Best Desktops for Pro Tools LE

[tangusa]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by PDEES:
[QB]Welcome fellow Texan. How's the weather in Austin? Overcast and cold down here in Houston.



Pleased to meet you PDEES, they make the same weather up here in Austin. Thanks for the tip on the thread to follow, I've looked a little at it, but just the first few pages or so. I've mostly been reading this thread (amazing wealth of info) since I just built my machine. And thanks to you Allen for starting this thread and the sugestion to turn everything off, I'll try it.

Oh and thanks for the compliment on the website, rock is my bread and roll is my butter.
Yall Rock [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
Tangusa

[PDEES]

Figured as much weather wise, I did my usual christmas in-law retreat in bustling Wimberely...

Anyhow, Allen / Phil, I got my first 2 boxes from newegg and started reading from thread one. I see that the enermax 8CM fan is a replacement for the stock box exhaust. Do you suggest using the stock as an inlet, looks like it will fit? or double it out the back exhaust under the pwr supply? Or just blow it off?

[Silence]

I don't think this system will come in at the US$900 mark, it is costing me nearly $2500 Australian, roughly US$1250. But this is what I have just ordered for use with the 001.

Antec File Server case w/ 400watt PSU
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe
AMD Athlon XP 2400+
Zalmann CNPS 3100 (it's a quiet heatsink/fan)
CorsairMicro Xtreme PC3200 512mb DDR CAS 2.0
Western Digital 8mb cache 40gig HDD (system disk)
WD 8mb cache 80gig HDD (audio drive from old PC)
MSI Ti 4200 VTD8X
Lite On CD Burner 12X (installing from old PC)
Windows XP Home Edition

I faced the same RAM quandry ie. 1 x 512 or 2 x 256, and decided that 512 will have more life in it and in a few months when the bank balance is a bit healthier another stick of 512 will put the 'pedal to the metal' by utilising the dual bandwidth function on the mobo.

Will keep you posted on my DAVEC results and any issues when I am up and running with it.

[tangusa]

Hey Yall, this is my first post, nice to meet you.
I just built an Allen box exatly like the 12/15/02 update. I have a 001 and my OS is XP. I'm having similar problems as some other 001/XP users of frequent 9129 and 9093 errors. I'll hit play and get "audio processing conflicting with other cpu tasks-reduce H/W buffer-9129" I'll do that and then hit play again and get "operating system held off interupts for too long-increase H/W buffer-9093". I'm not at my PT machine so I can't check the IRQs right now, but just like other XP users, both my Promise card and 001 are high like 16-18. I've read here and on Microsoft that IRQ's in XP are not user assignable. I'm also not sure what optimizations I need to do as far as all the stuff thats running in the background. What can I turn off? Should I just load that old copy of win98 I have? I would truly appreciate any help or direction.
tangusa [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

[Phil O'Keefe]

Originally posted by PDEES:
Figured as much weather wise, I did my usual christmas in-law retreat in bustling Wimberely...

Anyhow, Allen / Phil, I got my first 2 boxes from newegg and started reading from thread one. I see that the enermax 8CM fan is a replacement for the stock box exhaust. Do you suggest using the stock as an inlet, looks like it will fit? or double it out the back exhaust under the pwr supply? Or just blow it off?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Try it with just the Enermax as a case exaust fan. If you can get by with just the one (exaust) fan and things run cool enough, there's no sense in adding an intake fan - it will just make more noise.

[Evan C.]

Hey I had a question about processors. I want to put a computer together. Should I go with the P4 2.8 or the athlon xp2800? They are around the same price. Or should I wait for the amd hammer which may be out next month. Thanks for the advice.
Evan

[Allen Hallada]

Originally posted by Evan C.:
Hey I had a question about processors. I want to put a computer together. Should I go with the P4 2.8 or the athlon xp2800? They are around the same price. Or should I wait for the amd hammer which may be out next month. Thanks for the advice.
Evan

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Evan,
I would go with the XP processor at this time. I wouldn't hold my breath for the Hammer release and the new motherboards required to run it. Good Luck,
Allen [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[PDEES]

For future newbie pc builders like myself, I will post my experience of putting my allen / Phil hybrid togeter. My basic internals and box arrived yesterday so the night was spent reading the url link that Allen posted on building pcs. But as w/ all opinions, you learn it is a great guide. For instance, I put the pwr supply in, then got wondered about the extra fan, but as you can see Phil helped out (again, thanks) and then I had to pull the pwr supply back out to put in my cdrw...litte stuff like that cost me an hour or so last night. But then alot of it will be based around the box, etc. Just got a call from the wife and two more boxes arrived today...My approach is to complete the kit, load XP home, tweak per www.musicxp.net, DUC threads, etc, then 002, tweak, then glyph -but I bought the el-cheapos Phil bought, but they change from the VIA to the TI chipset since Phil bought his, so if it works on the glyph but not the 002, we will see... then tweak heading to the davec test and finally pulling in my session 8 files and off to funland.

[Road_Hogs]

Originally posted by PDEES:
For future newbie pc builders like myself, I will post my experience of putting my allen / Phil hybrid togeter. <snip>and off to funland.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Thanks PDEE,
Looking forward to your report. There is SO MUCH information in this thread over an extended period of time covering configs other than Allen's that it is tough to filter out the extraneous info.

My thanks to Allen and the others who have bent over backwards to help like this! It is VERY MUCH appreciated!

Cheers,
Toby Gray

[j old school]

For those of you using A7V333 without the promise PCI card, how are you connecting the drives? Is the audio drive connected as a slave? On board, there are two IDE connectors and two raid connectors. Can you use the RAID connectors for plain non-RAID IDE connections?