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PC recommendations...

OK here's the deal - In September, I'm moving out to university accommodation, and I'm gonna be getting my own computer. Some kind of PC, I've decided... I'd be using it for general things like surfing the net/talking online, assignments, and so on. But also (hence why I'm asking in this forum) since I'm already into producing, I'd want to use it for production.

I know that ideally a dedicated computer should be used for production, but it's not like I'm made of money

So since I don't know that much about computers, I'm asking you guys to help me a bit. I use Reason at the moment, and I'm not leaving out the possibility of maybe also using other programs, like Cubase for example, so I'd need to have a decent amount of power to run them.

So...

Specifications (memory, processor type, etc)?
Any particular manufacturers?
Laptop or desktop (any particular advantages of either, not just for cost/power but for living situation too)?
And so on...

Thanks a lot for any help

well

Well get one custom built.

Go to alienware.com or bestbuy or a local pc shop if u cant build yourself.

1gb ram minimum 512mb

over 3.0ghz

xp pro

good and fast hardrive over 80gb with ata

128mb video card at the least. go radeon and not shared memory either.

and of course a good audio card.something like m-audio

wireless mouse and keyboard monitors and a flat screen monitor.

and a nice asus motherboard with a plexi cd writer and your all set.

GOD DONT BUY AN ALIENWARE!


You can buy a PC so muhc more efficient and cheaper then a factory PC.

Alienware RAPES you with profits.

You can buy a pc thats easily a lot better then an alienware for a lot cheaper.



There are very nice pc's out there.

here are some links

http://www.voodoopc.com
http://www.overdrivepc.com
http://www.abspc.com



Id recommend you build your own pc using newegg.com or tigerdirect.com

AMD 64 Processor, beats the crap out of a P4.
1 Gig of DDR400 Ram. Dual Channel DDR400 is even better.
Serial ATA Harddrive (Make sure the Motherboard supports it)


Now alienware might be an okay alternative if you cant build a pc cause its kinda evenly prcies compared to those other links but go check out voodoopc youll be shocked by how sweet those pc's look. They beat the crap out of alienware by miles.

Get 2 hard drives. One for music and one for non-music. Set them up with their own OS and run them seperately. I don't know the details on what you need to do exactly but it will give you a 2 pc's in one. One with just music and the other with Internet and word processing and movies and all that crap. When you don't have stuff like norton running on your computer, you'd be surprised how much quicker it runs.

I'd get Mac if I were you.
Just for the record- I'm not saying that just because I'm selling one of my Macs/

well you can get almost the same thigns on a pc as for the mac. less hastle to. actually you can get more for the pc then you can for a mac. since its not for all production you want some friendly use too.

quote:

Originally posted by hey cheggy Get 2 hard drives. One for music and one for non-music. Set them up with their own OS and run them seperately. I don't know the details on what you need to do exactly but it will give you a 2 pc's in one. One with just music and the other with Internet and word processing and movies and all that crap. When you don't have stuff like norton running on your computer, you'd be surprised how much quicker it runs.

you can just install a partition of windows on each hard drive...but then again you have to select what windows you want to ru when you get into startup..which is stupid. why have 2 windows?

quote:

Originally posted by jupiterone you can just install a partition of windows on each hard drive...but then again you have to select what windows you want to ru when you get into startup..which is stupid. why have 2 windows?

I don't know much about pc's. I just had the idea.

if you have the money i'd definatly say buy a mac, they are awesome for production and if you dont know much about computers chances are a windows machine will become a fumbling mess with spyware and viruses (no offence its just a weekly occurance for me to clean my family/friends computers of that kinda shit)

How much do you have to spend? According to that budget we can make some better suggestions.

- farris

quote:

Originally posted by jupiterone well you can get almost the same thigns on a pc as for the mac. less hastle to. actually you can get more for the pc then you can for a mac. since its not for all production you want some friendly use too.

Exactly, I've been a Mac user for a few years and sick of it. Since none of the production stuff I'm doing is really high-end, and I'm wanting to use the computer for general things too, it would work out better. But that's about how much I know so far...

And I've not really got a budget yet, I know parents are gonna help me pay, and if I manage to get a job I'll be able to get something a bit better. That's quite vague I know, but consider that I'm a student and I don't have all the money in the world, so value is a key thing...

Thanks so far guys... I'll consider the dual-boot thing if it's not too much hassle.

Build a pc from scratch www.ebuyer.co.uk

Dont worry about any special, cases, mice, keyboards and you'll save a hell of alot of money there.

