Be Excellent To Each Other

Hiya PC geeks,

Just thought I'd throw this on the board to see if I've made any grave errors in the build I'm gonna be purchasing parts for in 2 weeks. It's for a music production PC (DAW), so keep that in mind if you're suggesting I should get 2 SLI graphics cards. Here's what I've got listed:

1 x Intel Core i7 920 D0 2.66GHz Socket 1366 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
1 x Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 Intel X58Socket 1366 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
1 x OCZ 6gb (3x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz/PC3-12800 Gold XTC Triple Channel Memory Kit for i7 Motherboard

This seems to be the best power to price ratio atm. I def want to go i7 and everyone reckons these boards are best. Is OCZ RAM good? It is CL8 ( 8-8-8-24 ). I always bought Crucial in the past, but this stuff is faster for the same money.

1 x Asus HD 4350 512MB DDR2 DVI VGA HDMI Out PCI-E Low Profile Graphics Card

Cheap but passive. Nothing fancy for audio work but I'm sure it'll do the trick... I don't do games

1 x Antec Solo Quiet Mini Tower Case - Piano Black/Silver - No PSU
1 x Nexus NX-5000 R3 530W Real Silent 80+ Power Supply
1 x Megahalems 1156 - Prolimatech Megahalems Rev B,Super 6 Heatpipe Tower Cooler for *NEW* Socket 775/1156/1366 (Fanless)
1 x Nexus 120mm PWM Series Real Silent Case Fan (for the Megahalems)

Good Case/PSU/cooler combo? I've heard these cases are really good and silent pc review rate everything as nice and quiet.

1 x Intel X25-V 40GB 2.5" Solid State Hard Drive (SSD) SATAII
2 x Hitachi Deskstar 2TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM (1 internal, 1 in an external enclosure as a backup drive)

This is a bit experimental, but I really want to go SSD for the system drive and use one massive big platter drive for all my files/samples/projects etc. This is a pretty entry level SSD, but I can upgrade that in say 18 months when they get a lot better for the same money. Any better SSD recommendations for similar money?

1 x LG CH08LS10 Super Multi BD-ROM & DVD±RW with LightScribe SATA - OEM Black
1 x Tenda Wireless-N PCI Adapter
1 x Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound Thermal paste 3.5gram

The other basic essentials.

I've got a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit on my shelf at home all ready to be installed (thanks Gazchap!).

I'm pricing this all to about £1100 via ebuyer/scan.

Any comments on anything? Have I made any stupid choices?

Thanks guys.

There's nothing wrong with any of that. OCZ RAM is very good, the only things that niggle me is the 530W PSU - it should be enough, but I'd be tempted to go up to 750 to cover my bets, and there's no dedicated sound card. I don't know what sort of music production you do, but does the MB have MIDI in/out and all the other bits you might want?
Also - why the wireless adaptor? No cabling nearby?

Groovy

Yep, I'm gonna double check the power usage, but inital maths said I'd be ok. Graphics cards are the big drain and my GFX is piss weak so it should be ok.

I've got one of these already http://www.dv247.com/computer-hardware/ ... rid--69750 so that's well taken care of

Can't be arsed with cables, basically. I've never had massive problems with Wifi before and I move house a lot too.

\
It's what I rock with!

I agree with that. However you should take note that if the GPU is too underpowered then it can become a bottleneck, even in things like Windows.

Infact let me rephrase that.. It can and will become a bottleneck in Windows.

A few months ago I brought a motherboard for £30 (to this day it's been bloody fantastic). Problem was out of the box it would not support any 5 series Radeons. So I brought a passively cooled 512mb Nvidia 6200 LE. All I needed was something to get a display with so I could go into Windows and use Winflash (AMD only) to flash the bios to add support for my lovely Radeons.

I was using Vista and with Aero enabled the screen refresh was so bad I would have to do it myself at times as it would become garbled. Windows is quite heavy on a GPU now. Back with XP and so on it was fine unless you used something like Windowblinds but wasn't anywhere near as bad as it is now.

There are other cheap GPUs on the market that are good, but those low profile things are usually aimed at media PCs and thus not very good.

Still, you can always try him out and see how you get on

OCZ ram can be hit and miss. I have had no problems with mine but when it's bad it's very bad.

Totally agree on the PSU thing unless it's something like a Corsair. As once said it's not really the wattage (well, to a degree it is) it's more about the rail amps.

For a PSU? well you won't go wrong with one of these.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/750-watt-Alienwar ... 27aca9289d

Ignore the pic of an AT psu. That's why they haven't sold. I got one recently from the same seller and it's an 80+ certified Alienware PSU that looks like this.





