: i845E-based Motherboards or one of the latest ASUS boards.

Graphics: GeForce FX 5200 AGP 128MB DDR DVI or Radeon 9000 PRO AGP 128MB DDR 2D/3D w/TV or GeForce4 MX440 AGP 128MB DDR w/ TV- out DVI (to be used at 1024 x 768)

CDRW Drive: SONY 52X24X52 IDE RET, or PLEXTOR 48X24X48 IDE RET (BURNPROOF), or YAMAHA 44X24X44 IDE RETAIL BOXED

I want for it to be a double boot system cos I need a partition for my STUDIO and a second one for MULTIMEDIA purposes, so dividing everything not to have problems, perhaps using Partition Magic 8, I don’t know yet.

(The Studio side software will be, of course, SFP, VST 5.1r and Wavelab 3.0.)

Please guys, help me to choose the right components, compatibility being able not going over 1.300 American dollars… I’m going to post quite a few questions later, this is just to beginning the understanding of it.

Thanks for everything.

[darkrezin]

The only suggestions I would make are the following :

1. the P4 (we're sadly not up to P6 yet ) 3.53ghz (are these even out yet?!) will be very expensive indeed - my advice is to go for the 2.4ghz and overclock it, meanwhile wait for the faster chips to get cheaper.

2. Ethernet card - most motherboards these days come with LAN on board.

3. 512mb DDR - I would advise to go for 1gb or upgrade as soon as possible.

4. CDRW drive - I don't recommend spending big bucks on Sony/Yamaha/Plextor - I find that it's better to buy cheap disposable $45 LG/LiteOn CDRWs because they perform just as well as the big brand drives, and it's not so annoying when the drive dies (in my PC servicing job I see CDRWs dying all the time).

peace

[Nestor]

Thanks for your answer Dark!
Of course, the 3.53 does not exist, it was a mistake of mind… I just whish I had this future connection! No no… the one I’m talking about is the 2.53. I have chosen this one against the 2.4 you are talking about, cos of the improved architecture it has, as long as I have read.

I’ve got a Yamaha CDRW 6x4x16 and I have recorded a real lot with it, without problems at all… and is still here working well. I guess that if you work fixing them, you know better, but I can’t tell you otherwise this piece of hardware has been extremely reliable and has recorded more than 2.700 CDs already!

[Nestor]

Dark suggests getting a 2.4 PIV, which one would you choose yourself and why?

I have been told you need a powerful supply for your computer to work correctly if you plan to use two HD or more. I’m going to use a 400watts supply. Is there any consideration I should be taken care of, trademark for instance? Perhaps buying the case separated from the supply, etc?

I would like to have some space to upgrade one day with an SRB, should I take care of something special when choosing a motherboard cos if this?

Which specific HD drives would you use? Maxtor, Western Digital, or Segate? Which one specifically? Tell me your thought. Is it to small what I’m getting with 20GBs for the first, and 80GBs for the second for Audio?

I guess there is no better price-performance today in Ram, than the DDR333, am I wrong?

i845E-based Motherboards or one of the latest ASUS boards? Which motherboard specifically?

I personally prefer the Radeon 9000 PRO AGP 128MB DDR video card, what you do think? Any experience?

Cheers...

[Nestor]

Oh, I forgot it… what kind of CDRW should I get? I still have an SCSI one 6x4x16, but I think a new IDE 48x24x48 is likely to be much faster than mine. I don't think SCSI is any longer needed for this.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: nestor on 2003-04-21 20:24 ]</font>

[Spirit]

I'd make RAM a priority. This will also be very useful for multimedia work. But dual-boot ? I wonder if this is really needed ?

I run a combined DAW & multimedia system running ALL the big multimedia apps like Flash, Fireworks, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, a PCI analog capture card, Illustrator, Sorrenson Squeeze, about half a dozen smaller video and Flash-related apps etc AND all the music apps like Kontakt, Absynth, Acid, SoundForge etc etc

I also run a USB Zip drive and a modem for when I absolutely have to go line for a short time (some of my multimedia apps need online authentication).

No problems here.

