Hello Werido, how are you?
Well, here I am again… I couldn’t pay attention to this before cos I was (and actually still am) busy installing software. I go soooo slow, that even if I have very little to install, I do lots of research in regard to the ORDER in which to install everything, which is what you want to do to.
About your components…
Let’s get at it:
For me, ASUS are the best boards, I own a P4PE full today and I’m flaying, it’s truly fantastic. I don’t think you would be wrong taking Abit or some other trademarks as long as you get a high end product. But ASUS is well known for it’s stability and extremely reliable throughput for Audio Work Stations, so I would preferably go with an Asus board myself. And I think that all P4P800 are a good choice. All you need to think about now, is which suits you best in accordance to the quantity of PCI slots you need, the kind of processor, etc., but they are all very good boards.
I think that for your configuration, the
P4PE-X is a good choice (What I'm not sure is if it supports SATA or not, you have to make sure. I have payed attention to the main features rather, forgot about the SATA sorry). You have an enormous 6 PCI slots plus the AGP one, so, expandability it’s not a problem. It is Hyper-Threading Technology ready, and gets the latest Pentium IV with 800MHz FSB!
You can go up to 2GBs of memory, but, the only way of getting to 2 GBs is buying two sticks of 1GB each of RAM, and this is too expensive. If you use two double sided RAM sticks DDR 400, you will not be able to use the third slot. This is the only backside I have found to this boards, but 1024 RAM DDR 400, assuming you install two DDR of 512 MBs each, its already quite good. This is what I have and it’s plenty.
The Audio Onboard, it’s a good option if you listen to music, see videos, etc., without the need to open Pulsar. And the sound it’s rather good, quite detailed in fact.
The CrashFree-BIOS is a very good feature too, that secures your life against serious upgrade problems when upgrading your BIOS. I did it and it couldn’t’ be easier.
And… most important of all, it’s rock solid stable!
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Everybody here likes and recommends Matrox, so just if you can, get the latest one, the 650 instead of the 550. You can’t go wrong with it. I honestly, have not own one of them, but would have liked to get one instead of an MSI, as I did. I’ve got an MSI cos there were no Matrox boards in the whole of Chile, that’s it. If almost 100% of the Z Forum members recommend you something through years and years, obviously, it’s because it’s good and reliable. So go Matrox no prob!
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The very little experience I had with my Seagate Barracuda V 80GBs is just great! They are REALLY FAST! Some think they do not worth the money, etc., but my experience is that they actually do. I do not regret to have one of them. And I certainly recommend you to get a couple as you want to.
Nowadays, 240GBs is not as much as you might think… In fact, when I got my two 13.5 GBs IBM 7200 for my last DAW, I was asking myself: “Hey, aren’t you going crazy? This is just too much space, what are you going to do?” I would think that way cos those dicks were in fact VERY expensive, about 250£ each! Wow! But… time gave me the reason, I needed them desperately. Today, they are like a little toy box to me. I need much more space. I’ve got two 80GBs, a Maxtor and the Seagate we are talking about. And I have to tell you that if I’ve got to 80 instead of two 120, it’s because they didn’t have them in Santiago. But I would gladly take even two 160GBs as long as they are GOOD drives. Those Barracuda V truly are. When I read it’s
60 pages PDF information was surprised of how much care they had taken to build those drives.
One thing is true, and is that the Barracuda Seagate V SATA gets hotter than most drives in the market. But assuming you are going to take a Thermaltake with 7 fans, there’s not problems to care about. Only remember…
put your drives as far from each other as possible
As I say, you are going to use this space faster than what you imagine, so two 120GBs it’s not an exaggeration today.
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If you have the money for a 3.06GHz Pentium IV and YOU NEED IT, go for it! But you have to have money to burn if you say yes… It’s too expensive for the difference you are going to experience. Of course it’s faster, but I doubt you actually need something faster than a 2.4 right now. The faster the better, and we couldn’t agree more on this, but it’s truly too expensive for the difference. I would take a 2.4 with 800MHz, and would do with it for a year or so, and then would go for the biggest possible to upgrade my system with HT and 800MHz. I think this is wise and you are not going to miss much power anyway. Remember that if you take this ASUS board we were talking about, overcloking gets far too easy, and you can with no problems get a faster system to reach a quite similar performance, for HALF the price.
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1024 MB PC3200/400 DDR of RAM is good enough. You can go even higher to PC3700, cos the 800MHz of FSB will benefit much from it.
Something important: get the very best RAM you can afford. It’s quite more expensive, but so important for the overall function of the system, that it would be silly to get a very good system killing it’s performance and reliability for getting a bad or mediocre RAM. If you can, get Corsair RAM, it’s fantastic and comes with heat spreaders, which will be well suited to a fast system using two Seagate Barracuda V SATA.
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I would not get a DVD writer, unless you want to do DVDs, of course. But not for a storage solution. If you want a good storage solution, just buy an IDE HD, you have space, you have a good set of fans, and your board is extremely expandable, so… why should you pay for something like a DVD writer? Well, I too want one of those! But it’s technology is still growing and it’s rather expensive. In the mean time, I would recommend for you to get a CD-RW waiting for it to mature a bit, and then, perhaps in a year or two, get one of them. I can’t say it’s not a good storage solution, it is with it’s 4.7GBs capacity per disc, but… Well, it’s a matter of having or not the need to burn DVDs.
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Monitors:
Be careful! Do not buy monitors you have not tried for at leas, 20 minutes, staring at it as if you were working at home. You have to be exigent about this with your salesman, if they don’t allow you this, go elsewhere… or you’ll have perhaps to regret to have bought something in fact, you didn’t like!
I could see how people were attracted to the cheapest monitors models in the shops, instead to be attracted to the high end models… it’s strange, but the first reaction is for you to get close to those monitors… Why? Because they are in general sharp, and for a couple of minutes they are very sparkly, then if you stare at them for a long time they become extremely tiresome and can get your eyes VERY tired.
The problem is that many monitors today have only 24p so they look quite pleasant at first sight, but they are definitely not good for working on them for long hours.
I’ve just got a ViewSonic Professional Series P75f+ for my wife and common, they are good… They are not so sharp as others, but the image is very good. Of course it’s not a top of the line, but your eyes get no staring from staring at it. She’s very pleased and so I am. I like the ViewSonic quality. If I were to give you an example about food, I would say that some manufacturers are more like ice-cream while others are more like bread. What would you choose if you were given the opportunity, ice-cream or bread? Well… most people in the world would choose ice-cream, and so would I of course. But if you have to eat ice-cream all they through, you’ll get really disgusted about it… if you were to eat bread all day along, it would be much easier cos the taste is softer… ViesSonic is a little like bread, is softer and I like it this way.
Overall, I think you’re getting a very powerful machine that will satisfy most musicians and composers.
Good luck Weirdo 
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: nestor on 2003-07-21 11:39 ]</font>
