Building Your PC

[jcwillia]

I'm in the market for a new PC and easily the most demanding thing I do on my computer is Ableton.

What do you guys look for in your computers?

I tend to buy from the value side of the store as opposed to the highest performance.

At the moment, I'm scoping out hard drives and looking at WD's Blue vs Black series. Thoughts?

[yur2die4]

Do yourself a favor and also get a solid state. It is night and day. So one SSD, one other of whatever.

[jcwillia]

I haven't been able to wrap my head around the value proposition of a solid state drive. I'm sure they're amazing - they're also crazy expensive.

Any other opinions on WD Black vs Blue for HDD

[Schmidi]

Copied from another thread I posted:

My philosophy on DIY builds is:
- spend the extra $ on the motherboard now. Get one that is made by a trusted brand (I went Asus, but have also built Gigabyte in the past. Intel would be a safe bet too) These are your high end "enthusiast" boards, with a lot of extra in/outs and features, and usually the newest CPU socket type. (If you need FW, make sure it has a T.I. (Texas instruments) chip)
- Buy the most basic CPU that will fit in it! Reason: it will still be a big upgrade from your current CPU. it saves some $. Most importantly, you have a nice mobo that will last through to the next time you want to upgrade and can then throw in the current high end CPU (in 2-4 years it will be much cheaper!).

So, I run an i7 3820 (4 core) on an ASUS P9x79 LE mobo. Huge performance upgrade from my core2quad. I can run more plugs than I realistically need and not exceed 50% CPU.

For RAM, I've had great luck with Kingston HyperX and Mushkin. They are not THE absolute fastest, but they are always highly rated for performance and stability (more important to me!).

For HDs, I think a main OS SSD ROCKS! Win 7 installed in 12 minutes and boots in 12 seconds! Shocked the hell out of me! (bear in mind I'm started building on win95 which was a 5+ hour affair!). I run Western Digital 7200rpm drives. One for VSTs, one for audio (samples/recording destination which is set in Live's preferences) and one large HD that is a backup. 4 total.

Good luck to you, PM if I can further assist.

Schmidi

[jcwillia]

Thanks for your thoughts.

[login]

IMHO:

1.- Get the best CPU you can afford, all audio processing depends on the cpu, and i7 is the best you can get and will last you many years. MOBOs just need to be from a good brand but you wont usev all the fancy stuff that comes with high end models.
2.- The rest get within your budget, you can upgrade everything later (CPU not so much because of the socket). You can start with 4 gig ram and a HDD and later upgrade to more ram and an SSD.
3.- Geta quality PSU: Antec, Corsair, Silverstone.

[jcwillia]

I can't afford an i7 and I'm a hobbyist (and a beginner at that) not a professional. It all sounds the same when it's rendered anyways.

[granted]

An SSD will make your day, every day. Every time you turn on your computer it will boot in seconds, programs will will load instantly.
An SSD drive (I recommend the Samsung 840 pro, Samsung EVO, and Crucial M series) I use them all.
An SSD drive is actually worth more than it costs. To someone who has been building and upgrading computers for over 20 years SSD drives are magical things sent from the heavens.
I used to say start with the best power supply you can afford, because it's powering everything. Great Motherboard? Awesome memory and CPU? They are not worth jack if you have bad power. Now I say start with a great power supply (Seasonic,Antec, to name a few) but start with and SSD too.
All my standard hard drives are WD Caviar blacks or Velociraptors. They are old and not Sata III but they all still work great.
Unfortunately even my raid arrays of velociraptors seem like a horse and buggy next to my SSD drives.
Gigabyte makes great boards.
My favorite Memory comes from Corsair or Crucial. And I overclock the heck out of it. Yes that's right I overclock my production machines.
Oh and here is something that so many people run into. Do not build a computer unless you have a fully functional computer sitting right next to it. You will have to download BIOS updates, drivers etc. Or you may have to test a drive, video card in a computer that you know is already working. Nothing is worse than building a computer without another "buddy" computer.

[Hermanus]

Seriously, you should think about i7...

If you go for i5, you surely will regret it in no more than a few months further.
And that means you will need to upgrade your cpu in future, again extra money.

Wait a bit more and once you have the money to afford an i7 cpu @ around 3ghz, you can go for sure and build you own custom pc.

I give +1 to kingston for ram and ASUS for motherboard.

Right now I have a msi mobo and it is not the same stability like I had with asus in the past.


Think twice, don't rush yourself and you'll have a very good new pc.

BEST

[jcwillia]

Sorry my priorities start with the money first and what you get for it second. I don't break our family's budget for many things and when I do, it's not by more than $100 or so. i7's are completely out of the question but I appreciate the advice.

[clydesdale]

What's your budget?

First start your build with http://www.pcpartpicker.com it's hands down the best tool to help you build and compare, from budget builds to top of the line.

[login]

Which is your budget and where are you?

[musikmachine]

I haven't been able to wrap my head around the value proposition of a solid state drive. I'm sure they're amazing - they're also crazy expensive.

Any other opinions on WD Black vs Blue for HDD

There's also hybrid SSDs if you want more capacity but i thought the price was pretty good on smaller SSDs.

[jcwillia]

I haven't been able to wrap my head around the value proposition of a solid state drive. I'm sure they're amazing - they're also crazy expensive.

Any other opinions on WD Black vs Blue for HDD

There's also hybrid SSDs if you want more capacity but i thought the price was pretty good on smaller SSDs.

I've been price shopping them for about 18 months now. About a year ago or so, the OCZ's of the world were going on promo at about 50c per GB so a 120GB was $60, 240 was $120. Lately, the more established brand names have also been dropping into that price range. My issue now is that no one seems to want to sell or make the 120's anymore. $60 is just about the price point where I think I could try it and not feel "overinvested".

back to the original purpose of this thread, my hard drive continues to give me heartburn as it spins and spins and churns and spins and I'm just imagining the thing melting down inside my computer like Paul Atreides' hand in the reverend mother's pain box. Extra credit if you understood that reference.

Someday the world will be like Star Trek where everything is free and resources are no longer a constraint.

[jcwillia]

What's your budget?

First start your build with http://www.pcpartpicker.com it's hands down the best tool to help you build and compare, from budget builds to top of the line.

thanks for this.

I guess initially I'm trying to refresh what I have but it seems like I'm bumping up against constraints that don't have simple workarounds. I bought a used HP XW4600 off ebay a couple years ago - real beast of a machine but not necessarily built for consumer at home needs if you know what I mean. I think there's a Q9300 quad core chip in there and a Radeon 7770? Whatever the cheapest Radeon is in that range is what I bought. I bought it to play Mechwarrior Online, proceeded to play all of about dozen matches and never touched it again Welcome to the infuriating world of living with me

My main point of concern right now is that hard drive. I have burned through my fair share of HDD's in the past and I know this one is on it's last legs. I'm bracing for the end. Fortunately I use Carbonite and SkyDrive and multiple external hard drives here in the house so I won't lose anything if it does. (I really should look into a lockbox though)

The reason I say I probably can't expand this machine any further is two reasons : 1) The CPU I believe is maxed out for the MB it's on and 2) the memory is roughly 2x the cost of "desktop memory" because it's server memory.

Lastly, can anyone explain to me why Live 8 is so sluggish visually using the above hardware? I feel like I had better luck with my laptop and Live 6 five years ago - this thing REALLY chugs.