I think more important is to not run any garbage apps, no warez, no Microsft Office, no virus checkers, no heavy-handed system tools etc

I'm running a mildly tweaked XP home with an Asus P4B266 with 512Mb RAM. Once I had it running well (almost straight away!) I then did not touch it again. I think that's important too, once it works, STOP FIDDLING !

This machine never crashes even when I sometimes run four or five apps together - sometimes even music and multimedia together.

You seem pretty keen on the high-end P4 CPU - I'm not up with the architectural benefits you mention, but you'll pay a premium for the fastest CPU.

Instead of pure technical specs I'd also consider exactly how you're going to use the machine. For both music and design (especially design!) I find the best investment I've made is having twin monitors.

I run a Matrox 550 with a Samsung and a LG 19-inch CRT. I'm running at 2304 x 864 at 32-bit depth and 75Hz. Beautiful colour (for design work), good refresh rate to protect the eyes, and plenty of screen real estate to work easily.

When you get deeply into multimedia you'll probably be using apps with dozens of palettes. With only one monitor you'll spend a large amount of time either working at a reduced % scale of the design, or be constantly shifting the palettes around to make space. Both are big time wasters.

A CDRW is a MUST.

A Zip drive is very useful.

If your DAW is an off-line machine and you want to move around files of 2 or 3 Mb what do you do ? Burning a CD for such things is a waste IMHO. Zips are a very convenient transfer method. Otherwise maybe use one of those little USB keyring-sized things of 32Mb ? You need a quick transfer method.

I'd get a big case. It will be mostly empty, but means you will always have space and easy to work.

A 400W power supply should be plenty. I run a 300W supply with two HDDs no problems.

And while we're taking about drives, why get a slow app drive 5400rpm ? Drives are cheap. I'd go for the Barracudas, maybe a 40Gb and 80 or 120 all at 7200rpm.

cheers,
Spirit

[marcuspocus]

I aggree with Spirit here, except one point, the powersupply is as crucial as the ram... If going for P4, take no less than 450w.

A very good powersupply make a world of differences when talking about stability.

There have been articles about this in numerous audio and pc magazines...

If i remember well, the difference between P4 2.4 and P4 2.53 is the FSB... 2.4 is limited to 400mhz FSB, and the 2.53 is going to 533mhz fsb.

It is far less important to have the fastest CPU than having your machine working near 100% of the times like expected...

Best MOBO money can buy, not necessarily the fastest, same thing with memory, forget about 'no brand', and a good, silent power supply, will give you months if not years of reliable work.

[darkrezin]

Motherboard - go for Asus P4PE (845PE) or P4G8X (Intel E7205). Asus boards are unmatched in terms of stability/reliability and quality of BIOS and overclocking options.

Hard drive - pointless going for anything other than 80 gig drives at this stage as they are so cheap. I'd go for Seagate or the new IBM 180GXP (the only drive around to my knowledge which has a 3-year warranty). Both have fluid bearings so are very quiet, and both are pretty reasonably priced (got an 80gb seagate for £70 and a 120gb IBM for £88). I think other manufacturers are doing fluid bearing technology now too, and perhaps with bigger cache, but the IBM and Seagate are the only ones I've tried and know for sure are pretty good.

Graphics card : Radeon's are pretty good these days and most people rate them above GeForce's now. Matrox's are very nice too, but nowhere near as useful for games and 3D.

I mentioned LG/LiteOn CDRWs because I've used expensive Yamaha and Plextor drives in the past, and I find that the cheap 48x or 52x LG/LiteOn drives are just as good.

Also I think Zip drives are expensive and slow compared to using ethernet.

peace

[Nestor]

Hi Spirit, I’m very pleased you are in this thread, thanks for your always-useful answers.

I went to Crucial Ram web site, and they show you why you should have more Ram in a rather convincing way. Of course, they want to sell they staff mainly, but nevertheless, it’s true. My present system, once had 128, and it was insufficient to work with Pulsar Sample Players, then I went 512 and the system gave me double performance. I do believe in Ram, I do! I’m going to follow your advice and am going to go for 1G DDR333.