Project 7 is right dont spend your cash on like 200$ cases. yours not doing gaming here so you dont need extreme cooling.

Get an aluminum dragon atx mid-tower case taht comes with a 500w power supply and fans. lkike on tiger direct for 90$

Is there really a huge advantage in building your own PC?

I've been to sites like Ebuyer and Aria, and to be honest the amount of parts, and their functions, confuses the hell out of me. Not just the range, but also knowing if every part is compatible with other parts and so on, it's so complicated for someone like me who's not particularly interested in the workings of computers... And that's not even getting started on putting the thing together. It seems like a lot of work/effort/knowledge involved, would it be worth it?

Just wondering. It seems like buying a system would be so much simpler. I have no idea how much I'll even be producing on it, cos when I go to uni I'd like to make the most of the experience, you know socialising and all that stuff. So I don't know if I'll have much time to produce. Then again, the computer will probably have to last me a few years at least, during these I could get more into production and I just don't know yet, so I need at least some power for it to last me a while and stay up to date.


Sorry if it's my problem's lot to understand, I appreciate the help loads and thought this would probably be the best place to ask...


EDIT: if you're gonna give me links, try to make it UK-based stores, i'm sure the US ones are great and all but they're not much use to me...

EDIT 2: AMD or Intel? I know some people can be quite opinionated about that debate but ideas are welcome...

And how important is a video card? Somebody said I should get a 128MB one, but that would hike up the cost even more...

if you know how to build one. you can save a shit load of money. I bought a PC that was on alienware same one. which came out to 2,400$ on alienware.com and made it plus added 2 more gigs of ram and it came out to be 1,350$.

AMD 64 FX
orginally 120Gigs of HDD Space but i added 3 400 gig SATA Drives and made it 1 huge Raid drive. which is 1 tetrabyte of hard drive space
4 gigs of DDR400 Dual Channel Ram
Soundblaster Audigy 2
Geforce 6800 SLI (2 geforce 6800 cards working together)
and water cooling.

the new AMD 64 bit beats the shit out of the Pentium 4. But you haev to have a 64 bit windows to run it.

this is what i have and runs fine

2.8 overclocked to 3.4
512ram
3 hard drives 40, 30 and 200 usb
128 dual video card
motu 2408 firewire
xp home
run cubase sx with no problem

quote:

Originally posted by DjSimonB Is there really a huge advantage in building your own PC? EDIT 2: AMD or Intel? I know some people can be quite opinionated about that debate but ideas are welcome... And how important is a video card? Somebody said I should get a 128MB one, but that would hike up the cost even more...

Well you sound as tho you don't want to hike up the price too much, so like my purchase 2 months ago, bang-for-my-buck was the biggest advantage of building my own pc.

The system I built, and runs EVERYTHING damn fine is as follows:

http://www.shopgenie.co.uk/110002.h...10250&popups=no

First you need a CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939 (�99.47)

Then a Socket 939 motherboard:
Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro (�65.20)

Some memory:
Corsair DDR PC3200 2x256 MB Value (�36.37)

A video card:
Radeon 9550 128 MB (�39.99)

And finally, the cheapest ATX case you can find.
Midi Tower Case ATX 400W (�18.74)

Ontop of that you may need to find someone to put it together for you. Even with the cost of that tho it should work out CONSIDERABLY cheaper then a computer from say "dell" not to mention twice as good.

quote:

Originally posted by jupiterone the new AMD 64 bit beats the shit out of the Pentium 4. But you haev to have a 64 bit windows to run it.

do not mislead the poor guy. i have athlon64 2800+ and it is much better than my old athlon 2200+ on standard windows xp pro sp2. i would reccomend to go for athlon64, whether one has windows64 or not.

3500+ is cheap and good..recommend!!!
1gb ram is must!!!

other parts as you wish as you need!!

you can build good audio pc if you dont need it for gaming becouse good videocards cost 700 euros

quote:

Originally posted by h.vox do not mislead the poor guy. i have athlon64 2800+ and it is much better than my old athlon 2200+ on standard windows xp pro sp2. i would reccomend to go for athlon64, whether one has windows64 or not.

