What's required in a good music computer?

[eggnchips]

I want to have a super P.C. built. (No Mac debates please)
What should I look for in a good music P.C.?


Thanks.

[esky]

I built my own computer and could have done better. Next time i let these guys do it for me...
http://www.da-x.de/de/digital-audio-wor ... rator.html
...(if i buy a desktop once again). It's not that more expensive and all components are tested...

[CFM]

If you are going to build yourself then get the basics right. I feel at times so called ‘specialist music’ PC builders have a laugh with their prices because there is nothing so really special in a music PC then any normal PC.

When I use to build them, I’d stay away from cheap components, good quality motherboard, case, quiet power supply with enough power to run all those USB devices and memory.

[Earwax69]

Intel Core i7-2600 Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor

ASUS P8P67 LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

2 x CORSAIR Vengeance 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory

GTX 460 if possible. But you dont need that much power for Ableton of course...

CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

ASUS Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model DVD-E818A4/BLK/B/GEN

COOLER MASTER HAF 922 RC-922M-KKN1-GP Black Steel + Plastic and Mesh Bezel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

[Evengy]

you don´t need a gtx 460 for a music pc. onboard graka is enough but i think the sandy bridge cpu has a built in gpu.

[Brian Ffar]

A good musician

[H20nly]

A. motherboard
B. processor
C. RAM
D. power supply
E. Cables
F. Fan(s)
G. Hard drive or SSD

a case helps too, but it's not entirely necessary (and technically it's around, not "in" a good computer)

[Donnie]

you don´t need a gtx 460 for a music pc. onboard graka is enough but i think the sandy bridge cpu has a built in gpu.

Many onboard GPUs are pretty bad though, especially if it borrows RAM from the system. You are usually much better off having something else to relieve the load, more importantly when running multiple displays at high res

[ze2be]

Ive heard there's no need for i7. And that i5 should be enough, because its basically the same cpu, except the i7 has hyper threading. Weather or not that is good for Live, I do not know.

Most new gear now is great. Just go for the safe brands. Ask a friend-geek who loves to build game pcs. In most cases, he will do all the research for you, because he loves it. They usually know what you need. But tell him: You don't want a gamer PC, you want a silent, cold power pc.

Invite him to dinner, beer and PC building!

I haven't build one in 3 years, but I know the new i5 and i7 are the best and safest bang right now.
Also, I would consider getting a small SSD disk for the system, and a large hard drive for the rest. This will make pc restarts and opening Live projects super fast.
Also recommend a silent cabinet. Antec is great. But there are lots of other great ones too.
Minimum 4gb ram, and keep some slots open, in case Live 9 shows up suddenly with 64bit. From there on, Live can use more then 4gb ram.

[Evengy]

you don´t need a gtx 460 for a music pc. onboard graka is enough but i think the sandy bridge cpu has a built in gpu.

Many onboard GPUs are pretty bad though, especially if it borrows RAM from the system. You are usually much better off having something else to relieve the load, more importantly when running multiple displays at high res

shared memory is bad thats true but with 8 gb ram its ok. but you are right, i checked the price for the 460 and its ok, i thought the price is higher. maybe there is a gtx with passive cooler, that would be nice for a music pc.

[eggnchips]

you don´t need a gtx 460 for a music pc. onboard graka is enough but i think the sandy bridge cpu has a built in gpu.

Many onboard GPUs are pretty bad though, especially if it borrows RAM from the system. You are usually much better off having something else to relieve the load, more importantly when running multiple displays at high res

shared memory is bad thats true but with 8 gb ram its ok. but you are right, i checked the price for the 460 and its ok, i thought the price is higher. maybe there is a gtx with passive cooler, that would be nice for a music pc.

So is a good graphic card important or not?

[ARDJ]

So is a good graphic card important or not?

[/quote]

you just don't want your graphics usage to exceed your graphics card's own RAM and use some of the main system RAM. what's your set up? dual screen? what's the res? color bit depth etc

@esky cool site, wish it was in english but building the comptuer I want was around $1,700 USD, not bad!

