Members LIMiT Posted September 29, 2005 Members Share Posted September 29, 2005 Hi there, I've been a MAC guy for as long as I can remember, but I'm being given some top end PC components (at least I think they are??) from the IT guy where I work. He's giving me: P4C 800 Deluxe Socket 478 MoBo 3Gb Dual Channel DDR 400 Ram 2 X 250Gb Maxtor 7200Rpm HD's Will this be good stuff to start a PC DAW? This is what I'm looking at buying: Antec Sonata II Quiet Mid Tower Case w/450W P.S. $140.00 Can. Intel Pent 4 3.2Ghz Socket 478 800Mhz 1M Cache $287.00 Can. I need some advice on a good dual display Video Card.. Also... refrencing my current setup in my signature: Advise on whether I should go M-Powered?..is it possible to sync up to my MAC/002? Any Digi alternative? Looking forward to hearing all your great advice! -LIMiT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dylan Walters Posted September 29, 2005 Members Share Posted September 29, 2005 You have some nice components to start out with. I'd highly recommend a Zalman CPU fan for the P4. The P4's run *very* hot, and the stock Intel fans do little to help. Plus, they are noisy. The Antec cases are nice, but I would recommend a CoolerMaster with a removable motherboard tray if you can afford it. The removable tray makes working with the MB much easier. Any ATI or Nvidia chipset AGP card with dual output will work fine. You should be able to find a 64MB version for well under $60. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the_tonto Posted September 29, 2005 Members Share Posted September 29, 2005 how quiet are the coolermasters though? I'm in the process of deciding on components for a new recording pc, and I was going to go with the sonata II because the sonatas are supposed to be really quiet. I'd be more concerned about the noise picking up on mics than the ease of working with the MB. If the coolermasters are as quiet i might go with one of those though. What I'd really like would be a quiet rackmount case to make my set up more mobile as I'm looking at possibly starting a cheap mobile recording service on the side. But most rackmounts I've seen have been 300 - 400, and I'm not willing to spend that much on a case right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted September 29, 2005 Share Posted September 29, 2005 I'd highly recommend a Zalman CPU fan for the P4. +1,000. The Zalman coolers are the quietest and most efficient CPU cooling systems I am aware of short of a water pumpers and heat pipes. I love mine, and I'd never go back to Coolermaster (I've had a couple of their CPU coolers) unless they came out with something even better than the Zalmans... and the ones I have owned didn't come close. As far as Vid cards, I am a big fan of dual heads, and I've had the best luck with ATI Radeon dual head cards. Matrox cards have worked well on some systems for me, but have also had compatibility issues with the chipsets on some motherboards. The Radeons have always worked for me, regardless of the mobo I had them installed on. My ATI Radeon 9600 Pro may be getting long in the tooth, but it still serves me well. Your basic component list looks good. Just make sure you get a good case, and quiet cooling solutions and a quiet power supply - the Antec should be fine. I've yet to see a really cool rack case that looked like it would meet all my needs insofar as interior space and quiet operation, and I'm open to suggestions if anyone knows of something I've overlooked. As far as "going M-Powered", I don't see why not if that's what you want. Can you lock it to your Digi 002? Sure. The main thing is that you can not run two Digi (or M-Powered) interfaces on the same PC... I'm not certain about the status of the M-Powered stuff insofar as using multiple Delta 1010 interfaces on one computer, but you can't run more than a single Digidesign LE interface on one machine. But that doesn't prohibit you from running two copies of PT LE and two interfaces, on two SEPERATE computers and locking them up. Here's how you'd do that: Connect Computer #1 and Computer #2 together with a MIDI cable - MIDI out from one MIDI interface, to MIDI in on the second computer's MIDI interface. Also connect a S/PDIF cable from the output on Computer #1's PT LE interface into the S/PDIF in on Computer #2's LE interface. Set computer #1 to transmit MTC (MIDI Tiome Code) out of that MIDI port, and set the second computer to slave to that incoming MTC. Set machine #2 to be the word clock slave of machine #1... again, this is also a setting within PT LE. Let me know if you need to know exactly where and how to set these parameters. With the MTC sync, and WC sync, the two machines will run in lockstep, giving you a total of 64 simultaneous tracks. You can feed the outputs of both interfaces to a mixing console for mixdown, or you can feed the audio outputs from one interface to physical inputs on the other interface, and bring them into the PT session on that computer via a stereo aux input if you'd like. I REALLY wish Digidesign would allow you to connect two LE interfaces to a single computer, but alas, that's currently not an option. But you can "work around" that if you're willing to run two computers and lock them together with MTC and word clock sync. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LIMiT Posted September 29, 2005 Author Members Share Posted September 29, 2005 This is just the info I'm looking for. Thank you all!As soon as Digi announced PT 7 I was sure that my G4 800 would soon be 'not enough' power,..so I'm going to make this new PC my primary DAW.It'll be a little weird moving from keyboard to keyboard,..mouse to mouse...maybe ther's a solution out there for this (remember,..it's between a MAC and PC...??? Anyways..thanks again,..I'm putting it together this weekend...I'll let ya know if I encounter any issues. Cheers,-LIMiT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted September 30, 2005 Share Posted September 30, 2005 Anyways..thanks again,..I'm putting it together this weekend... I'll let ya know if I encounter any issues. Please do, and we'll do our best to help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dylan Walters Posted September 30, 2005 Members Share Posted September 30, 2005 Originally posted by the_tonto how quiet are the coolermasters though? The Coolermaster's are fairly quiet. You might want to add some insulation if you are going for 'whisper' operation. I use an Antec Sonata case and I'm about to replace it. The airflow is poor and it gets very hot very fast, which means that I have to crank up the juice on my Enermax 'Quiet' power supply to keep things cool as well as turn on more fans. The Antec Solution cases are much cheaper and actually do a much better job cooling and are more quiet than the Sonata. The stock system fan and power supply are very quiet. I'm probably going to replace the Sonata case with a full size tower to maximize airflow. I only have 2 hard drives, a DVD burner, and my Echo Mona card installed, but the case is still fairly jammed packed, especially with the Zalman fan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LIMiT Posted October 4, 2005 Author Members Share Posted October 4, 2005 Almost there as far as building it goes.... didn't have enough funds to get a new Digi interface yet 1 quick question... anyone know the reason why it's recommended to disable 'Hyperthreading' in the BIOS? Wil this not effect the speed/performance?? LIMiT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted October 4, 2005 Share Posted October 4, 2005 The most recent verion (6.9) of PT LE doesn't do well with hyperthreading enabled on PIV machines. That's why they recommend you disable it in BIOS. It MAY work, but you'd probably see an increase in maximum simultaneous track count and plug-in count with it disabled. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LIMiT Posted October 4, 2005 Author Members Share Posted October 4, 2005 "The most recent verion (6.9) of PT LE" Thanx for the quick reply Phil,.... I'll ask again after October 7th LIMiT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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