Ultimate Windows XP Machine?!

j7243 · Post by **j7243** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:51 pm

I'm want to buy a new computer, mainly for music production in Live 6 (with lots of plug-ins!) and some video editing. I'd like the fastest, most powerful and reliable computer possible - but for compatibility reasons, I'm sticking with XP Pro 32-Bit. I've done a lot of research and here's what I've come up with so far... any thoughts?!

Processor - Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme 3GHz
Memory - Corsair 2GB DDR3 1333 (2x1GB)
Motherboard - Asus P5K3 Deluxe
Hard Drives - Western Digital 150GB 10KRPM (x3)
Case - Antec Take 4 4U Rackmount

Cheers!

gavscope · Post by **gavscope** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 5:07 pm

Maybe check out the Hitachi DeskStar 7K1000 or other 1tb hdd's, they are rating faster than the raptors, except for random access time (not sure how that would affect music and video, but it's only a few milliseconds difference- i'd be interested to see

).

j7243 · Post by **j7243** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 5:10 pm

Thanks, I'll check it out...

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 5:12 pm

You don't seem to be too concerned with $$

Definitely up the RAM I think.

I consider 2G to be minimum for music work, it is certainly the least I'd want to use with Live.

nagal · Post by **nagal** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 5:16 pm

Supermicro X7DAL-E Mobo
4 x 1GB FB-DIMM
Intel Xeon X5365 Clovertown 3Ghz QuadCore x2

j7243 · Post by **j7243** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:55 pm

Thanks for the replies.

I consider 2G to be minimum for music work, it is certainly the least I'd want to use with Live.

I thought XP can only see 2GB! How can I get it to see 4GB?!

Nagal - thanks again for your advice - I'll look into the X5365...

nagal · Post by **nagal** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 8:12 pm

XP will see up to 4GB of memory minus whatever is need for the IO address space of your peripherals (mostly video car memory and BIOS). What you are thinking of is that XP only assigns 2 GB of virtual memory to each process running.

brunob · Post by **brunob** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:52 pm

I'm getting something similar, though a more budget version:
- Antec Take 4 rackmount
- Asus P5K-E WiFi
- 4 Gb ram 800 mhz
- Intel Quadcore 2.4 Ghz
- 2 x 500 Gb HDD

If I were you I'd consider getting bigger hard drives. The larger the capacity, the faster the disk will be in most cases. Maybe 2 large ones instead of 3 smaller ones? The 500 Gb seems to be the sweet spot right now for pricing / capacity.

rasputin · Post by **rasputin** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 8:05 pm

Man, these posts are a delight. I've been planning to replace my 4 year old rackmount Pentium 4 system with something newer (really missing the USB 2.0 ports for one thing!) and these sound really good.

Where can I get Windows XP SP 2 cheap? Will the MOBO/CPU vendor provide that?

Ultimate Windows XP Machine?!

Ultimate Windows XP Machine?!

Dear to my heart