[matthews]

So is a good graphic card important or not?

A decent graphic card is definitely important. If its integrated, make sure you have enough ram to cover it. If its dedicated, anything at 1gb and your soaring.

[arachnaut]

The stuff Earwax posted seems fairly good from what I know. I intend to upgrade soon, but I'm waiting for LightPeak (Thunderbolt) on the motherboard. Also some PCIexpress SSD that runs at 2 GBps and holds 200 GB might be nice (reported to be in Q3 this year)!

Graphics cards offload a lot of CPU work, the better cards intercept more system calls and offload more work. You don't need dual graphics for audio, but a good card will help. Soon, perhaps, CUDA will be used for a lot of audio work and we will all be migrating to video cards. And then, some games are fun!

Follow some of the good sites that report these things: Tom's Hardware, ExtremeTech, etc.

The Sandy Bridge series will soon be in the second phase stepping (not second generation - second cycle of Intel's tech planning). Intel has a so-called tick-tock cycle, the tick introduces new hardware, the tock lowers price and increases integration. Wait for the Sandy Bridge Tock cycle.

My wife's computer broke a few weeks ago (the graphics card's fan broke off and shorted the motherboard). She runs Vista 32 and doesn't need a lot of performance so I bought some simple new parts on sale.

I bought a Core i5-2500K (3.3GHz before overclocking), MSI P67A-G43MB, a 600 watt power supply, PNY GT440 graphics card, Corsair DDR3 1333Mhz 4GB memory. She also wanted a new keyboard and mouse because the wireless one we have seemed to interfere with other home gear. After I installed it the weakest link was the old Sata 300 hard drive so I got a SATA2 ATA600 hard drive (Barracuda 1 TB).

To test it I bought Crysis 2, Portal 2 and Dragon Age:Origins and an XBox 360 controller (this was for me, not her, and that graphics card look really nice).

Here was the cost:
CPU 179.99
MB 124.99
memory 52.99
power 69.99
graphics 89.99
kb and mouse 24.99
drive 69.99
--------------

about $700

Games:
Crysis 2, Portal 2, Dragon Age: origin + XBox 360 controller - about $100.

I am quite amazed at the performance of this system. She has Vista 32-bit and runs the Ultimate version because she needs the Chinese language support for her work. Her Vista Experience factor is 5.9 for everything but graphics, which is 5.7 out of 5.9 (I don't think it goes to 6).

I have an account on it with an old Live setup (it was Live 6 when I installed it on her original system) so I upgraded that to Live 8.2.2.

I ran some LiveSets that kill my current setup (Athlon dual core 2.2 GHz running XP SP3) and it cruised smoothly at 20% of the CPU.

If I click on Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and Access as fast as possible they come up POP, POP, POP, POP in a few seconds.

I didn't expect to see such a huge performance difference, and I didn't go looking for high performance parts originally - it just came out that way.

The MSI motherboard has a GUI Bios setup with very easy overclocking support and a 5 way boot - HD, DVD, USB, Ethernet, etc.
It also comes with a Linux derived installer that has Firefox, Skype, OPenOffice, a calendar, and a few other things that boot, internet-ready, from a 1GB flash drive.

I ran Crysis 2 with all the extreme settings - no problem. Really nice grahics. The other games are quite fun - Portal 2 is a riot!!

I never bothered to try the overclocking, I just ran with the 'Optimized' Bios settings. I didn't get super-fast RAM. And she runs 32-bit, not 64-bit so no need for more than 4 GB of RAM. There is more DIMM slots in case we ever upgrade the software to 64-bit, but that's probably unlikely - the Ultimate package costs too much and she needs multi-lingual support.

One warning - this motherboard has no FireWire ports! She doesn't need it, but you probably will want that for audio work. It does have USB3, but I don't have any USB3 stuff to try out.

[Semihedonist]

Recently i changed PC to Intel i5 3.1 GHz Sandy Bridge + 4 GB RAM DDR3 - all on ASUS P8H61 motherboard and it works like a rocket! Works perfect with 20+ VSTs on air