Thinking of upgrading my PC, is this suitable?

[no.cow.level]

Hello mates! I'm a loooong time lurker on the forum and finally decided to check in.

Firstly, I'd like to thank anybody who opened the topic and is willing to help!

No, onto my troubles.

I've been rocking a laptop for the past 2 years, and recently finishing projects has become a tough job. It clicks, pops and saves/loads slow as hell! In addition, the 15" screen does not do it for me! I can barely see my tracks and have to constantly press ctrl+alt+l and ctrl+alt+l to save space. I tried plugging in an external monitor, that was my first idea, but to no avail. The monitor introduced a loud noise in my monitors (lol). I guess it has something to do with my external usb card NI Audio Kontrol 1. I had some noise with my former M-Audio Fast Track Pro, but it was less.

Now, I've almost decided on upgrading to a desktop PC and using the laptop when I travel, for lives and as a sketchpad if I want to work at another place.

But I'm still not entirely sure what to do. Here are the specs of my laptop:
Acer Aspire 5735Z
Intel Pentium Dual Core processor T3200 (2.0 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 1 MB l2 Cache)
15.6" HD Acer CineCrystal LCD
Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M
4 GB DDR2
320 GB HDD
Windows XP

Audio interface: NI Audio Kontrol 1

So this is my rig.

I've been thinking about this configuration (it is ready made as I have absolutely no knowledge of pc hardware):

Processor: Intel Core i5 2400 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz
RAM: Transcend 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz
HDD: Western Digital 1.5TB
MB: Foxconn H67M-V B3
Graphics: NVidia GTX 550 Ti 1GB DDR5

It's around 800USD and thats around the mark that I can spare. Maybe a little more if it's really worth it. And I'll have to look into a monitor, something around the 21.5" mark or higher.

What do you think? Will live run smoothly on this one and Windows 7? What about my NI Audio Kontrol 1? I don't know how stable 7 is, what I've heard are both good and bad things.

What should I try to change or look into as I make my decision?

Thank you all in advance, I'd really appreciate ALL of your help!

Cheers!

[owner_1]

Go for Dell Inspiron.You will get all these features in cheap rste and their service centre is also awesome.

[darkcatt]

I would check out the Asus series. Get the I7

[naburo]

Well I just configured a PC with an i7 26000
it works great

[no.cow.level]

Isn't the i7 too expensive?

[no.cow.level]

Any more advice?

[H20nly]

I dunno about that motherboard...

very important component. remember if it goes out, its not a matter of popping the cover off and swapping it out like RAM or even the CPU.



also, get your self a second hard drive to back up to.

[Khazul]

Just get a 2011 mac book pro and use it for both travel and studio instead of getting two computers.

My MBP holds its own respectably vs a 4GHz i7 PC for running Live and Live seems more reliable too.

(Edit - I misread - thought you were getting both),

[no.cow.level]

I dunno about that motherboard...

very important component. remember if it goes out, its not a matter of popping the cover off and swapping it out like RAM or even the CPU.

Do you have another one in mind? I'm open to any suggestions!

also, get your self a second hard drive to back up to.

Yeah, I have a spare one here, so I think I'll hook it up too.

Just get a 2011 mac book pro and use it for both travel and studio instead of getting two computers.

It's waaaay past my payroll... something like $2600 bucks here for a basic one. So I think I'll hold out on Macs for now.

[H20nly]

I dunno about that motherboard...

very important component. remember if it goes out, its not a matter of popping the cover off and swapping it out like RAM or even the CPU.

Do you have another one in mind? I'm open to any suggestions!

if i was building another PC today, i'd go with ASUS motherboards. i've used them for years (for personal use and even more so through work) with no issues. not that there's not lesser models out there by them... i found a good one a while back that had a Texas Instruments chipset for firewire, but i don't know if you use firewire. if so, T.I. is what you want. regardless... look at the reviews before you order a motherboard. i tried to look up the one you posted... after about 3 or 4 websites with no reviews at all on it, i posted my comment as is. i just wouldn't trust my DAW to Foxconn. YRMV

[arctic ranger]

seems like you could get a bigger monitor as well...

[McQ714]

+1 on a different mobo.

you want either an Asus board or a Gigabyte board. Gigabyte tends to use TI firewire chips. check their website to see which boards have it. for the RAM, i'd opt for corsair or crucial over transcend. western digital is fine for hard drives. and personally i like AMD/ATI cards better than Nvidia and so does Apple apparentely.

[H20nly]

you want either an Asus board or a Gigabyte board. Gigabyte tends to use TI firewire chips. check their website to see which boards have it. for the RAM, i'd opt for corsair or crucial over transcend. western digital is fine for hard drives. and personally i like AMD/ATI cards better than Nvidia and so does Apple apparentely.

agreed.

all this.

[no.cow.level]

Note taken on Asus mother board! I'm not big on Firewire as I don't plan to use it yet. I'm probably going to stick to my NI Audio Kontrol 1 for now.

The graphics card is not of that great importance to me, I just want to be able to run 2 monitors at once at some point in the future. I haven't edited video in a while.

As for a bigger monitor - probably yes, i can fit up to a 25 inch one here probably, I'll have to move my Yamaha monitors further away if it is bigger than that.

Anyone else on the CPU thing? Should I go for i5 or should I delve deeper into my pockets for the i7?

Thanks to everybody!

[H20nly]

i think when you get to the specs CPUs are boasting these days, after a certain point, its about just that... boasting. i say save your loot. bigger, faster, higher spec is probably better, definitely more expensive, and questionably necessary. truth is you could do it all on a single core 3.4 - but why?


you're running XP. use the extra loot to get Windows 7 64 bit. then in a few months when your bank account recovers, get more RAM.