I’m surprised you can run all this app together without problems! Most people in the forum agree that it’s better not to put them together. Of course, when you build a double boot system, any problem you many have in one of the sides, does not affect the other, and so you can keep working. I have had quite a few problems in the Office side, and could nevertheless keep working in the Studio one, this is one of the biggest advantages. Then, of course, I think your system is slightly slowed down by so many app installed into the same drive. What do you suggest to do so? How do you handle your installations?

About the 3.53 P4 architecture: I thought the difference was important, not cos I have tried it, but because I have read about it, as I am doing every day to catch up with the latest information. Can we build a system based in a motherboard that will be able to accept multithreading technology, so you can upgrade later, being able to go for a P4 2.2 for instance?

Twin monitors for design? Well, that would be great of course! We are going to build web pages, E-books, applications, interactive CDs and things of the like. For the moment, I think this is a luxury or us, I prefer to invest in a powerful machine able to handle, most of all, music intensive applications, like virtual synthesizers in VST, then, this could be implemented, the important thing is to get a proper video card, and the Radeon 9000 does it well. BTW, how much did you pay for your LG 19-inch CTR?

No doubt, a CDRW is a MUST! Do you know about this one?:

CRW-F1 CD Re-Writer from Yamaha? I am particularly interested in the “Audio Master Quality Recording.” I don’t know if this is of any use. And of course, the beautiful MBs buffer, which is much if you compare it to other drives with just MBs. Any experience with it? “Audio Master Quality Recording” is a special method of writing that widens the pits and lands during writing, this supposedly reduces jitters and improves audio quality which Yamaha claims is comparable to professionally made music CD’s. Widening the pits and lands also means the CD is more durable as CD players can distinguish them more easily when the surface is scratched or damaged. You can write CD’s in Audio Master Quality Recording in 1x 4x and 8x using the CRW-F1.

A Zip? What do you use it for, isn’t enough to have a CD writer? Nevertheless CDs are cheaper than Zips. Of course, it’s a shame to use constantly a CDR for a couple of MBs, but you have CDRW for this, and the can be overwritten about 1000 times.

HD drives: well, I been told 5200 is enough for the speed of programs, but as you say, if they are cheap, I can probably benefit from a faster drive at the master side or programs side. I’ll see which is the price difference.

BTW, how many coolers should I need to keep the system in its right temperature?

Thanks very much for your answer man.

[Nestor]

Hey Marcus, cheers for being here…

450 watts power supply, wow, aren’t you going a bit too high? Please, have a look at this case I was planning to buy and tell me what you think:

http://www.xpcases.com/shop/item.asp?CatID=1&Sku=116

You say: “A very good powersupply make a world of differences when talking about stability.” I have read this and it is true. In fact, there was a Pulsarian in here having problems, then he changed the power supply and everything went fine.

You said: “It is far less important to have the fastest CPU than having your machine working near 100% of the times like expected...” Well, i think nobody here will discuss this, it’s an absolute certainty! Which CPU would you recommend me so?

You say: “Best MOBO money can buy”, but for me this isn’t an answer, cos i don’t know which are the best, please, give me names and if posible, tell me which is the difference between them, why you prefer one instead of the other, etc.

Should I buy a separate case and then add the power suply? Which power suply would you recomend anyway for it to be reliable and silent?

Thanks for the answers…

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: nestor on 2003-04-22 13:06 ]</font>

[Spirit]

Hi Nestor,

Re multi-apps:
Yes, people do say not to mix, but I have three machines: a good P4, a reasonable P3 and a good laptop. The laptop is for business, travelling and emergency backup (it basically has every app I own installed on it); the P4 is my "serious" work machine, and the P3 is the "frontline" machine: it has Office, good virus checkers, it runs all the demo programs, does all the downloading etc.

For me, even with three computers, there was not enough to just have one as 100% music, another for multimedia, another for web etc

I have no experience with dual-boot, so can't comment on that part of your plan, but my theory was that all these multimedia and music apps I have together are all very good programs. There is no rubbish in there. If I can't trust Adobe, Native Instruments and Macromedia to work happily together then there is no hope for computers !

