Wanna buy new PC: Show yours...!

esky · Post by **esky** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:07 am

Hello, i' gonna buy a new PC, it should be optimized for the work with Ableton Live 6. What do you guys use? Any advice...? Any special components you can recommend...?

Thanks in advance, Esky

QuantumFizz · Post by **QuantumFizz** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 7:54 pm

The first question to ask is: what's your budget? Here are some general guidelines that I'd recommend for a computer you're building for Ableton (or any kind of audio production/performance):

- Intel Core2Duo (preferably Santa Rosa) processor
- 2gb of RAM
- As much hard drive capacity as you need (I'd get 2x 500gb HDD's, about $109 each)
- Decent sound card, selecting the sound card that suits your needs and budget could be the topic of another thread. If you don't know what to get, search, I can't help without more information.
- Dual displays. Whatever you have room for, but this makes a big difference. Two 19" widescreen displays can be had for the price of one 24".

Here's a photo of my computer (along with my laptop) taken almost 2 years ago when I built it:

AMD 64 3500+
Dell 20" widescreen display + Maya 17" widescreen LCD
2gb RAM
M-Audio Delta 44[/img]

gavscope · Post by **gavscope** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 10:37 pm

Here's my 2 bobs worth, after turning into a computer junkie instead of actually making music.

You will see my stats below.

If I had my time again, i would keep the same motherboard and CPU
(taking cost into consideration- you could go for an E6700 or a quad, and change the motherboard to a 965p-DS3 which is a bit more solid andallows you to adjust RAM timings).

I have G-Skill 2gbnr ram which is fine but has timings of 5-5-5-15, but I would look for 2 gigs of DDR 2 - 800mhz ram with 4-4-4-12 or faster timings, by all reports it would be a bit snappier.

I have a cheap g force 6200 turbocache memory card which is fine, but i would recommend spending a little more and getting a graphics card with dedicated memory ( turbocache uses system ram if it needs it, i would get a dedicated graphics card just to be sure that your ram is not being leeched).
That being said, i have never gotten the ram usage going over 37% using a few different testers.

I would definately look at a more silent case.

I would recommend the Samsung Hd401L hard drives ( 400 gig seems to be a good price point) , my Seagate drives are a bit noisy and these are rating amongst the fastest and quietest.
Look into getting a raid setup, i got mine in Raid 0 and it is snappier- reports i have read seem to indicate that 2 hard drives in raid 0 is faster than a raptor 10000rpm drive. If money was no object i would go for Raid 0 + 1 with four hard drives for speed and safety.

I would stick to XP.

I have an M-Audio firewire solo that has given me no problems whatsoever, and to my ears sounds sweet. I don't get any crackling, but if i reduce the latency of my asio drivers from 64 to 128 samples, i get better cpu performance. the only problems i have is no headphone monitoring and no RCA out to hook it into my analogue home stereo.

Get an extra usb 2 pci card put in.

Seriously, i have not gotten my current setup to freeze up using ableton yet,
i have had 8 midi tracks and 4 audio with at least 10 effects on each track, and played 20 keys simultaneously just to test it out and it peaked at 80 %.
I get 10 - 11% on the Live five performance test at 128 samples; 14 -16% at 64 samples.

I use the internet and other programs on the same drive without it being an issue. There is alot of talk about dedicating your PC to audio, which I think was a real issue 12 mths ago, but with technology being what it is and will be, i like the convenience that just having everything i need and want in one place priceless, the possible 1-2% cpu increase is not worth the hassle. Just make sure to back up regularly ( if you have Raid 1, you will have a constant back up anyway); and partition your hard drive so you can reinstall windows without losing your files.

The motherboard is upgradable to 8 gig of ram (4 slots) but i don't even think getting 4 gig would make much difference yet, it barely uses 2.
It holds 6 hard drives too, which may be handy.

So, in conclusion, I reckon for under $2000 Australian (you do the math) you can get a system that will hold it's own for years to come.

v00d00ppl · Post by **v00d00ppl** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 11:15 pm

how do i know if its a santa rosa processor?

gavscope · Post by **gavscope** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 11:18 pm

Santa rosa processor is for notebooks. I just googled it.

ekwipt · Post by **ekwipt** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 1:11 am

Santa Rosa is just for notebooks, the new chip platform won't be out until next year (Penryn). I'm getting my new setup soon, I've done research and they are all great components without going stupidly over the top:

CoolerMaster Stacker 832
SilverStone ST60F 600w
Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6
C2D E6600
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste
Tuniq Tower 120 Cooler
G.Skill HK 2GB DDR2 PC6400
HIS X1950XT 256Mb IceQ 3 Turbo
18 x Sata Pioneer 212D Black
Western Digital RaptorX 150Gb
Seagate 7200.10500Gb16MbSata2

You could ditch things like the expensive case and you wont need such a good video card if all you want to us it for is Ableton.

