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if you had around $400 to spend on a motherboard, processor, and ram (a gig of ram preferably) what would you buy?


reason is i only have a p4 1.6 right now and a shit mobo and ram but i have a 9800 pro


so plz help (it can be intel or amd, don't matter to me)

AMD Barton 3200+, gig of 400MHZ (pc3200) ram and a compatible motherboard. I like MSI boards but just about any will do.

You comfortable overclocking?

not really :~(

Muglack wrote:You comfortable overclocking?

Can someone explain "overclocking" to a tech newbie? I assume it involves tweaks that speed things up, but other than that I am clueless!

Menlaan

I don't understand much about it but in involves clock speed (and bus speed?) and the multiplier of the clock speed. The multiplier i think is based on the voltages used. So more voltage means more heat which means more cooling is needed.

overclocking is basically playign with the settigns in your bios ( or jumpers on motherboard) to make your proccessor run at a faster speed than it was designed too. It allows you to squeese extra performance out of a lower system... but the drawback is this also produces more heat and you will need to have more than just standard heatsink/fan and cooling in your system if you do much overclocking.

IMO if you dont know enough about computers... dont do it

Yah you basically give it more juice so it runs faster, but the extra power also causes it to heat up considerably, and raises serious stability issues. I'll look through newegg for you and see what I can find for under 400 bucks and get back to you.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 394&depa=1

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductde ... 006&DEPA=1 x 2

and

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 475&depa=1

grand total: $345.04 without shipping and whatever applicable taxes there might be

Now that's about as basic as you can get. You can upgrade the processpr a step for 50 bucks (not really worth it IMO) or get better RAM, but once again not really worth it. And that's an AMD system (which I'm partial too) don't know how it compares to Intel systems in the same price range.

cool thanks

is it worth it to upgrade to the 64 bit processors right now in case i want to upgrade in the future?

FYI sometime in the next 6 months i will be making a thread like this as to which components would work best for a dedicated recording studio computer

just a warning

SB Audigy 2.1 platinum np

Thanks for the overclocking info, too. I'll stay away from it

Menlaan

man i swear to god every single case made now has more lights than las vegas on it and just looks absurd

i need a good tasteful looking box that is concerned with maximum cooling efficiency and none of this compu-rice bullshit

I tried overclocking last night and bluescreened ~_~. I always get confused as to when (if) raise voltage and when(if) I should change the multiplier when bumping up fsb.

Kaeerwen wrote:SB Audigy 2.1 platinum np

No. SB cards are great for games, suck for professional quality recording.

I have an internal PCI card that I record to and the quality is quite good BUT the next one I buy will be an external firewire setup. The card I have is an M-Audio 2496. RCA in/out, SPDIF in/out and Midi in/out. It's a cheap, no frills quality card but having to plug and unplug on the back of the PC is teh gay.

Mine's not too bad for recording... but honestly I think I'm just partial to the fact that it's front-loaded more than anything else. Of course, I'm not as big into recording music as I used to be...

My barton 2500 (1833Mhz) broke 2800Mhz.. that's almost 1100Mhz of 'free' speed. Of course, by 'free', I'm ignoring a scratch-built $1500 cooling system... but... then... that will follow me from puter to puter.

A barton 3200 runs at 2200Mhz... for $200. Mine ran at 2825, quite stable... for $85. Compare a stock 2500 to a stock 3200 and there is only 377Mhz difference (1833 to 2200). Now, compare my overclocked 2500 to a stock 3200 and there is 425 Mhz difference. How much would AMD charge for a barton that runs at 2825Mhz stock? They'd call it a Barton 4500 and it'd be a grand.

My point is... the 2500 *can* run at 2200 speeds without much cooling at all... some chips can do it on STOCK cooling. Wouldn't a $35 heatsink be worth it to get a 2200 for $80 off?

I have an internal PCI card that I record to and the quality is quite good BUT the next one I buy will be an external firewire setup. The card I have is an M-Audio 2496. RCA in/out, SPDIF in/out and Midi in/out. It's a cheap, no frills quality card but having to plug and unplug on the back of the PC is teh gay.

Couple things. The top end SB Audigy "cards" now are all external and connect with USB 2.0 (about 8 times fast then Firewire) and are designed for sound editing. They're also hundreds of dollars more then the their gaming counterparts. The best Audigy boxes will run you in the 500 or 600 dollar range, have 7.1 sound for incredibly precise sound placement, and have plug-ins for anything from Keyboards to random midi devices, the one I looked at had 9 or 10 different plug-in types.

Sound Blaster ASIO drivers suck shit. They are not made for studio audio recording.

You pronounce them ASSEEYO for a reason.

Tossica wrote:

Kaeerwen wrote:SB Audigy 2.1 platinum np

No. SB cards are great for games, suck for professional quality recording.

I have an internal PCI card that I record to and the quality is quite good BUT the next one I buy will be an external firewire setup. The card I have is an M-Audio 2496. RCA in/out, SPDIF in/out and Midi in/out. It's a cheap, no frills quality card but having to plug and unplug on the back of the PC is teh gay.

ya i got an aardvark q10 direct pro and will pick up second one before too long

i was more concerned with the rest of the comp-- basically i need everything that a top-of-the-line gaming machine would need, PLUS extra consideration for hard drive performance. the only major difference between this comp and a gamer's dream comp is that video performance is completely unimportant.

sound files are bloody massive, and i have to have hardware that will toss as many as three dozen of them around at once and not slow down at all.

so like i said, when i'm ready to start building this studiobrain, i will need a lot of input from you guys about high-end components.

This post turned into a frigging novel, so I moved it to a new thread.
-Tree