Build me a DAW PC.

[Merlot]

I am moving over from mac, (will have powerbook for it if I need it). :? I am going to use live 5 for sequencing and pro tools LE for mix down. I plan on buying two UAD cards for use. Dont want to spend the $$ that ten spent on his rig, but dont want to have to upgrade for a couple years either. With all that is out right now, and never owning a PC, I am a bit confused to say the least. I am pretty sure I want to head the AMD route, but dont know if dual would be better or not. Live only is capable of using 1 processor, but in pro tools I might need all I can get. Or if I want to fire up another sequencer, the extra processor might be handy. So, I am open to any suggestions you guys have. Dont need a monitor.

Thanks in advance :lol:

[AlexHall74]

I would look into using 2 PCs over LAN instead of a dual processor machine.

Multi-threaded code is hard to come by.

Check out this article:

http://www.tweakheadz.com/how_to_network_your_studio.html


I have heard that the AMD chips are quieter...

Good luck!

[Merlot]

tTHanks man. WIll check it out.

[ten]

If your going to be using dsp cards (uad/powercore etc) I would scratch networking pcs together. You will have no end of problems with increased latencies from the cards not to mention the complete pain in the arse that you cannot run the slaved plugs guis on the master machine.

Get a nice dualcore AMD X2 chip and Nforce4 motherboard. You get dual cpu performance with a single chip and it will all cost a fair amount less than a dual cpu machine.

Even though Live doesnt support multithread right now Im pretty sure it will in the future, and they seem to do a new x.0 release each year. Not to sure about PT LE but I know the main versions are multithreaded so the dualcore will be a godsend when using that.

I would recommend the AMD X2 4400 chip (or even a 4600/4800 if you can afford one) and a board from Asus, DFI, MSI should do you well.

Its worth checking the nuendo and cubase forums hardware sections and checking what other people are using, stealing ideas from them as there is some good info from the people that are pioneering this kit.

ten

[Merlot]

Much thanks ten. What would you recommend for a case and cooloing system?

[ten]

Case will depend on what you would like to put in it.

If you give me a list of your kit, or what you would like I will give a few recommendations...

For cooling it will depend on weather you are thinking of overclocking, if your comfortable with using watercooling or if everything will be at stock?

If going for stock or mild overclocking Thermalrite heatsinks are among the best. Check out the XP-120 (very big) which takes 120mm fans. It doesnt fit all motherboards so check the Thermalright website first to make sure it will fit the one you plan on getting. The XP-90c is slightly smaller and takes 90mm fans but will fit on any motherboard. It also cools pretty much exactly the same as the xp-120.

I have two XP90cs on my daw...

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ten.dj/10.jpg

They cool extremely well under load, never hitting over 40c (the alarm wont sound till 65c!!)

These with some Thermaltake 92mm silentcat fans give awesome cooling and near silent operation.

ten

[jasedee]

You should check out these silent cases....

http://www.musiccomputersystems.com/photos/compute/Silent1%20copy.jpg

A guy I know in Sydney uses these cases for his custom audio PC's, and I have heard them in action. The only thing you can hear is the hard disc whirring quietly. Fookin quiet

Music Computer Systems (http://www.musiccomputersystems.com/home.htm)

Obviously your arent in Sydney, but Im sure others are using these cases too..

[Tomer=Trance]

what exacly make a computer silent?
replacing all standart fans into zalman silent fans for example?

[jasedee]

I think instead of fans there are massive fins for cooling, if you look at the sides they are just big slits to allow for cooling. Also, the whole PC is mounted on rubber feet, so no vibrations from the computer.

I have seen this thing in action, and it is by far the quietest PC or Mac I have heard. Even the liquid cooled G5's sound like they are an aeroplane taking off when the processor kicks in, but this thing in flight is like a frisbee.....dead quiet.

I guess also what it is made from....must be very thick materials...

[Tomer=Trance]

well still i dont have 3K to spend on a computer.
it will be cheaper building an isolated vocal booth inside my room :D

[harrystainer]

Its one big fuck off heatsink.

[Drammy]

I would have to recommend the case I got - they are both the same on this page (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/copy_of_copy_of_Arctic_Cooling.html)but I got the bottom one.

