biggest issues regarding production and stuff like that is RAM.. now 1 gig of ram will be sufficient for what you will require of it, especially as it is DDR2 and you will easily beable to upgrade RAM in future.


most likely this pc will come with an onboard soundcard, which means its somethign that is part of the motherboard.. so any soundcard you buy will be an improvement.. and yes they're easy to install, ill help you...

also, 250gig will be enough harddrive space for your needs and that too is upgradable..

as far as price, im not too sure been out of my nerdlinger phase for a little bit, but dell are prettyy reasonable, and u get the confidence of having a big company to purchase from who wont disappear unlike vongs pc and hardware shop.. as well as a warranty.

i'd say go for it.

I'm gettin a Mac soon, PC's dont do it for me anymore..

quote:

Originally posted by Virginia_L I'm gettin a Mac soon, PC's dont do it for me anymore..

oh well in that case....

never ever EVER buy package brand name PCs. they are a total rip-off. find a wholesaler, tell em what you want and get them to put it together for you. this will remove the need to upgrade things like your sound card. imo dell sucks cock.

DDR2 is neglibly faster than DDR (at best). ram is also produced at varying speeds these days, so 1 1024 ram might be different to the next. (youre after 400Mhz ram at least) youd want a motherboard that runs dual memory; essentially making everything a lot faster; ie 2x512 would be better than 1x1024.

for improves performance you also want a nice amount of FSB or system cache. that will depend on your motherboard; find a nice sight that reviews boards.

if youre at all interested in gaming graphics id check out the speed of the monitor\'s refresh; youd want an 8ms monitor for gaming.

the rest of the specs seem fine; but like you said a dedicated soundcard if youre producing is a MUST. check the producers forum for what youd want. not sure exactly what that vid card is either.

find a wholesaler thats been around for a bunch of years and go with them. whatever you save you can put back into it to make it tougher. the big name brands stay around coz ppl are too lazy to do their own research, dont fall into that trap. this way youll have everything you want and wont have to settle for \"extras\" that arent worth my bollocks.

good luck

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sorry mate but this is a little vague.

for sample based production then RAM is essential.. but if you're not using samples and you're using lets say VSTi's instead of samples for your leads/pads/basslines then it's the CPU which is most important.

it has also been mentioned here about soundcards.. up until recently i've been using an on board sound card and it had done the job fine. the only use you'd need for a decent sound card in terms of music production is to help you with latency issues for external MIDI devices etc. (like synths, keyboards, etc). if your setup is going to be purely software based for the moment, then you could consider a sound card later on (which is what i did).

ben. if you would like some advice, hit me up on msn for a chat:

[email protected]

cheers.


oh ps.. the pc you listed has the right kinda specs for the job, but its a bit pricey i think.. thats what you get with name brands though.

quote:

Originally posted by 00soups00 biggest issues regarding production and stuff like that is RAM.. now 1 gig of ram will be sufficient for what you will require of it, especially as it is DDR2 and you will easily beable to upgrade RAM in future.

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Last edited by Aesthetic on Sep-29-2005 at 03:08

Sweet.

I have a laptop with everything, but its unreliable, i have a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX External Soundcard, which works a treat for the lappy.

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Too old for this shit. But still luvin it

quote:

Originally posted by DaveBegic it has also been mentioned here about soundcards.. up until recently i've been using an on board sound card and it had done the job fine. the only use you'd need for a decent sound card in terms of music production is to help you with latency issues for external MIDI devices etc. (like synths, keyboards, etc). if your setup is going to be purely software based for the moment, then you could consider a sound card later on (which is what i did)

hmmm, does this mean a nice, shit-hot TA-recommended soundcard WONT help the latency i get with VSTs in cubase? coz the latency is painful (definitely the only reason im not king of the producers obviously)

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yes pkc.. soundcards only improve latency towards external hardware devices.. i used onboard sound for ages and i got an audiophile card recently and it did shit all for my vst processing.. since the vst's are all directly loaded @ the cpu. but of course when you plan to add hardware to your rig you want kickass response times so you need a soundcard with low latency levels

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Recently released:
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http://www.wtfnews.org

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN never ever EVER buy package brand name PCs. they are a total rip-off.

bang bang my instant thought to seeing a link to a dell page

and go athlon 64!

doing audio production? that doesn't mean very much, I might as well say I want a computer for games.. and by games I mean solitaire... O_o really depends on what software you're using n stuff, but maybe a soundcard that supports ASIO for low latency is something you're gonna want to have, although really depends on what kind of production you're going to be doing, and how

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picturerise.com

thanks for the info begic. tho not the info i wanted to hear
basically means i gotta upgrade my freakin board & cpu which i totally cant afford. coz it really is unmanageable, esp for a newbie without a clue what theyre doing

oh well, another good reason to have cubase sitting there doing a nice load of fvck all

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Thats not a bad spec'd system, but you could do a lot better without going through a big name like Dell.

It depends a lot on what you want to use it for. There's a few components in that system that you could modify to drastically reduce the cost without really sacrificing any performance.

The CPU they've listed is the latest D-type 800. By reducing your clock speed down to 3gig rather than 3.2 you'll save over $200 right there.

Unless you're going to be power gaming you don't really need the X600 card either and could remove that and get a motherboard with onboard video and there's another $200-300 saving.

I'd be happy to go through it with you, spec and build a system if you like, I generally use MSY (www.msy.com.au, parts list @ http://www.msy.com.au/Parts/PARTS.pdf) for parts as they seem to be the cheapest in Melbourne at the moment. Other contenders are generally CPL (www.cpl.net.au) and if they don't have what you're after there's always ScorpTec (www.scorptec.com.au) but they're getting a bit pricey these days.

I can't help you too much on which sound card would be the best for production, it sounds like a few of the other guys here have got much better understanding of that stuff.

The benefit you -would- get from going with Dell is that they give you a 1 year next day service warranty if anything breaks. You can put custom hardware in their PC's (new soundcard for instance) but this -will- void your service warranty.

Ping me an e-mail if you'd like me to help out! ([email protected])