Which at £44.99 delivered is decent branded 400w territory, utterly unbeatable.

Ignore the Alienware logo that has jack shit to do with anything. If you like you can do a google for the 80+ website and check it out for yourself.

/looks round at thirty desktops and three servers

Seems to be hitting pretty well so far.

A friend of mine got some DDR3 when it was first introduced and it was a nightmare. Failed to detect correctly in bios and even when manually set still refused to run at full speed.

And it did turn out to be the ram in the end.

Reading through reviews on Newegg it seems to pretty much sum up my experience (very good) and his (very bad).

Buy a Mac. Few people these days who are serious about being creative use Windows. Even I as a previous Mac hater switched over because, fuck me, Macs just work and generally run smoothly. The Mac Pro I'm typing this on is nearly 2 years old, will still eat most PC's alive and hasn't slowed down at all. In fact I am still finding ways to attempt to max it out. Nearly impossible!

Cheers John, I was hoping you'd post as you is our resident PC tinkerer

Re GFX: A poster on ebuyer says of the Asus HD 4350 512MB: "windows index score in windows 7 ultimate is 5.7 for games and 3.7 on windows aero graphics." Is this going to be enough? TBH, I can live without Windows Aero, I usually turn off all windows visual spangly things when I install a PC as it doesn't interest me. This most graphic intensive thing it will ever need to do is play a Blu-ray. They also have a 1GB version of that card for about 10 quid more, is that worth getting over this one?

Re PSU: A BIG factor in my PSU choice is it being silent. This is a music production PC so a everything has to be as silent as possible for when I'm recording. Therefore, the PSUs I'm usually looking at for PC builds are more expensive than your usually gamer PSU, but I'm confident from past experience that Nexus make very solid and power efficient PSUs. DO you know what dB rating that Alienware PSU you linked to has?

Re RAM: I'll read some more reviews, but what I've read so far suggest that OCZ is good. If I get a dud batch, I can always exchange it, so that's not a worry really.

EDIT: Also, John, you had a good play with a bunch of SSD system drives, didn't you? Can you give me any advice/tips/comments on the SSD I chose based on your experiences?

I won't get into a MAC vs PC argument as it's pointless but, basically, no, I won't be buying a MAC under any circumstances. There are dozens of reasons why I am much better off with a PC for what I do (and I speak from a great deal of experience here) and it isn't because I'm not "serious about being creative", which is just Apple advertising propaganda and fanboy hyperbole.

I earn a living from my computers. I'm not playing around. The amount of time saved by buying the Apple hardware has more than paid for the Apple tax. In fact it's paid for it many times over.

You can go down whatever route you want, but I'm giving you the voice of experience of someone who was an absolute Apple hater. I have both Windows and Macs here. I use one lot for making money, the other for collecting or soliciting it.

Dear Lord, are you serious?

[edit]Okay, bit late. That'll teach me to get distracted at work, where I earn a living using, I dunno, cheese or something.

Do you really need such an elaborate external soundcard? You only need something like that if you need to record more than two sources at once. As it is a fairly cheap unit, sound quality is somewhat compromised. Your recordings will only be as good as your input device. If you don't need all those channels, a similarly priced stereo 'channel strip' module would be better. The only other reason for having the MOTU unit is several in/outs for external sound processors or mixer. But as everything can now be done 'in the box' just as well, there's no real need for that either unless you have some spectacularly expensive outboard stuff.

I would recommend a control surface too. The Mackie Control is good.

He already has the soundcard though, he wouldn't be buying another one.


Sure is, but doesn't it cost about the same as the PC?

Back in the day, when I was gainfully employed, all the Silicon Graphics machines were removed and replaced with PC running an open source molecular modelling prgram as the SG machines weren't as good.

It won't be silent. Things with fans can't be - it'll just be quiet.
If you are serious about the noise involved, you might want to think about liquid-cooling. It's much easier to do that you'd think.

As I said, I'm not getting into a MAC vs PC debate, but please be careful not to patronise me as I do know a lot about supporting both MAC and PC systems in audio production environments, I've been doing it both personally and professionally for a decade having owned and worked with both types of system extensively. You work in video (if I am not mistaken) which is a very different environment to mine; without knowledge of exactly what I'm doing with my computer you can't make hugely encompassing statements about a MAC being more stable/powerful/better.

What Grim... said. I already have the ultralite and have been using it (with a laptop) for 2 years. It's perfect for my needs, of which there are many. Don't worry about things like that, they're already sorted, it's just the PC specs I'm asking for feedback on

I have a HD4330 in the media pc I was given. It works fine with Aero (in Win 7 x64) and I haven't noticed any slow down or bottle necking with it.