Sometimes I think people get too worried about this angle. Where I used to work there were about 40 IBM Z-Pro PCs used for graphic design. They were also full of web apps, Microsoft, network tools etc and were all producing deadline-critical graphics files without problems.

Also, all these apps take up less than 6Gb ! My 40Gb "application" drive is almost empty. So, it seems to me that there is no strain here, no need to get too worried about separating things. Perhaps this way may even be better because it is simple - I don't know.

But most important is that I use all these things together - I couldn't work if they were not together. For my work I will sample using Soundforge, maybe process it through the SFP environment, then take the wave file into Flash, convert to swf format etc, incorporate that into a webpage using Dreamweaver.

Or maybe I will have a little video in Vegas that I export as an AVI file, drop that into Acid and add some sound effects and music in real-time using Pulsar and maybe also VSTi synths in realtime from FL Studio, then I export that again and open Flash.

In this 30 minutes work I now have four apps up and am working with music, video and web.

This is an important point you may want to consider - is your work going to be so neatly divided that you can happily keep all this stuff separate ? As things progress the borders of your work may start to get very fuzzy.

I recommend thinking about that ...

Also, I can't stress too much the joy of twin monitors. To me twin monitors are the same as a good chair: you can't expect to work long hours unless you have the right environment.

Twin monitors will save you a lot of time and make working faster.

Getting your PC right and installing everything will take maybe a few weeks or a month. But it's what comes after that which is important, how you will work with the machine.

Monitors are also pretty cheap. A 19-inch LG costs about A$400 in Australia - that's about US$180.

So for maybe US$200 you could have a twin-system. In my opinion this is of much greater value for the type of work you describe than spending that US$200 on a slightly faster CPU.

With 1Gb of RAM and any good CPU your problems will not be VSTi capacity or music processing, you will already be near the top ! Your problems will be how you work and what apps you use.

So again think of how you will work: chairs, desk, light, mouse, keyboard, monitors, screen glare, temperature. The technical specs of your machine are just a small part of the story.

Now I'm sounding like salesman so I'll stop

[Nestor]

Thanks Dark for your answer.

I have been informing myself about the Asus P4PE (845PE) and P4G8X, they are fantastic boards, extremely well planed. I think the P4G8X is perhaps more suited for Pulsar use, what do you think? Which of these two MOBOS?

It seems that the IBM 180GXP drives are having lots of problems, I’ve fond plenty of complains out there saying the plates have problems, as well as the seeking technology they use. I don’t know if this is true or not, just reading about, I did not try one of those. Anyway, I have a couple of IBM 13GBs 7200 RPM myself, and they have always been extremely reliable, little noisy and little heat as well.

Which Segate drives are you referring to please? Tell me, so I go learning about them. Cheers.

A sensible question to me: Aren’t big HDs too heavy to manage by the system? It is perhaps a completely naïve question and everything works differently, but, to my ignorance on this matter, I would suppose that the bigger a drive is, the slower it gets as well.

I will definitely go for a Radeon 9000, I have only read good reviews! I’ve never read so many “perfect” reviews with “no bad points” in software or hardware, ever.

Thanks for the information about drives, as I asked to Spirit, I would like your point of view as well please. What do you think about the Yamaha F1, does it really changes the quality of your burning audio CD making it sound more professional? I didn’t hear it, but I guess it can be pretty subjective.

I agree with you about Zip drives. A little intranet is much better, and you don’t need to be getting up all the time, as we are going to work in different rooms.

[Nestor]

Hi Spirit
Well, I have to say that your reasoning about using no partitions, installing everything in one single system sounds “pretty attractive” in terms of controllability, it sounds much easier to have everything into one side. I can tell… cos I have had a double system all this years, and I had to reboot perhaps 10 or more times a day. I’m going to seriously think about that… But I still think the joining of so many different programs makes your system slower and for sure, you can’t adjust the OS to Pulsar specifically, you will be forced to install all the problematic net implementations, antivirus, fonts, etc., that slows down your system and sometimes contradicts other applications. I have to sort out the PRO and CONS of all this.

