Has anyone built a new computer recently?

[Old Vantaa Man]

What was the spec, please?

Looking for ideas and thinking of putting a 64-bit system together running Sonar 7.

Comments most welcome.

[Doc Jones]

64 bit eh? which os were you thinking of using?

[Old Vantaa Man]

I dunno. XP, probably.

Is Cubase 64 bit yet?

[Timo]

Am in the same boat as you, OVM. Going to have to build my own system, as there are currently no affordable 17" laptops with TI firewire chipset (my former laptop died miserably). Thinking of core 2 quad-core, or maybe the next-gen quads ("Yorkfield": new fabrication at 45nm, SSE v4, 1.3GHz FSB, DDR3 support, 6 or 12Mb L2 cache) which will be released in around mid November.

Will likely install both XP 32-bit and Vista 64-bit for dual booting in parallel for the best of both worlds, and to further test compatibilities to see what software I stand to lose by moving over to V64 for good (my eventual goal).

It's a pretty exciting time for computing, but we're still at that awkward 32/64-bit, XP/Vista, DX9/10 crossover stage.

[Khazul]

Thinking of doing it.

I cant rememeber which mobo I was going to use - it wasnt an Asus this time around because they are using VIA firewire chips which are crap.

I think it was a gigabyte mobo, intel P35 chipset, TI firewire chip, intel quad core @ 2.4Ghz to keep it cheap unless the quad 3Ghz chip comes down in price. Also choosing the newer process G0 stepping CPU - lower power, lower heat etc which is good for keeping the whole machine more reliable and quieter. On memory - probably DDR2 as at any given speed DDR2 will be faster than DDR3, so DDR3 is only worthwhile when it gets alot faster. DDR2 goes upto about 1066Mhz I think and 1333 DDR3 is (I think) not quite at break even point relative to DDR2 at 1066.

As for gfx card - I guess just whatever is current with decent performance from nvidia. Again something with overkill quiet cooling on it.

Dont use stock intel coolers - my experience is they are way under spec'd once in a real machine with loads of harddrives etc, so am using a huge zalman cooler - also stuck one on the graphic card.

Case - antec P180 currently, though might look at one of their rack case next time around.

Hard drives - couple of WD 10000 RPM raptors and a couple of high capacity 7200 rpm of some random make. The raptors are for the OS and project drives, the others for relaiable main storage in a raid config.

Main thing on the case - find something with soft rubber mounting for the hard drives to cut down noise (have a look at that antec case to see what kind of thing they do) and very good airflow that allows for 120mm fans - they are much quieter and shift more air. Good dust filtering is advisable as well - as eventually the cooling fins will clog up with dust otherwise and become near useless.

[Doc Jones]

are you guys finding that all of your apps and drivers are fairly stable running in a 64 bit environment now? (I know that the devs for Ableton still recommend running their app in a 32 bit setup)

[Guzzy]

My new PC so far:

Missing the main parts, that will be ordered this month, got a bonus at my job

[Khazul]

I *still* cant get 64 bit drivers for my audio interface.

Hence my general hatred of yamaha at the moment.

[Juho L]

Speaking of 64-bit drivers, what the heck is taking so long? I've heard that only a laughable fraction of manufactuers has managed to release a proper 64-bit Vista drivers. Are they lazy or is there some problems with Vista like compulsory Microsoft driver sertification?

[Khazul]

I guess some give a shit - most dont.

Have to aplaud roland for getting most of their Vista 64 drivers out within a a few weekss so of vista 64 being launched - as a stable final too - not just as some flakey beta as was the case with many others who at least made the effort at the time.

To me this just points to the rest of the audio companies either not giving a shit or being incompetant (or both).