True dat - I meant silent enough It should sit at around 20dB which is fine.

Great to hear! It's only a £25 card anyway so if it can't hack playing Blu-rays etc then I'll ditch it and get a more powerful one.

And on that - the 4330 can (and does!) play Blu-Ray output at 1080p

Goody goody I'm glad at least one component of this PC will be dirt cheap! I'm getting the shakes thinking about spending £165 just on the RAM!!?!?! I always manage to choose the worst time to build a PC in relation to RAM price fluctuations!

Can you liquid cool a PSU then? I wasn't aware of that being a possibility, but then my knowledge of water-cooling in PC's is rather limited.

It looks like a good build to me, Pupil. Seems like you've done your research on it already. I'm personally using a Titan Fenrir CPU cooler in my system and I can't recommend it enough, although it's size can be an issue (on my Core i5 motherboard, the fan from it is lightly pushing on one of the DDR sticks, although it all seems fine.

Anyway, although it is a fan-based cooler, it's very efficient and with the fan speed controlled by the BIOS, the only time I can ever really hear it is when playing games on it. Considering the GPU I have, it's probably heat from that raising the ambient temperature in the case on top of the extra work being done by the CPU causing the fan to kick in so high. I'd have imagined in your line of work, the fan speed would rarely need to kick in quite so high, meaning you'd just have it there for some extra cooling 'oomph' should it be needed.

I only mention it as I'd personally be slightly concerned going with a fanless CPU cooler and the Titan Fenrir usually gets some pretty good write-ups. Might be worth checking with the audiophile techy types to see if it's one they'd recommend.

Yeah, either by busting it open and replacing the fans/heatsink or by buying an off-the shelf liquid-cooled version.


I didn't spot that - so would I.
I've got to admit I've never tried a passively-cooled CPU, but the idea makes me plenty jittery.

Cheers Zio, I'll check it out, but the Megahelms only comes as stock fanless so you can add whatever 120mm fan you want to it; I'll be adding this fan: http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/produc ... nx-120-pwm

A passive cooled GPU I'm happy with, but passive cooling a CPU scares the shit out of me

I'll check out that Titan Fenrir. The Megahelms is getting crazy good reviews all round, though.

[Sigh]

It doesn't matter what you are doing with the hardware, it's the OS and the build quality.

In 2 years I haven't had any major problems. No firewire stopping working/slowing down, no needing to reinstall graphics drivers, no overheating and the only OS issue was solved by a PRAM reset which took all of 20 seconds.

The reason is because it's a prebuilt system with pre-determined hardware. No weird conflicts. It's not a computer, it's a dedicated workstation. A tool.

Now one thing I did look at was the professional pre-built PC workstations. They looked attractive but for several reasons I came down on the Mac side.

You may want to madly foam at the mouth and that's fine. But if you haven't investigated it to the depth I had investigated it then please don't lecture me.

I think that's exactly what pupil was saying to you, wasn't it?

The Vram will have little to do with it and tbh? 512mb is actually overkill for the Windows desktop. I have an 8600 GTS 256mb (well actually I confess, I have two) but they are rather nippy as they were originally designed for gaming. One alone was enough to run Aero and Fallout 3.

This site has a 1gb Geforce 240 for £74.99. As for blu ray? don't under rate it. Those low profile cards will not play stutter free HD matierial. I know £74.99 is quite a lot but if you poke around you may find one cheaper. What I would suggest is go for what is considered an entry level gaming card (a cheap one) and go with that. If it's up to any kind of gaming then you can feel safe in the knowledge that it'll power through any mundane tasks.

Infact here you go. A refurb 8600 GTS for about £40 delivered (if this site links to specific items)

http://videocardshop.co.uk/viewproduct. ... -T84G-YDQ3

Again I am not saying order that one, but just throwing some ideas out there



I don't sorry. What I do know is that it's 80+ certified. And that is more important IMO than the noise it makes. I do know that it has a 92mm fan in the back and is made by Delta (of server fame). I don't know if the fan speeds up or down but I do know that my system drowns it out any way.



This is very true. I strongly reccomend Scan because their RMA is effortless and painless. Or Ebuyer. I didn't have to RMA with Ebuyer but I ordered at like, 9pm and it arrived the next morning.



O.K. *THE* crucial thing (haha pardon the namesake) when buying an SSD is TRIM support. Now I didn't do my homework when I got my Extreme series but I soon learned the error of my ways. I was having to do a secure erase via a linux disc every 6 weeks to keep it zippy. It now supports TRIM but the firmware update for Indilinx is shakey at best, and if it hates your bios you will be doing an RMA.

