Ableton Forum

Hi,

I'm specing up a PC for Ableton to last me a few years, here is where I am at, i have just realised I have no graphics card (any recomendations? this will purely be an audio PC) thinking Asus 8400GS Silent 512MB for £30

I intend to get or already have Ableton Live, Reason 3.03, Soundforge 9. Trilian and Omnishpere, PSP mix pack, apEQ, camel Phat and I have MOTU 828 mk1. I'm thinking one larger monitor as Ableton doesn't support dual monitors, the ram bottleneck is behind my decision just to get 6GB. The SSD will be for Windows 7 and Software and my current porjects, the rest will go to the external HDD

Any thoughts?

Case Antec p 183 97.68
PSU CORSAIR CX600 46.49
CPU Intel i7 950 174.99
Baord Asus P6X58D-E 109.5
CDD Liteon 14
Cooling Noctua HD-D14 49.49
SSD Mushkin 60Gb 76.49
HDD 1TB WD Black 54.5
Ram 6GB Corsair 58.99
Cables 20
Monitor HannsG 28" HD 183.99

Total 886.12
Vat 155.071
1041.191

If you're running 7, a graphics card may actually improve performance. It offloads all Aero processing to the GPU, freeing up your processor for other actual processing. Depending on your setup, this may get you better performance than using the old Windows 98 skin (not to mention making it look cooler).

Otherwise, that looks like a baller system, though I personally would up the RAM to 8GB because the cost increase isn't substantial, and it'll give you more breathing room even if Live itself can't use all of the space you have.

agent314 wrote:I personally would up the RAM to 8GB because the cost increase isn't substantial, and it'll give you more breathing room even if Live itself can't use all of the space you have.

Agreed. It's very rare that the only program I'm running is Ableton.

sounds good to me.

LukeLSB wrote: I'm thinking one larger monitor as Ableton doesn't support dual monitors

How often do you use 3rd party pluggins? For just Ableton, 1 big monitor is probably the way to go (I think this will change one day, but not necessarily live 9).

I’m thinking of getting a smaller monitor to sit next to my big one for third party plugs as I’m using them more often these days. Also as Live can’t display 2 clips at once, I sometimes find it useful to do a screen grab of a sequence to refer to when editing another. This would also work better with a second monitor.

But yeah, that system should keep you going a good while. Very happy with mine (see sig). The graphics card fan noise is a bit much for many, but it doesn’t bother me personally. The card you mentioned is more than enough for audio work, no matter how fancy the interface.

Not sure about the 8GB ram suggestion. All motherboards for i7 9XX processors use triple channel memory, not dual so to get best performance, you want 3 or 6 matched modules. Don’t know how much difference it really makes. Maybe go for 9 or 12GB?

agent314 wrote:If you're running 7, a graphics card may actually improve performance. It offloads all Aero processing to the GPU, freeing up your processor for other actual processing. Depending on your setup, this may get you better performance than using the old Windows 98 skin (not to mention making it look cooler).

Otherwise, that looks like a baller system, though I personally would up the RAM to 8GB because the cost increase isn't substantial, and it'll give you more breathing room even if Live itself can't use all of the space you have.

Thanks, the reason i went for 6Gb is because the i7 processors work better in stes of 3 (i.e 3gb/6gb/12gb) i could have gone for 12Gb, but i went for the extra cool and quiet case and Heatsink instead as its quite plausible the PC will be on a lot and late at night.

So in theory i'll have 4gb for ableton and 2gn for everything else...

P.S i intend to keep this PC completely off the internet and only have audio programs installed

How often do you use 3rd party pluggins? For just Ableton, 1 big monitor is probably the way to go (I think this will change one day, but not necessarily live 9).

Pretty much all 3rd party plugins that I use (Guitar Rig, Alchemy, Reaktor Player, etc.) live on my second monitor. I've got a 1680x1050 for main work and a 1280x1024 second one, and it's a great amount of real estate for me.

andydes wrote:

LukeLSB wrote: I'm thinking one larger monitor as Ableton doesn't support dual monitors

How often do you use 3rd party pluggins? For just Ableton, 1 big monitor is probably the way to go (I think this will change one day, but not necessarily live 9).

I’m thinking of getting a smaller monitor to sit next to my big one for third party plugs as I’m using them more often these days. Also as Live can’t display 2 clips at once, I sometimes find it useful to do a screen grab of a sequence to refer to when editing another. This would also work better with a second monitor.

But yeah, that system should keep you going a good while. Very happy with mine (see sig). The graphics card fan noise is a bit much for many, but it doesn’t bother me personally. The card you mentioned is more than enough for audio work, no matter how fancy the interface.

Not sure about the 8GB ram suggestion. All motherboards for i7 9XX processors use triple channel memory, not dual so to get best performance, you want 3 or 6 matched modules. Don’t know how much difference it really makes. Maybe go for 9 or 12GB?

I have use a lot, I understand the dual monitors can be handy for this. However I have had dual monitors in the past and I find it quite difficult to work with and end up just using the one.

Let me know how this computer is with Ableton. I am also looking to build a new computer.

Will do