The motherboard is now superseded by the P35 chipset from intel, you could go with this if you wanted to without much increase at all.

Always check the chipset used for firewire, this is A texas instruments, I made that mistake when buying my notebook, although I have no use yet for firewire, just keep it in mind if you want to use such devices.

Having a separate drive for your software and streaming audio files is a good idea, you could look into raid 0 on your audio drives, but you increase the chance in losing data by adding drives in raid config, but of course you get increase in performance

I'm personally waiting on getting a quad core chip until later this year, with AMD dropping their new quad core range you're going to see price decreases

gavscope · Post by **gavscope** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 1:19 am

re: ekwipt

looks tasty- i would recommend checking out the samsungs. My seagates are noisy little buggers- a chittery noise whilst writing- nothing wrong, but just the way they are. Otherwise fine, but it does get annoying!

gavscope · Post by **gavscope** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 1:29 am

oh yeah,
and the pioneer dvd etc
good choice, though sata is unnecessary as they cant read or write fast enough to justify it anyway

JACKAL & HYDE · Post by **JACKAL & HYDE** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 1:38 am

esky wrote:Hello, i' gonna buy a new PC, it should be optimized for the work with Ableton Live 6. What do you guys use? Any advice...? Any special components you can recommend...?

Thanks in advance, Esky

Budget?

Mike Goodwin · Post by **Mike Goodwin** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 2:02 am

heres my computer porn

Here are my servers. One is not set up yet but the other is a amd athlon 3000. It is setup with a FX teleport gigabit connection.

Here is my main desk. An intel core2duo 2600 with two gigs of kingston ram and five hard seagate barracuda drives making up over a Tbite of space. The motherboard has been very good to me and is an Asus P5W DH delux. I use two EN7600GS video cards from Asus. I would recomend sticking to the intel core 2duo and the intel chipset on the motherboard theme. I have used many computers over the years and this has been the most stable setup that I have had. This is been a serious workhorse computer. It runs very very well.

This is my "DJ" setup. It is more of a dj live Pa setup. I use a IBM G40 laptop. It is a bit older but has been very good to me. It has played qute a few shows and has bits of plastic breaking off of it now but still works every time (knocks on wood). The touch screen is new and is slick as hell. I love it. It is a SlimAGE screen with an ELO touch screen. I use another seagate baracuda drive on this computer as well for all my files.

My other computer is now living in my livingroom doing tv stuff but it did not work all that well with ableton. It is a AMD 4400 with an asrock board. I cant remember the model off hand but it had issues. It used an ULI chipset. I read and read about that thing but turned out to not work that well for ableton. It has been fine for all the other stuff I use it for though.

There is all my computer porn for ya Hope it helps abit.

Rogue Scrunt · Post by **Rogue Scrunt** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 2:06 am

gavscope · Post by **gavscope** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 5:34 am

mmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!! touchscreen.....

It will be nice to have that when they perfect it some more, i will have to stick to my pda for now- maybe someone will make a plugin for ableton (purlease!!!)

jamester · Post by **jamester** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 6:36 am

I can say nothing but good things about my new PC from Jim Roseberry of Purrrfect Audio! Jim's a great guy, and gave me an *unbelievable* price on my new machine. This thing's a monster, and can take a quad-core chip as a direct drop-in replacement later on if I want.

http://www.studiocat.com/index.htm

I've got:
- Core2Duo 2.4 ghz
- 2 GB RAM
- 128MB NVIDIA
- DVD burner
- 2x 160GB HD's
- XP Home fully stripped/tweaked for music (no Vista for me, thanks)
- Multi-card reader
- 8 USB, 4 FW
- sleek black case with locking cover and washable air filter!

I was expecting a system like this to cost me around $2K, judging by places like PC Audiolabs and such. Not even close. Shoot him an email, he'll give you a price.

ekwipt · Post by **ekwipt** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 6:55 am

gavscope wrote:oh yeah,
and the pioneer dvd etc
good choice, though sata is unnecessary as they cant read or write fast enough to justify it anyway

Thanks for the advice will research a little more.... on drives etc.

The pioneer sata dvd, is about the same price at the ide so might as well

funkdefino · Post by **funkdefino** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 7:13 am

Rogue Scrunt wrote:

How original!

Wanna buy new PC: Show yours...!

Wanna buy new PC: Show yours...!

Re: Wanna buy new PC: Show yours...!