So find one with TRIM, basically. Now onto the nice part.

Using an SSD is like the old days when you had dial up and went to broadband. It will leave you grinning from ear to ear for months. And, like broadband, once you go there you can't go back. It's actually very painful to. Seriously, booting Windows and being able to launch Firefox instantly is just something that's hard to go back from.

As for particular drives? Well I don't know what size and what you are looking to spend. If it's just a system drive and you're on a budget I strongly suggest this -

http://www.ginger6.com/intel-serial-40g ... m=Shopping

Scan are out of stock but you should be able to find it cheaper. It's a 40gb one and my friend in the USA got one. It read at 190mb ps which put my nose out of joint because my Corsair Extreme reads at 210 or so and his was a lot less money. His is also 8gb larger than mine. However, on the write mine doubled his speeds showing where my money had gone. If I had to go back though? I would get the Intel hands down. It comes with a SSD toolkit with it's own TRIM function that you run whenever you feel like it.

Don't worry too much about the size of it. 40gb doesn't sound like much. Windows 7 with some hacking around can be greatly reduced in size. For example there is a file in it called Hiberfil.sys. This file is used for hibernate so you can still put the machine to sleep. It weighs in at around 4gb. Disable system restore (it's useless any way as viruses will infect all of your restore points) and you can get it down by another 4gb or so.I have a 32gb drive that shows as 29gb, my install with lots of apps on (inc photoshop 7 which I now have legally) is 14.8gb free of 29. So I'm using 15gb with every app I run (limewire, alien command center, Avast, Skype, MSN, Nero etc etc).

You can always create a partition on a secondary drive for bloatware but even with the having to hack around I cannot reccomend SSDs enough. They are like going from a single core to quad cores, or dial up to broadband.

If you want quiet go Noctua. But prepare for a bleeding botty because they're ruddy expensive. (for the cooler).

Also http://www.quietpc.com for the quiet win.

lol this thread is funny..

im currently recording demos on my pc using adobe audition and a line6 guitar port

It terrifies me that people listen to you.

Seriously hacking an OS?? Dear god!!

No, he came out with the "I've supported Mac and PC" line".

If you are serious about what you do then you go out and buy a dedicated workstation with support from a reputable supplier. All your firewire and breakout boxes all pre-installed. A slower reliable computer is more important than building a fast, but unreliable computer.

My mate used to run a full Pro-Tools setup. Mixing desk, the works. He started off with an off the shelf PC from Evesham (back when they were good) but he never managed to totally get rid of all the niggly problems. Then he changed over to an off the shelf workstation and it seems to be fine. He just uses it for audio work as well, no games or other clutter.

It's merely trimming the FAT (or NTFS)

Seriously, Windows has as much bloated bile in it as anything else. Trimmed down it's not bad at all tbh.

Never used Acronis or Ghost then?

I should clarify on that.

I use Acronis Trueimage home. It can be set to automatically take images of the drive. The best part of course is that it can put those images wherever you want them (and add levels of compression I may add). Windows system restore is crap IMO. It takes an image and slaps it on the system drive pretty much doubling the install size. And as your drive fills up so does the image. Every time I have gotten a virus and tried to run system restore EVERY restore point was infected and it would simply go straight back to where it was when I attempted to run restore.

These days things like Revo Uninstaller keep the registry clean. Which in turn stops your OS turning to bum gravy after a certain period of time. System restore doesn't really serve much of a purpose then, apart from if you installed a bad driver or something. And with something like Acronis running in the background putting images wherever you like them AND with the ability to cold boot from CD (ever tried running system restore on a machine that won't even go into Windows?) it's a MUCH better and safer option than Windows Restore.

Fuck me, Chinny. "Few people these days who are serious about being creative use Windows"?

If you're serious about being creative then it doesn't matter what you use, you'll find a way to create it anyway & anyone who says otherwise is a mong

And it looks like you stopped reading about there
What he actually said was that he'd supported both PCs and Macs in audio engineering environments for a decade. Without wanting to offend as much as you seem to, the last thing he needs is advice from someone who, for all we know, talked to a salesman in an Apple store one afternoon and is now stuck firmly in Mr Job's pocket.
It's difficult to stress just how wrong you are about this, and the whole "creative people use Macs" thing.

I know you're having a good experience with your Big Mac, and they are bloody good computers (although you'd probably have a fit if you saw my 2-core one, it spends its life running XP), but that doesn't mean they have to be used, or are best, for everything.

