PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

So l am making a big jump, leaving there Window 98 and going to window Xp (!!!)...I need a new system but i am totally lost in the actual specs of the motherboards, processors...I dont need the late state of art but a good, reliable (and cheap!!!) system for my pulsar ...I really prefer intel motherboard but i need one with a parallel port cos' i have some dongles to install....If someone can make a list of some good components: motherboards, procs (duo or quad?) graphic boards, hd and so on..This will really help me...A big thanks in advance to everybody...( i have tried to make a research in the tech forum section but it's a so long time i have dont studied the subject ...I am really lost.....

do you have only 1 pulsar board? are you planning on more, if so thats an important consideration because of the amount of PCI slots

and what else do you run, for instance a sequencer, lot of VST, hardware and so on.

you actually wait untill microsoft abandons XP before you switch...

*bows respectfully*


I went with the Intel DP35P with E8500 3.16ghz 2x 2GB ram

This processor is pretty expensive, perhaps you can do with an older cheaper model. Same
goes for the RAM.

There are many new setup topics in the archieves.

Thank you for your reply...I have only a pulsar one but i want add some boards in the next future...So i need a motherboard with pci slots...I use some vst and cubase Vst5.1 (yes, i am really a vintage guy...) , i project to buy ableton live too...... I really, really prefer the sound of the pulsar synths...And i also use some hardware synths...So i need a good pc but not the fastest on the earth...About Xp, everybody says to me: "dont take Vista , it's a crap"...

FrancisHarmany wrote:you actually wait untill microsoft abandons XP before you switch...

*bows respectfully*

Yep, that's pretty hardcore!

There is a gigabyte board with 3 PCI slot, I tried it, its a great board but just not for scope boards. too many usb hosts in there which share and can not be individually turned off in the bios.

Intel ones are good by all accounts, and im having good luck now with C2SBE by supermicro (3 slots) but its kind of hard to find. you can individually set the bus latency of each PCI slot. and the PCI bus doesn't share with anything.

difference between the *35, and *45 chipset is this:
* PCIe 2.0 support
* ICHR10, ICHR10R (*35 uses ICHR9, ICHR9R)
Which for a DAW probably amounts to exactly nothing except spending more $$$
I doubt there will be much more improvement even if they get up to p75 because they are gearing up for completely new architecture which has the memory controller on the CPU instead of the chipset.

if you want your cpu to run very cool (i dont even need a fan on one of those huge heatsinks) use a E8400 core2 45nm. its cheap, fast and runs WAY below the ""tdp" thermal design power, only using about 35-40 watts under load.

if you need tons vsti /multitasking power then get a quad.

I used to recommend scythe heat sinks, but i kind of hate those intel push twist mounting pin things. recently i built a machine with a "sunbeamtech core contact" and the mounting system is about 100000 times less frustrating and annoying .

memory is very cheap so get 4GB even if th operating system can only see 3GB its worth it.

Yes i forgot to mention that.

I decided to build a seperate pc for hosting all the usb and other various things that i dont really want on my scope pc. (virus TI, synth and effects editors, mass storage on various devices and so on)

i bought yet another corsair PSU for a build today. thats about 8 and even the lowest model (450watt one) does not disappoint.
I also bought an el cheapo ATI card today which is passive and has dual out. seems good so far.
its a radeon hd3450 and was $40 (cant recommend that yet though i haven't used it for much more than installing XP and its own drivers )