Help a Tone Deaf Builder Out

[sencha]

I am helping Khatru with his system build, the "Duozilla". I think we have all the specs figured out, but I am intrigued with the specs that he has gotten from this Forum. I am definitely not a musician, just a system builder, so maybe you could help me understand some of the specs that have been given for the "Best Desktop", referencing the "Quadzilla".

So to start, the Opteron, you use it for the stability and not so much for the speed? Because the new Duo 2 Core Extreme 6800's, I would think would crush the Opteron 270's. Obviously the cost of the new Core 2 Extreme is a factor but, with quad core just around the corner, I would think this would be even more attractive, due to scalability, assuming you buy the right mobo.

CPU fan, are most people using the stock fan? I would think that with all that data being crunched you could benefit from a cooler proc. I was going to recommend the ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro to Khatru, any thoughts on that, anyone using it?

I noticed that in some threads people complain about read/write speed. If this is a true concern, wouldn't it be best to use WD Raptor's or even better SCSI Ultra320? Why 2 80gig drives? That seems odd with today's huge hard drives.

I noticed nobody is talking about redundancy, I know for myself that if I just created the best track of my life, I would not want to lose it to a crash. What are most people using for backup? External drives, RAID, etc.

Have most users found that 4gig of RAM is better than 2gig? Is there a discernible difference, making it worth the cost?

Thanks


Khatru's Spec's:

AcoustiCase C6607B (Black)

ATX Ultra-Quiet PSU, 560W, 120mm Dustproof fan

2 X AcoustiFan 120mm, noiseless, dustproof fans

TYAN S2877ANRF-RS Dual Socket 940 NVIDIA nForce4
Professional 2200 ATX Server Motherboard
1 X AMD Dual-Core Opteron 270 Italy 2.0GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache
Socket 940 Dual Core Processor

BFG Tech BFGR76256GTOCE GeForce 7600GT 256MB
128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card

ZALMAN VF700-ALCU 2 Ball VGA COOLER

2 X CORSAIR 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM ECC Registered
DDR 400 (PC 3200) Server Memory

Western Digital 80GB and 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Hard Drives

LITE-ON Black 16X DVD+R

Samsung 941BW Black 19”4 ms GTG widescreen DVI

PT LE 7.3 upgrade from 6.4

XPpro SP2

Mbox

[Matt P]

sencha.

Frist off welcome to DUC!

Second your reading the wrong thread for the info.

First page of the Quad thread.

Third Shane and I designed the Quad 265 Opteron over a year ago this was long before any of the new Intel's even existed.
Infact we at one time did even consider the old Xeons, but went with Opterons instead.

Any ways Shane said for you to shoot him an E mail if you have Questions.

[email protected]

Hope this helps.

Matt

[Khatru]

Yo sencha my man,

I'll gladly bump this for you.

[wolfskin]

You'll notice a big improvement with 4GB of RAM vs. 2GB, especially when using instrument tracks or multiple instances of plug-ins...

A good habit is to back-up every session IMMEDIATELY after the session to DVD. You could ALSO back-up to an external drive, just to have a copy ready to edit in the event your primary audio drive fails...

[M-ManLA]

Just to let you know, Intel Quad-Core is out already.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...k=&srchInDesc=