PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Hi tech talkers
I am just about to build a new music pc whose job will be to run a Pulsar II, a Pulsar I and a Pulsar I SRB. Software will be Windows XP Pro, Cubase SX 1 + VSTs, Reason + Refills, Scope (and maybe Ableton Live in the future). The sole purpose of this machine will be to run the above. All other tasks will be handled by another pc.

I have already ordered the following:

Intel 875PBZ
Intel 3.4Ghz (Northwood not Prescott)
Lian-Li PC-6070B Silent MIDI Tower

I would like some advice on the following:

1.CPU coolers
2.RAM
3.Power supply
4.Hard disks
5.Graphics card
6.Sound card

1.CPU coolers - Am i right in thinking that the Northwood P4s are much cooler than Prescott P4s. If this is so, should i still go for a high end Zalman (or similar) or can i go for something smaller and lighter.

2.RAM - Do i need to go for high end Geil, OCZ etc or can i get away with cheaper stuff? Recommendations welcome.

3.Power supply - Any recommendations on a quiet supply. I have been looking at an Akasa Ultra Quiet 460W Paxpower or Enermax Noisetaker. I believe the Akasa makes only 18 dB(A) at normal load ????

4.Hard Disks - Should i put my C: on IDE or SATA ? All i'm gonna have on C: is XP, Cubase, Reason and scope. All VSTs and audio can go on D: and all refills and samples can go on an external USB drive i already have. Taking this into account, how big does C: need to be?
Has anybody done any hard disk noise level comparisons?

5.Graphics Card - I quite like the look of the dual head Matrox cards. Has anybody got one or wants to recommend an alternative, remembering that this pc is never going to do anything 3D?

6.Sound card - Do i need another sound card to run Reason and Cubase or can i get away with Rewiring all audio from Reason to Cubase and then ASIOing everything from Cubase to Scope? (this is more than likely a stupid question, but i had to ask it anyway)

Please feel free to pull apart any of my ideas if i'm way of the mark with anything.
All opinions welcome.

Many thanks for reading

O2B

1.CPU coolers - Am i right in thinking that the Northwood P4s are much cooler than Prescott P4s. If this is so, should i still go for a high end Zalman (or similar) or can i go for something smaller and lighter.

Well, noise and weight is the key here. if you plan to move your pc around alot, and have a tower cabinet, avoid big heavy coolers (as the zalman flower type fanless solutions). However, if your pc is going to be stationary, or will be moved in a rack case, a big fanless coole will be preferred.

2.RAM - Do i need to go for high end Geil, OCZ etc or can i get away with cheaper stuff? Recommendations welcome.

You can absolutely get away with cheaper stuff. i'd recomend getting some branded RAM, but i wouldnt think CAS latency etc. would make that much difference. more importantly, i recommend 1 gigabyte (at least) of paired ram, there are nice packages out there. i dont know that specific motherboard, but if it supports dual channel RAM, that is more important.

3.Power supply - Any recommendations on a quiet supply. I have been looking at an Akasa Ultra Quiet 460W Paxpower or Enermax Noisetaker. I believe the Akasa makes only 18 dB(A) at normal load ????

again, im not familiar with those models, but they are good brands. i have been using a "mist" brand powersupply myself, and it has a very good heat/noise solution which is getting popular by other suppliers; a 120mm fan underneath it, which sucks air from within the cabinet, and no fan at the back (outside). this results in very good ventilation of PCI and AGP cards (read Creamware cards), and is VERY quiet. 430w sounds good, just be sure that it does provide a stable current.
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4.Hard Disks - Should i put my C: on IDE or SATA ? All i'm gonna have on C: is XP, Cubase, Reason and scope. All VSTs and audio can go on D: and all refills and samples can go on an external USB drive i already have. Taking this into account, how big does C: need to be?
Has anybody done any hard disk noise level comparisons?

