Best Desktops for Pro Tools LE

[stereocp]

Thanks djspl for your input.

Although I detect a little sarcasm in your post, it is appreciated. My $800 budget is for the computer tower only. I have extra funds for monitor, WinXP, external firewire drive, MBOX PRO 2 Factory, etc.....

I simply want to get the most bang for the buck and don't want to be obsolete in 2 less than two years.

I am putting in a ThermalTake 480W power supply, which is quite and beefy. The AMD AM2 chip is the low voltage type, and I think I'll have enough head room.

Yes, this is only for my high school class, but I want them to have the best possible components I can afford.

I'm fairly sure we'll never reach the limit on tracks and plugs with this system.

Thanks again for the input.

Craig
stereocp

[djspl]

Thanks djspl for your input.

Although I detect a little sarcasm in your post, it is appreciated. My $800 budget is for the computer tower only. I have extra funds for monitor, WinXP, external firewire drive, MBOX PRO 2 Factory, etc.....

I simply want to get the most bang for the buck and don't want to be obsolete in 2 less than two years.

I am putting in a ThermalTake 480W power supply, which is quite and beefy. The AMD AM2 chip is the low voltage type, and I think I'll have enough head room.

Yes, this is only for my high school class, but I want them to have the best possible components I can afford.

I'm fairly sure we'll never reach the limit on tracks and plugs with this system.

Thanks again for the input.

Craig
stereocp

If you are buying the AM2 platform now, you shouldn't worry about obsolescence. If you are, you are suffering from severe brainwashing by the well equipped Computer Industry Marketing Army (CIMA) and you need to put down the "Maximum PC" magazine. Take a deep breath and repeat after me "There will ALWAYS be something newer and faster". It never goes away.

If maintained your computers will start the same 2 years from now as they did yesterday. It's only obsolete if your needs change and/or if you can't do what you need to do anymore. My buddy has an old Athlon XP equipped machine. Protools LE runs fine on it. The only difference is he doesn't have as much headroom for more tracks and plug-ins.

My "bang for buck" rule: Processor speed gets you the most performance on any given platform. If you have to buy a slower chip to afford a snazzy motherboard, you are sacrficing where it really counts.

re: power supply
Thermaltake power supplies are not too well respected in the gaming/enthusiast community (unless it's a "Toughpower").
PSUs to avoid

480 watts is way overkill unless you are running a huge video card. Look at this thread. It's not about watts, it's about quality. Notice the first post. He went from an old Athlon to a Core Duo and his power usage went down. For non gamers the wattage requirement has gone down as the CPUs get faster. He has a Core Duo, 7 hard drives, 5 case fans, Nvidia 7600GS, pci cards, etc etc and he's not even pulling more than 150 watts out of the wall.

Check this review by a guy that takes power supplies seriously. Look at reviews like this when selecting a power supply, these guys push power supplies well beyond what a typical Protools machine would use. That power supply is $58 at Ewiz.

Note that Enhance probably makes some lesser power supplies, made at a different factory with worse components, just like Thermaltake's "Toughpower" vs. their other power supplies. The key is to know what's inside and don't assume anything based on what's on the box, label, etc. Don't buy an abundance of wattage thinking you are getting headroom. You are most likely sacrificing quality for advertising claims if it's a cheap, high wattage power supply. Power supplies are tricky.

//power supply speech over

[djspl]

Apparently there are wholesale Intel price cuts coming April 22nd. Here's more Intel pricing news for those that are looking ahead. It looks like Intel's Q3 wholesale price cuts are fairly attractive to anyone looking to build in Nov/Dec. More bang for your buck coming soon from Intel to go along with AMD's offerings in the bang for buck category

A sale and some real world experience on the Enhance power supplies I mentioned.

[Allen Hallada]

Item Description Quantity
35-114-056 CPU COOLER DYNATRON|H46G R < CPU Coolers
17-153-040 PSU TT|W0128RU 650W RT < PSU (ESP 12V, not ATA)
13-151-048 SERVER_MB TYAN|S2696A2NRF (SATA) R < Shiny Mobo with onboard Firewire
20-161-045 MEM 512M|WINTEC DII667 39C925284C R < 2GB RAM, 2 per CPU
14-125-043 VGA GIGABYTE GV-RX165P256D-RH R < Silent Graphics Card
11-123-080 CHASSIS CHENBRO|SR10669 E-ATX < Big ass case

CPUS, HDs and DVD Drives not included in the above

I scored my CPUs for nothing (Please don't hunt me down and kill me!). Above is about $1150, all Item Numbers are from New Egg (www.newegg.com), which is where I got it from.

I happened to have some drives lying around, which is why thery're not on the list.
As for CPU take your pick of a pair from:-

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...NE&N=0&Ntk=all


Alternately buy one now, the the other much cheaper later. The nearest the the ones I have are $900 a shot ($1800 for the pair!), which although slightly slower in the MHz department should be faster overall as they have better bus performance.

If you wanted to climb down from the ceiling over the CPU price there is a 1.86 part for about $500 each, or a 1.6 (2/3 performance of mine, which is still huge) for $360 each.

So you can get a "baby" 8 way system for about $2000, or something comparable to mine for about $3000-$3500 depending on what parts you have lying around already.