The website linked above is fantastic for sourcing parts - it gives good descriptions and everything is well organised and very visual - also quite cheep.

It is incredibly cool and quiet - the master drive is intended to be mounted in an aluminium sleeve which is suspended in the air by strong Rubber bands, preventing any vibrations from the HD reverberating through the case and beyond. 1 thing to bare in mind the case will not fit long PCI cards - when I say long I mean very long, like the old Powercore card. UAD's fit fine though, the only card I had trouble with is the Powercore - bit of a school boy error on my part!

I also bought an arctic cooliing fan which is silent and comes with some arctic cooling coolant to apply between the CPU and the heatsink/fan.

If you want to get the latest specs for DAWs then I suggest checking out the PC music forum at Soundonsound.com (http://www.soundonsound.com). Martin Walker and the guys there are pretty clued up!

Congratulations on moving from Mac - my studio partner has nothing but Macs but after he saw the performance of my PC he has decided to get a PC for Video editing, and my PC is not even high spec, I just researched and bought the right components - the correct memory is just as important as the CPU in my opinion.


Good luck,

Drammy

[harrystainer]

I used OCUK to get the parts for my system too - for those of you in the UK this store is highly recommended. Also, check out some of their full system ranges, very expensive but I'm told its worth the money.

[Merlot]

Much appreciated guys. Will check into all of these options! :wink: :lol:

[F5D]

The computer noise level depends alot on what country you live in. Here in Finland my G5 runs very silently in the winter but in the summer the noise level rises to observable level, sometimes very noisy too if the room temperature is over +27 celsius. Usually in the winter the room temperature here is about 18 - 20, so the computer runs very silently. The noise level changes because the fans are temperature controlled. Earlier with my PC I didn't think about the noise levels and the fans were always running at the same speed. The G5 cooling is not optimal (because the noise level may rise very much if the fans kick in when doing something cpu intensive job and the room temperature is high) but the noise levels are very low in the winter. However now I understand those people who live in Spain or in some other warm country and say that the G5 is a loud machine. That's true if your room temperature is always over 25 or something like that.

To build a quiet PC, you need:

-As big processor heatsinks as possible with large fans which can be set to lower speeds
-A power supply with big 12cm temperature controlled fan, Fortron for example.
-8-12cm extra fans connected to 5V voltage.
-low noise harddisks
-a heavy duty case for the computer. Avoid the cheap sheet metal cases. If you can find a heavier case, it won't resonate like the cheap ones. For example the powermac G5 case is made of so thick aluminum, that the harddisks cannot make it to resonate at all.

[Timo]

Ten, aren't there serious issues with NForce4 motherboards with regards to audio latency and CPU usage? In fact I'm pretty sure of it, other than the so-called "Tyan" board.

Otherwise DO NOT get an NForce4 motherboard, else your latency values will be CRAP and your CPU useage will go through the roof.

The older NForce3, however, is fine.

There are also PCI-Express issues that have arisen with the new wave of motherboards, but the Intel ones can be made good by using low-end graphics cards such as the ATI X300 or similar, as opposed to the high-end X700 (or above) or nVidia 6800 graphics cards

RME NForce4/PCI-E stress test report (http://www.rme-audio.de/english/techinfo/nforce4_tests.htm) - Although this, published in March, is now out of date, but serves as a prelude. Read the next two for more info:-

Warning - NForce4/PCI-E - SOS thread (http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/showflat.php?session=dbe714ec3be76da0dad38183941ec021&Cat=&Number=143845&page=3&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#143845)

NForce 4 user tests - Nuendo forum (http://forum.nuendo.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=706&start=0&sid=65f78d64aa093081601e0cdb80510a61)

This whole thing has done my head in, as I was set up to buy a laptop this spring, but for all this PCI-E crap. No-one knows wtf is the exact problem.

[F5D]

I know that this may not be useful information if somebody has already decided to build a PC anyway but the reason why I didn't experiment building a new dual cpu PC (I was almost going to) just that you have to put lots of money to the parts and still not be sure if it will work or not. So I went the mac way. Interesting to see that Merlot is moving away from mac. Of course a PC can be very powerful and joy to use too if you know the parts which work together and have good experience in keeping windows xp clean.