Well, i would stick to the old myth of two smaller drives beeing better than one large. if i was to buy a new setup, i would go for a 80gb drive for OS/applications, while having a dedicated 200gb drive for audio. Two reasons: first and most important; bigger chance of retrieving data if OS fails/crashes. second, and amuch more vague reason is that i peronally believe that it would perform better (this is my thought, cant state it as a fact )

5.Graphics Card - I quite like the look of the dual head Matrox cards. Has anybody got one or wants to recommend an alternative, remembering that this pc is never going to do anything 3D?

two things to consider:
-what monitors are you planning to use?
-noise.

1. if you are planning to use flatscreens, try to get a card with two DVI's. this will be good for image quality/eye strain.

2. you ar enot going to use this card for 3d. therefore, get a fanless card to reduce noise. remember, a semi-old prev-gen 64mb card will do.

6.Sound card - Do i need another sound card to run Reason and Cubase or can i get away with Rewiring all audio from Reason to Cubase and then ASIOing everything from Cubase to Scope? (this is more than likely a stupid question, but i had to ask it anyway)

not a stupid question. answer is, i think the scope cards/rewiering will do.

Please feel free to pull apart any of my ideas if i'm way of the mark with anything.
All opinions welcome.

not nececary, you are on the right track Now, if someone can comment ont motherboards we are getting closer



hope this helps.

Piddi.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: piddi on 2005-01-20 00:20 ]</font>

one more point to consider; the case!

buy a sturdy one, and one that are design for low noise. And if you have people coming into your studio, be sure that it looks good!

clients have a tendency of noticing estethics more tham technical attributes

While I second most of piddi's advises, there's one thing I can't agree with. Memory's CAS latency is _much_ more important than most people would think, even more important than the memory bus frequency. I made several test in that area, and came to the conclusion that 266MHz CL2 memory is faster than 333MHz CL2.5 memory for example.

Benchmarks wouldn't show that usually, as most benchmarks only test burst transfer - which means, they read and write data in a single burst. That way, random memory access will only happen two times in the test (start write, start read). Real world applications on the other hand always access memory to read or write small segments, so the access times are much more important.

Same goes for harddisks BTW: except for some specififc uses, like video editing or pure harddisk recording, access time is more important than burst speed (that's why the only ATA harddisk to be considered fast would be the Raptor - not really because it's a 10000 Rpm HDD, but because it features SCSI-like access times)...

On 2005-01-20 07:53, wsippel wrote:
...I made several test in that area, and came to the conclusion that 266MHz CL2 memory is faster than 333MHz CL2.5 memory for example.
...

you're a reliable source, Willi - would you mind to mention how much ? Guessing from the numbers above it must be over 30% percent (as that's the 'even' figure...).
Does the optimized timing yield a better overall throughput ? As a notorious fan of low clockrates I'm thankful for any hint in that direction...

my 2 cents regarding HDs:
anything beyond 80 gig serves well as a frying pan - so have your case accordingly...
Server-type construction with disks set further to the inside and in the airstream of a dedicated fan !
anything starting at 7200 rpm is likely to develope critical temperatures in 'regular' case positions.

Imho the drives access time isn't that important for recording, as it's a fairly continuous process. Sustained data rate might be more relevant, but then... all current drives are pretty good performers compared to the stuff some years ago
I'm currently running Win2K from a Samsung 40G w 5200 rpm (cheapo, silent and cool)

cheers, Tom

It's hard to give an exact number. Like I said, this is hard to measure using memory benchmarks alone, as they are pretty much completely synthetic. But, using general benchmarks that rely heavily on memory speed, especially 3D/ game benchmarks (as they usually put a very hard load on the memory, reading samples and moving textures to VRAM), the 266MHz CL2 memory led to better results, usually about 3-5 percent with SPECViewPerf, 3DMark or GL Excess. I think I remember the Cubase benchmark was also a little faster...

That's why I shell out a lot of money for memory modules these days, using the fastest reg/ ECC memory on the planet (matched-pair 400MHz CL2)...

All in all, I'm very sceptical regarding the usual thinking more == better (in regards to frequencies and harddisk space). My system, while using a pretty slow CPU (1.4GHz), is faster than my father's machine (Athlon64 2.2GHz) in almost every aspect, even for some number-crunching applications.