[paulrmartin]

Good to see you're back Nestor!

I will be going for the P4PE myself but I'll be keeping to 2.4 or 2.6. I am going to wait for the 3.06 chips to come down in price a bit before I go there.

Seagate Barracuda is the HD you'll want to get. I'm sure that's the one dArKr3zIn was talking about.

We all wan to see a picture of the wedding!

Paul

[Nestor]

What about the

200GB EIDE Ultra ATA-100 w/8MB Cache 7200RPM Special Edition

it is 216$, it seems very cheap and people say it's as fast as a SCSI drive at 10.000 Any one experienced with this?

[Nestor]

Hi Paul, what’s up man!

Yes, here we are, thanks… and quite exited as you can guess, I was waiting for this so much…

I have been reading about the Seagate Barracuda IV 7200 and it seems to be the best one against the new V version, which seems to have some problems… of course, you can’t relay exclusively in what I read in the net.

Another incredible drive is the 200GB EIDE Ultra ATA-100 w/8MB Cache 7200RPM Special Edition, people say it’s extremely fast, as fast as a 10.000 SCSI and it’s just 216$.

Yes, you all are right about the CPU, I’m going to go for a cheap one now, so I can spend more money in the rest of the system, and perhaps in a year or so, buying the 3.06 P4, cos the system will be ready for it. I’m going to get the 2.2, hope I’m not pointing to low now… Chers...

[Nestor]

I can see there are several Seagate Barracuda 80GBs 7200 RPM drives, so I’m not sure which one are you talking about. Could you please put up the specification or a link to the one you are referring? Thanks.

[dehuszar]

Having used both, I'd say that either a Maxtor drive with 8MB cache and fluid-dynamic spindle, or the WD Special edition are awesome choices. The Maxtor is a little quieter to my ears, but I think either could be put into a Silent Drive sleeve (Maxtor told me theirs could, I don't use the WD at my studio so I'm not worried about it).

I've heard good things about that Yamaha. One observation though, if you want to burn CDs while doing other things, I found that my SCSI burner (god rest its soul) never choked, even though it didn't have and Burn-Proof-like tech behind it whereas my Sony DVD+-RW drive with BurnProof makes a bunch of coasters. See if there's a SCSI version. Of course, the SCSI might have an impact on your audio performance (though I recall my ethernet card causing more problems than my TekRam 160 card).

As far as the processor goes, why P4? They're more expensive and have a lesser FPU. Unless you are positively not going to be using more than a handful native plugs or progs, an Athlon will give you better performance for the money. To go with that, the nForce2 is supposedly a fantastic board. I have an nForce1 and can get 10 MVs open before I run out of DSP (1PII+1LunaII=9chips).

For your power supply, you're better off getting well over what you anticipate needing, especially if you're going to dual boot with an OS for games; the more demanding gaming cards require a LOT of power. Either way, you're better off leaving some headroom for more demanding hardware updates. Along these lines, the Antec units are AMAZINGLY Quiet and their pretty reasonably priced.

Additionally, whether you go with Athlon or P4, the Vantec Aeroflow is pretty quiet as well and provides better cooling than most of the other 'quiet' CPU coolers.

For the memory, I've used Crucial's sticks on the past 3 machines I've built, and they've always been reliable.

Hope this helps,
Sam

[dehuszar]

Oh, also...

go with the ATI or a Matrox. The GeforceFX (while a capable card) makes hella noise. You'd have to have your CPU in another room to record anything with a mic.

as for the HD sizes. 200GBs of HD space is 200GBs of data to either back up or lose. I don't go above 80GBs at this point. You're better off buying a DVD-Burner and smaller drives and archive finished projects to DVD or whatever you use. After losing (count 'em) 4 IBM Death(Desk)Star HDs, and about 3 weeks of recording (my own thank god), I won't ever buy a HD which I don't have either a RAID mirror of, external HD backup of, and/or DVD archive of, as drives die all the time now a'days, and warranties are getting smaller and smaller. The more space you have to fill, the more you have to back up.

Sam

[paulrmartin]

I believe you can't go lower than 2.4 with the P4PE...