I'm about ready.

[Terry Wetzel]

Good morning and thanks to all who responded for your great comments and instructions. One more question. How detailed should the list of specs that I present to the computer guy be. All I have is the ones I copied from guitardom's forum signature. I don't have any idea if these are current or if he will ask for more! If he does I won't know what to say. The Windows optimizations are no problem as I have copies but I will need to make sure he understands their importance.

[Terry Wetzel]

Perhaps I am wrong but shouldn't there be a list of approved specifications needed to build a pc that is capable of handling Pro Tools 9, Windows 7,64bit somewhere on the forums? Or am I again trying to take the easy way out?

[mjslakeridge]

Good Morning,

Are you planning on using any parts from your current rig (case, power supply, hard drives, etc.) or will you keep the current computer for general use? I don't know of a list of approved specs because there are an infinite number of cpu/motherboard combinations available.

I have put together a starting point build based (kind of) on Guitardom's specs. A couple of caveats: The 3930k processor he is using is meant for overclocking (that is what the "k" means). I doubt whether you will be overclocking - I wouldn't recommend it. When I chose that processor in PCpartpicker, it didn't show a price, so I don't know if that means it is no longer sold. Same thing with the motherboard, no price came up.

I chose a solid state drive for the operating system, pro tools, and other programs installation. Not a necessity, but with prices really coming down, no reason not to benefit from the faster boot times. I chose a 1 TB "D:" drive to record to. If you plan on using your existing session drive, then you can skip this. I didn't select a case as that is a personal choice.

Here is the link to the build I started for you:

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/FYW9r7

I am not the greatest expert in building PCs, so I fully expect others to chime in and make modifications.

Another thought I had was for you to contact an instructor at a local community college to see if they could get some IT students to assemble the PC for you. (The assembly only takes and hour or so, it is loading the programs and working through the optimizations that can take some time). I probably wouldn't try to go through a 4 year university - they are probably too bureaucratic to be able to assist you. If you are able to get some college students to help with the initial work, then you would have some contacts to help out in the future if something goes wrong or the system needs tweaking.

Let me know if the link to PCPartpicker doesn't work.

[810]

I found this thread earlier this morning. it is about the time of pro tools 9, so i would say its relevant:

https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?url...1&share_type=t

Whats the maximum ram Pro Tools see's/can use ?

Sent from my One using Tapatalk

[Terry Wetzel]

Thanks but all that is more than I can comprehend right now. If I specify 16 gig memory I should be ok.

[810]

The point is i think that a 32 bit program won't run the way you want it to. I couldn't ge my PT 8.0.5 to work right on my 16 GB RAM i7 laptop. It gave me cpu errors and told me to disable plug ins. PT started as a 64 bit program after v.11. Just sayin.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

[Terry Wetzel]

Thanks mjslackeridge. This is great and I really appreciate it. I'll print it out and give it to the computer guy.

[mjslakeridge]

Terry, I would hold off on giving it to the computer guy until we get more feedback from other more experienced builders. The GPU (video card) I selected may be overkill for a Pro Tools rig, that is one area I don't have much knowledge of. Probably give it a few days until the pros are back in their studios/offices after the weekend. After all, you want to get this build right the first time!

[Terry Wetzel]

Mjslackeridge. Agreed. I only intended to show him as an example but I'll hold off.

[Terry Wetzel]

I don't know about that but there are a few guys here telling me otherwise. I don't want to get in to a who knows more than... So. Who is in agreement that I can't use more than 3 gigs of ram with pt's 9. If that's so i'll be wasting my money!