Slight additional notes about memory, I've found CAS latency to be pretty important too. With PC133 memory, memory throughput (measured in Sisoft Sandra) went from 600MBps for CL3 memory to 9000MBps for CL2, so a pretty large difference.

It's also a pretty good idea to get fairly good quality memory, maybe not the most expensive, but cheap generic corner-store memory is usually extremely flakey. I used to have some generic mem, had all sorts of problems, like PC133 memory refusing to run at 133MHz a few weeks after buying it (had to run it at 100MHz =P), made my system pretty unstable, CL2 memory decided it wouldn't work at CL2 anymore, etc. Got some Crucial, and now everything is literally flawless, pure love really =P.

Can't help too much with the rest, since my machine is a bit on the older side of technology =P I have an Antex 300W PSU that's pretty silent, can't remember what my CPU fan/heatsink combo is, Alpha somesuch, but it's pretty silent too =P. I've heard lots of people say good things about the Matrox cards as far as 2D performance is concerned, not sure if anything else compares. My first Pulsar PC had a Matrox G200 and it was great.

Given how much DSP you'll have, having the latest top-notch system isn't going to matter too much (unless you want to run a few realtime convolution reverbs =P.) I'm still with a P3-1Ghz and I can't say I ever manage to run into something I can't do (except playing Doom3, but I have an XBox to take care of the gaming, so I couldn't care less about Doom3, which I found pretty boring anyway =P.) I can render 400k spheres in POVRay, and I literally never max out my DSPs/CPU with my audio projects.

ok ok, i give up

you are all probably right about the timing, but i still dont know how many extra audiotracks, extra softsynth voices or faster responsetime this a cl2 will give instead of a cl2.5, and i dont know id its worth the extra $

i use cl2 corsair twinx ram and i find the machine runs very smooth and quick. as to the cpu fan, i think the stock fan in the "boxed" version works great for the northwood, anyway...

I have an acousticase which is pretty quiet - and sturdy. The problem with all these cases is that they have to allow airflow, so there is basically a big 'acoustic' hole at the back. Still, my desktop is now quieter than my old laptop by a long way, and about 1000 times better, so no complaints.

I'm very happy with my qtechnology psu and my zalman superflowercooler too. However, I'm a bit worried about my harddrives with only these two fans, so think I'm going to have to put another one in. I hate noise. Strange considering I'm a musician !

Anyway happy shopping ...

W

Regarding the disks: cooling is important... I recently lost a 7200rpm disk because of heat. That motivated me to buy another case (Antec P160) where the disks are placed in the lower front of the case, just behind the 12 cm intake fan. Keeps them at 33 degrees celsius
The fan is low noise, running at 7V, and is practically unhearable.

Cheers,
Rob

On a side note, I'm currently designing a tower case, made from carbon and fiberglas, with a custom cooling solution. Should be sturdy, lightweight, quiet and very well suited for audio workstations...


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: wsippel on 2005-01-21 09:47 ]</font>

Water cooled?

Nope. I'll post some more info as soon as the prototype is completed...

My suggestions on parts:
-RAM: go for Kingston. They have the longest warranty period, showing their high standards. Personal experience with kingston rams: absolutely flawless.
-PSU: check Tagan or Zalman for conventional PSUs,which are very efficient (pays off in long term use), great build quality, and very quiet.
-Graphics: ATI´s GPUs produce less heat then Nvidia´s and they handle better in terms of multimonitor setups. If u want to have a pure audio/working PC, tho, go for Matrox.
-HDs: I love my Seagate Barracudas (2x2 120GB 7200.7 SATA RAID). For the fact there are 4 drives working together, they are really quiet. Also, Seagate offers the longest period of warranty among the HD manufacturers, which is a main argument for HDs in a professional box, imho.

that was my 2.. errr, 4 cents for now.

edit: oh right, cooler... check out the Scythe FCS50, that´s one ingenious machine! if u don´t want to overclock, u can run it at its lowest rpm (~1300, definitely <20db!)
and if u plan to have ur machine on some live gig where it´s really hot on the stage, just crank up the rpm and your cpu will be fine, even in egyptian conditions. ;D

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JoeKa on 2005-02-04 07:42 ]</font>