Of course you need PT and an interface, and this much power without th emusic production toolkit would be pointless..

Not cheap, but given the performance it's pretty mind blowing. This is all at 32 bit too, I'm looking forwad to Vista 64 support in Pro Tools, that should eek out another 10-15% gains.

Thanks for the list DigiNerd. Great looking system.

Allen

[Allen Hallada]

Allen,

Is this Mobo good for M-powered too?

Thanx.

Yes

[Allen Hallada]

After much reading & learning with thanks to this forum I'm going ahead this week with ordering the parts for my pc.

The motherboard above is not available any more from any of the sources I've checked. Does anyone have a suitable currently available replacement? & the processor to go with it? Everything else I'm ok with on parts selection.

Thanks again in advance!!

Have you checked www.pricewatch.com ?

Allen

[Allen Hallada]

Allen:

I am attempting to build a PC that is similar to the original < $600 system. The < $600 system system as configured is unavailable. The A8N ASUS board is discontinued and it appears that the state of the art AMD dual core MBs have a a different socket, an AM2 socket which takes DDR2 RAM, not DDR. After review of all the boards, what I see that might work in a similar vein includes the:

ASUS M2N 32 SLI Deluxe board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131013
AMD X2 5200 dual core for AM2 (just as cheap as the 4600 now)
XP Home SP2
550 watt power supply
2 GB DDR2 RAM, Kingston or Corsair installed dual channel
250 GB *SATA* HDD 7200 with a 16MB cache, preferably a major brand like Maxtor
use one of firewire ports for ext HDD for portability, other for digi 002
any video card w/o shared RAM that supports dual VGA...suggestions as to what is out there now that will be sufficient to support PT and not heavy gaming...

I know this thread has moved on to the Quad machines and the Apples are the best, but I am wondering if you and the other experts on this board might look at what is out there now and save those of us on a budget from making a huge mistake and purchasing something that just won't work with PT 7.3. Maybe we can pool info and come up with a new less than $600 machine. Thanks so much for the invaluable info.

You could check into an A8V motherboard or get the motherboard you mentioned with a good return policy. Newegg is usually good about returning items within 30 days. I'm betting this motherboard you mentioned will work with PTLE 7 or above though.

Allen

[Allen Hallada]

Hey Dave,


It's now March and my school wants me to order the six computers for my class right away. I was planning on ordering them in July....

So I'm curious to know if you've found out any new info regarding the AM2 vs. QUAD debate? We were posting back and forth about 8 weeks ago regarding specs and such.

I have about 800-900 budget for each computer. I'll be adding ext. firewire hard drives after the fact, so this budget is for a PC with one cheap 80 GB HD.


Of course I'd like the latest up to date system I can afford. As of 8 weeks ago it was something like this:

ASUS mobo for AMD AM2 w/ SLI w/ IEEE1394
AMD Athlon AM2 4800+ cpu
80 gb hd
2 gb good ram DDR400
simple vid card
lite on DVD R/W
lite on DVD ROM
keyboard & mouse
Mbox 2 Pro with LE 7.3+


and that's about it. Does this sound like a dinosaur already.

For a school computer lab, we certainly don't need the most killer system, but don't want to have to upgrade right away.

What do you think would be the best way to go now? Intel dual core duo???? AMD quad? Can I even do these systems for under $1K.

Appreciate your input!!!!


Craig
stereocp

(Yeah Allen, I know.... get a MAC....)

Craig,
This will be a dinosaur very soon. I'm betting that the new Mac Mini with Core Duo Intels will even outperform these now for under 700.00. Easy setup, no noise, 1 yr. warrantee and inexpensive 3 yr. add on warrantee.

Allen

[12bbb]

Need help

I've changed my MOBO to a K8N-DL and kept the same sys drive and Audio drive.

Changed the VID card to: ASUS EN7100GS512

It boot up but fails to start Windows and asks to go to safe mode etc...

HELP, what can I do?

[audiobuddha]

Ok Here it is,

First post here/ new to the forum. Third PTLE system i have put together, been running for a week. ALL PRICES New Zealand $.

CPU: AMD 64 x2 4200+ $200
MB: ASUS M2V $118
RAM 2GB ddr2 800 Crosshair (2x1GB) $200
HDD: 1x seagate SATA 80GB HDD (system) $70, 1x Seagate SATA 250GB HDD (Sessions) $122
GRAPHICS: ASUS 7300GS $105 256MB
LG DVD Burner
Thermaltaker matrix case.
OS: Win XP Pro
Running MBOX 2 PTLE 7.3

Cpu cooled with Thermaltake sonic tower, no case fans except fan in PSU! is lurvely and silent.. only thing that bugs me now in my studio is the fans in my monitor amps...arrrgh!

System runs extremely well andam currently mixing new album project, is stable, silent and has 4x the porcessing power of my old ssystem. Am running 32 track 24bit sessions with on average about 45 plugins and the system usage is hardly hitting a 1/4 of the meter, where as that would be the limit of my old Athlon 3000+system. AM very happy as this hardley cost any money to put together. AAAHH no more bouncing down reverbs...

will do some tests on it when i get some time let you know the dverb count.

cheers

Audiobuddha