Recommend a Socket 939 AMD 64. Don't get the Socket 754 AMD 64's, as they are nowhere near as efficient and fast with memory.

quote:

Originally posted by Rob Recommend a Socket 939 AMD 64. Don't get the Socket 754 AMD 64's, as they are nowhere near as efficient and fast with memory.

dual channel memory architecture does not even remotely offer twice the efficiency with memory (the difference might be about 10-20%), and that is the only difference, apart from much more expensive cpus which offer 1 mb cache instead of 512 k. anyway, i definitely would reccomend socket939 cpu, even though i own 754. but if the money is really tight .......

quote:

Originally posted by Rob Well you sound as tho you don't want to hike up the price too much, so like my purchase 2 months ago, bang-for-my-buck was the biggest advantage of building my own pc. The system I built, and runs EVERYTHING damn fine is as follows: http://www.shopgenie.co.uk/110002.h...10250&popups=no First you need a CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939 (�99.47) Then a Socket 939 motherboard: Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro (�65.20) Some memory: Corsair DDR PC3200 2x256 MB Value (�36.37) A video card: Radeon 9550 128 MB (�39.99) And finally, the cheapest ATX case you can find. Midi Tower Case ATX 400W (�18.74) Ontop of that you may need to find someone to put it together for you. Even with the cost of that tho it should work out CONSIDERABLY cheaper then a computer from say "dell" not to mention twice as good.

Thanks for that

Would still need hard drive, OS, CD drive, monitor, soundcard, mouse & keyboard (tell me if i missed anything) but it still seems pretty reasonable. And maybe a bit more memory.


The thing with the socket 939 cpu's I've seen is that they generally don't seem as fast (GHz wise) compared to the 754's. Do they make up for that in other areas? Cos I'm not sure how important the GHz is.

How much better is 3500+ than the 3000? Big price difference.

Yeah I know nothing about processors

man 3500+ is minimum.. thats only 2gig cpu becouse of coll and smarf function... my cpu hasnt became over 43 degrees.. thats cool..and smart

1 gig memory is minimum!!!! for sure!!

you can build good audio pc with 1000 euros

quote:

Originally posted by DjSimonB Thanks for that Would still need hard drive, OS, CD drive, monitor, soundcard, mouse & keyboard (tell me if i missed anything) but it still seems pretty reasonable. And maybe a bit more memory.

Can't you just use your current monitor, OS, CD drive, mouse and keyboard? And yeah, you'll need a hard drive. Make sure you get a Serial ATA (SATA) harddrive, as they're considerably faster then the old ATA harddrives.

Seagate 120 GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA (�52.96)

quote:

The thing with the socket 939 cpu's I've seen is that they generally don't seem as fast (GHz wise) compared to the 754's. Do they make up for that in other areas? Cos I'm not sure how important the GHz is. How much better is 3500+ than the 3000? Big price difference.

The Ghz war is totally irrelevant. If GHz was the determining factor of performance, then a 3.0C GHz P4 would destroy a S939 AMD64 3000+ which only runs at 1.8GHz. It doesn't tho.

And yes, the Socket 754 AMD 64 3000+ runs at 2.0ghz, while the Socket 939 64 3000+ runs at 1.8ghz. Don't let that fool you tho. The S939 is a totally improved architecture, and the S939 CPU runs a faster core (90nm compared to the S754 120nm core). The S939 architecture is also the same architecture the Athlon 64-FX's use, so when the prices come down in a year or two, it would make for an awesome upgrade.

Even today, the price difference beteen a 3000+ & 3500+ doesn't seem justified, mainly because I too was on a tight budget, and the only thing you're paying for is priority technology. These are the top selling CPU's at the moment on that site.

1. AMD Athlon 64 3500+
2. AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939
3. AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Socket 939
4. AMD Athlon XP 3000+ Barton
5. AMD Athlon 64 3000+
6. Intel Pentium 4 3.0C GHz HyperThreading
7. AMD Athlon 64 3400+
8. AMD Athlon 64 3200+
9. AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton
10. AMD Sempron 3000+ Socket A
11. AMD Athlon 64 2800+
12. Intel Pentium 4 3.0E GHz HyperThreading
13. AMD Athlon 64 3800+
14. AMD Athlon 64 4000+
15. AMD Sempron 2800+ Socket A

The Socket 939 3000+ is surely the best bang for your buck CPU at the moment, and the only reason I'd get a 3500+ is if I had alot of extra money to burn. Sure you could get a 3500+, but you'll be considerably more out of pocket.

The socket 939 3000+ can do eventhing, and with it, I'm sure you'll have a better PC then alot of people who have made really really nice tracks. The best thing to do of course would be to research everything up for yourself. It took me a week of research to decide what was best, and I was upgrading from a Duron 800

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