[edit]It would appear that I am in a bad mood about this. Blame the Thames Rib Experience. And idiots that can't use SQL timestamps.

Actually I decided to chip in here as I researched that a while ago.

The mother boards (or logic board or whatever they are called these days) in Macs (the very latest ones) are manufactured and pressed by Foxconn.

Foxconn make PC motherboards and they range from being the cheapest out there to the most expensive (like the Destroyer). Now I would doubt that they put more effort into making Mac boards as they do PC ones. Infact it would be a bit of a false economy to make your own brand with your name on to a lesser standard.

The difference of course is that a Mac is built for you and tested before it reaches you, which means you should never recieve a DOA Mac. But then having said that you shouldn't recieve let's say a DOA Dell, either.

Listen, I deal with "creatives" every day. A far greater proportion of them use Macs than Windows. In fact when I was editing in Windows it actually started to become rather an inconvenience.

These days I can handle both the estimated 70% of people I deal with who use Macs with ease as well as the 30% of people on Windows. I run Parallels and Bootcamp. My Mac sits next to a PC. Even at home I have 2 PC's and a Macbook.

Get a 360.

CRTVTY = SRS BZNS!

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you there JC, as I've just finished watching The Bourne Identity on the Dell Zino HD. Not a hint of stutter, slow down or anything else to spoil the enjoyment of the Blu-Ray experience.

The spec is:

Athlon Neo X2 6850e (1.8Ghz)
Ati HD4330 with 512mb ram
8Gb system ram

(so basically a laptop squeezed into a box sans screen)

During playback processor usage averaged about 25%. I'm surprised by how performant the system is; I doubt it will play recent games with anything but low settings at an acceptable frame rate (but I have a 360 for those, anyway ) but it certainly doesn't seem to struggle with any of the HD content I've thrown at it. I reckon pupil's system will eat Blu-Ray alive and is probably over-specced for his primary usage.

That's cool then

I suppose a good thing to do would be to look at a comparisson chart and or review of the card he has sized up just to be sure.

John: Thanks for the info, especially about SSDs, that's all really good to know. The Intel SSD you recommended is the exact one I picked out (see post #1) so I'm pleased that my own research has drawn me to the same conclusion as yourself I agree with you about turning off hibernate and system restore and have been doing so with XP for years; there are much better solutions for the latter than what comes built into XP. I'll also be buying my cooling solutions from quietPC, I've been using those guys for years, they sell all the best stuff that people like silentpcreview rate the best. I also will be using Scan and ebuyer to procure the main PC bits, again, been using them both for years and they're always excellent. I'll also do some more reading regarding GPU/PSUs to make sure I get the right ones for what I need too. Ta.

Chinny: I've already stated I'm not going to have a MAC vs PC debate with you. I'm pleased that your MAC works brilliantly for what you want it to do but I know what is best for my own specific needs, trust me.

Also, these guys build absolutely solid PC DAWs:

http://carillonac1.com/ (UK)
http://www.adkproaudio.com/ (US)

I'm taking a lot of information about my own build from these guys. The founder of the latter company I communicate with on a Pro Audio forum fairly regularly.

Oops sorry mate I didn't realise you had said which exact one you were getting (the SSD, like).

Been a busy day here what with finishing off the screen doors.

Also it's a good idea to spend as little as you can on a SSD (which you are doing) because as I mentioned elsewhere Intel have apparently found a way of making them far larger for far less money.

Ha, I wish 150fx plugins, 50 stereo channels of audio, several monstrous VSTi and drum sample libraries, all running consecutively at 192 samples of latency is nothing out of the ordinary for me! This new PC will give me some much needed headroom without having to bounce down tracks but I'll find new ridiculous ways to grind it into the floor, don't you worry

Precisely my logic too, mate. SSD tech is screaming ahead so fast right now that I'm just gonna get my foot in the door with this Intel one then think about getting bigger and faster ones a little later into the future.

EDIT: silentpcreview forum folks like that SSD drive a LOT: http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... hp?t=56949 - extra confirmation always a good thing!

One other point to consider, then, on the GPU front: I know next to nothing about audio processing, but if the mathematics involved is largely floating-point maths it might be worth considering a beefier graphics card. Both NVidia and ATI have invested heavily in api's that expose the functionality of the GPU in a general purpose sort of a way (CUDA and Stream respectively). If your software vendor(s) are able to support/exploit either, a decent graphics card may pay dividends.

Still, like I say I know next to nothing about audio processing and even if I did I'd probably still go with the low-end entry point and upgrade if necessary and when it's cheaper to do so!