But if you're gonna build a new PC, maybe an X2 dualcore Athlon64 might be a good processor choice. I don't know about the new motherboards so I cannot recommend any at this time.

[ten]

Timo,

More recent tests have found this to be only with certain setups and certain sequencers, cubase sx and nuendo mainly.

I know of a few people (if only a handful) now running nf4 single cpu boards and not having these problems.

One thing to point out these initial nf4 problems did and do NOT affect any current dual cpu nf4 boards. I have tested two extensively myself (Tyan K8WE and SuperMicro H8DCE) and they perform amazingly.

I agree though, If you want total hassle free setup and can find a decent nf3 board that will support a dualcore X2 it just might be the way to go....or go for a nice dualie like me :) second hand opterons go CHEAP on ebay.

ten

[Merlot]

I know that this may not be useful information if somebody has already decided to build a PC anyway but the reason why I didn't experiment building a new dual cpu PC (I was almost going to) just that you have to put lots of money to the parts and still not be sure if it will work or not. So I went the mac way. Interesting to see that Merlot is moving away from mac. Of course a PC can be very powerful and joy to use too if you know the parts which work together and have good experience in keeping windows xp clean.

But if you're gonna build a new PC, maybe an X2 dualcore Athlon64 might be a good processor choice. I don't know about the new motherboards so I cannot recommend any at this time.

May not be moving sooo soon after seeing all the config problems. Who knows? I am up in the air everyday! :roll:

[ten]

Probably best to list exactly what you will be using it for, what you want to use it for (music, internet, games etc) and the top amount your prepared to spend...

Should be able to draw up a short list from that.

ten

[Drammy]

Another link to a DAW and computer music forum:

http://recording.org/forum-30.html

[Merlot]

Guys,
Thanks for all the info. For some reason I cant pull myself off the mac and therefore purchased a new G% last night. Thanks again guys and hope I did not waste your time. :wink:

[jasedee]

Guys,
Thanks for all the info. For some reason I cant pull myself off the mac and therefore purchased a new G5 last night. Thanks again guys and hope I did not waste your time. :wink:
Great decision!

:)

[Merlot]

meant to say G5! Sorry. :?

[Drammy]

Have you checked the known issues with G5s and UAD-1s?

I think you will find there are a few problems with the G5s.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help I don't know the current situation - might be worth checking it out on the chrismilne UAD forum.


Drammy

[Merlot]

Have you checked the known issues with G5s and UAD-1s?

Drammy

I have heard about the issues with the UAD-1. Supposedly from all the reports coming in, the latest update for the UAD (OS 10.4), everything is working great. THose are still a little ways off though. Need to save up some more dough.

Thanks

[F5D]

Good choice merlot. The UAD1 driver is working very well in Tiger now. UAD1 only have some performance problems with PCI-X G5's. I have a PCI G5 and the UAD1 plugs don't need the native cpu almost at all (maybe 0.5% per plugin). My Powercores need native cpu a little more than the UAD1 (maybe 1% per poco plugin). These are per 1 cpu (of 2).

[aztec]

I've built a Dual Xeon for the average price of a single pc. Will post setup if you wish.
Put powercore in your list :>

[Drammy]

Aztec, I would be interested in the details of your set-up. Would you mind posting them - I am umming and aaahing between creating a new 64bit dual core AMD machine or a dual Xeon???

[aztec]

ok, will post in a bit, really busy at the moment to look for the exact models. Mind that i created this setup about 8 months ago and maybe there are new motherboards or cheaper cpus etc. Also AMD chips where out of reach then, x3 the price i paid.

[aztec]

Motherboard : asus ncch-dl, i875p intel chipset
CPU: 2x Xeon nocona 2.8 800fsb
RAM : 1 gig, Adata, pc3200 DDR(i saw those getting sold for 76 pounds lately)
PSU: Tagan tga480-u01


make sure you buy some silent headsinksfan configuration for the cpu, cause there is no way you can make music with the noise the included ones produce. As loud as a car engine....