Custom PC - price/spec discussion...

[wub]

Currently clocking in at just over £650 inc VAT;

AMD Quad Core
16Gb RAM
120Gb SSD System Drive
1Tb storage drive
FireWire Card

Everything else is just standard as is, nothing fancy.

(Considering I only run FL, this is almost overkill )

[SKIN E]

Jesus mother, I wouldn't even know what to do with those kinda specs, are you getting into cracking passwords for a living?

Literally haven't gone over my 2gb ram in cubase yet, and even if it does.. I like bouncing stuff down to audio so it wouldn't really be a problem.. worst case scenario i'll go on my internet machine (4gb ram) but 16....

[wub]

Downgrading the specs to 2Gb takes less than £100 off the final cost...tbh at that price may as well just go full whack on it.

Also, as I'm going to have the bits of hardware I have so far fully integrated, I've got no real experience of using multiple outboard units at once within live projects...everything so far has been bouncing audio, then running through effects units, or else recording synths directly in and manipulating them offline...so I've got no real idea whether that'll make a difference to things.

[SKIN E]

I know what you mean, whether you are actually going to use all of that ram... most likely will in the future and for less than 100 pounds.. no brainer!

[shoot2stun]

I bought a new custom pc recently and what I am noticing is that most new mobo's that support i5/i7 sandy bridge are coming standard with integrated usb 3.0 which is quite fast. I wonder if audio interfaces will keep up with this shift and start taking full advantage of that tech or stay in the usb 2.0/Firewire zone.

[Immerse]

you seem like an intelligent guy wub, build it yourself. youll save hundreds of dollars. go check out reddit.com/r/buildapc
make a post on what your looking for and they help you put a build together! theres tons of smart guys over there thatll surely help you out. you should only have to spend around 5-600 dollars

[mks]

Yeah, build it forward. Get the most RAM, fastest processor etc. that you can afford, and the machine will last you a few years. Don't skimp out on the PSU!!

[Immerse]

32 bit only utilizes 3.2 or so GB of ram, so the rest is a waste unless you are running 64, also 8gb should be all you need and even that is overkill.

[Electric_Head]

I would go intel and choose an i5 2500k sandybridge over the quad core Wub.
But get a mb to support higher.

You'll want to upgrade the quad core soon imo.

[wub]

you seem like an intelligent guy wub, build it yourself. youll save hundreds of dollars. go check out reddit.com/r/buildapc
make a post on what your looking for and they help you put a build together! theres tons of smart guys over there thatll surely help you out. you should only have to spend around 5-600 dollars

My current PC (and the last few I think) have all been builds, but tbh I'm out of practice and my cabling skills inside the case were never the best

32 bit only utilizes 3.2 or so GB of ram, so the rest is a waste unless you are running 64, also 8gb should be all you need and even that is overkill.

I'm looking into Window 7 64 bit at the moment as an OS, but need to check against FL10 (finally getting my upgrade on that ) to check 64 support, and if there are any issues.

[__________]

My advice...

Build it yourself. Ridiculous deals on pre-builts are usually done to shift stock of obsolete components. You get better parts and save money by building it yourself. No excuse really unless you're complete un-technical, which you obviously aren't!

Go for the biggest and best SSD you can possibly afford. Bigger SSD drives have higher read/write speeds than smaller models because the increase in their number of NAND chips allows for much faster reading & writing to the drive. Look at as many benchmarks for as many things as you can before you buy a new SSD - they are by no means equal! You can get a 40%ish increase in speed by doubling drive size sometimes.

AMD Quad Core
16Gb RAM
120Gb SSD System Drive
1Tb storage drive

Sorry but this means nothing! 16GB of shitty extra-value RAM would be outperformed by 8GB of top-of-the-range Badman RAM.
HD wise I'd go for 2x (or 4x - two, both mirrored) 10,000RPM 500GB running in RAID 1. 1TB of anything is just looooooooooong to backup/defrag/organise/etc IMO.
Also, I've been very tempted by the Bulldozer myself - I've been thinking about upgrading for a while and have had a few AMD CPUs - but really, the i5's and i7's are just a better bet these days. The Bulldozer is literally that - a bulldozer. It's not very efficient.

edit...

I'm looking into Window 7 64 bit at the moment as an OS, but need to check against FL10 (finally getting my upgrade on that ) to check 64 support, and if there are any issues.

Dual or triple boot, it is the best way honestly. Soon enough you WILL find something which won't work in your current OS...then you'll go and 'upgrade' to a newer OS and find something which you need to 'downgrade' for again soon enough. I dual boot x64 W7 and x86 XP on my desktop and have x64 XP, x86 XP and Ubuntu on my laptops...works perfectly for me. Just make sure you think long and hard about your hard drive partitioning before you do it! With an SSD or two it'd be very very speedy to re-boot too.

[Immerse]

i5 2500k sandy bridge is all you need, anything else is overkill imo. as for ram go for some gskill or something, stuff is dirt cheap and is just as good as any other brand.