Switching from Mac to PC

[Reb]

I know that usually people talk about switching the other way and I love macs but the dual machines are too expensive and the imac g5's have had some capacitor problems (melting) so I am seriously looking into this. Also, I hear that you can get more plugins and this is of interest (I have the waves gold package which uses a lot of juice). I was looking at a windows machine from sweetwater. They have 2 of interest ($999 2.66 ghz pentium 4/533 bus with 512 ddr333 ram on an Asus motherboard) and ($2000 - pentium 3.2/800 bus, 1 gb ddr400 ram, 2 sata drives). These have acoustic treatment in them for noise (auralex sheetblok, lined, Zalman, cooling system, quiet power supply and quiet glyph drives). Would the 2nd machine be a huge amount of difference over the 1st for $1000? The machines are also optimized for audio. I would like to stay in the $1000 range if possible, so if the first machine could handle around 24 tracks with a good amount of eq/comp plugins, a few reverbs and have no problems with screen redraw that would be great.

Is there a strong recommendation to get one of Allen's configurations or a "best buy" machine over these? The advantage for me as a mac user is I don't know how to optimize the pc for use with protools (oo2r). Sweetwater shuts off things that don't need to be on and removes unneccesary drivers/programs. I am a long time protools user, but on mac so I don't know how to do this for the pc.

Reccomendations are appreciated. I just don't know where to start. Thanks for your help

[JonnyGinese]

I woudl say... look at the "Best Desktop PC for PLTE" post and copy down the items recommended(which can get around 32+20 and up with 5 plugins on each channel on DaveC) and then either build it yourself.. and if you dot'n knwo taht much about PC building.. bring it to a local PC shop and have them do it for you. Thats the best way to go.. the recommended comp will ocst about 900 and probaybl 1000 after them building it if you dont build it yoruself.. and its going to destroy that $2000 comp from sweetwater.

Jonny

p.s. I'm sure Allen will post after this with his reco.. so jsut wait a day or 2.

[astrorock]

they sound like good machines and i'm sure they are optimized correctly.
but sweetwaters prices are too high for me. i really like the service
but i just can't get past paying twice as much for something because of
the service. you can build a machine faster than the dual g5 top of the line
for like 1000.00- 1500.00. and i'd go amd personally! having had both
the amd just kicks butt with ptle



jay

[Reb]

thanks for the reply. Any other suggestions/thoughts?

[120359]

I am working with a standard hp paviljon and have no problems with ptle,sonar,cubase,reason etc.
The price was 999 EURO and he is silent.