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Right guys,

I am looking to build myself a music production pc, I am going to be running the following on it for starters :

Ableton Live 8
Reason 5
Gladiator 2 VST
Effectrix
Alien 303

Possibly other VSTs too but I'm going to try streamline my collection to suit what I will use more often and get my moneys worth out of Gladiator

Basically I was wondering about RAM first, has anyone noticed the need for more than 8GB of RAM??

Secondly processor wise, intel and amd, I have heard AMD is more bang for buck but don't take the risk just go for intel because that is quality, any thoughts??

All help much appreciated guys!

.

dont feel like thaaat, i myself was only using that until recently i got my laptop with 3GB RAM, I have a lot of production buddies that are building high end machines not just for music production but a little gaming aswell, so i'm just getting a wide spectrum of opinions, I don't have much lag myself but I'm making sure for bigger tunes when i get better that i won't have to use simpler synths to have more tracks etc. I wont be going mac simply because I am not jumping on the fashion bandwagon, If i win the lottery I might consider buying one but i dnt play it so haha, any thoughts on processors?? thanks for the feedback

I`d say go Intel.
If you can make a choice.

8gb should be sufficient but you`ll be better off running 64 bit in that case.
Do you have 64bit versions?

Just a question.
Why use reason?
Gladiator has major functionality.
You shouldn`t need Reason`s plugins.

Alien 303 is a good bass vst, one of the few folks I`ve seen that use it aside from me.
I only know about it because I`ve produced Dark Psy for years.
Good bass sound.

Do you have an external sound device or using on board sound?
I would definitely get an external usb device or a good sound card to replace the built in device.

Just remember that you can get by with crumbs.

i5 or i7 definitely

You can overclock the i5 to go over the i7 anyway, something about it's build gave superior performance.

jaimelee wrote:You can overclock the i5 to go over the i7 anyway, something about it's build gave superior performance.

Plus it`s a whack load cheaper.

I was shocked when I heard the difference in price for the performance.

thanks guys

I love Thor, thats why I use reason, there is another reason too. Well I have an external sound card, M-Audio Fast Track older model, but I would consider getting an upgrade to the internal sound card or a new external sound card. Yes Alien303, deffo worth it, I am also a psytrance producer, I tend to stick to psytrance and dubstep, sometimes a little hardstyle and ambient weird stuff, but yeah intel seems the way forward then im using 64bit on my laptop windows 7, I will be looking at 64bit anyway knowing that RAM may increase over time, thanks for the advice guys.

Electric_Head wrote:8gb should be sufficient but you`ll be better off running 64 bit in that case.

It's not even a case of better off.
If he plans to run 8gb ram he will have to run 64bit, or else you wont be able to run 8gb ram

And even if he runs 64bit, he will need 64bit plugins, and they don't make a 64bit Ableton to run those plugins in. All in all more than 3GB is a waste unless he wants to hack the system to run Mac and put Ableton on that.

gen_ wrote:And even if he runs 64bit, he will need 64bit plugins, and they don't make a 64bit Ableton to run those plugins in. All in all more than 3GB is a waste unless he wants to hack the system to run Mac and put Ableton on that.

Ding Ding Ding

We have a winner.
I have 4gb but I never use it all.
8gb won`t even be detected by 32bit systems so It`s pretty much a prerequisite to run 64bit.

The most important is CPU and Sound Card imo.
Nothing worse than a track maxing out on cpu and crashing.
Either way though, you`ll learn to render tracks to free up resources.

Its pretty simple building a PC for production.. Its the same premise for building any PC really..

As much ram you can afford / your OS/Software can take -32bit software won't pick up on the extra ram and I think Ableton isn't 64bit yet?

Don't skrimp on the cooling and keeping it quiet (the more quiet your computer is, the less chance of getting electrical hum during recording).

Instead of buying a graphics card put that money into a good interface.

Big hard drive(s), best processor you can afford and make sure you don't bottleneck yourself with the motherboard..



Also - AMD are coming out with there octocores soon which are going to be dirt cheap compared to the Intel's (or so the rumor goes...) for the record though, AMD HAVE stepped up their game within the last 2 years and its not as much of a compromise anymore when getting one.

If you've never done it before and are a bit skeptical, I would go for scan's custom music production rigs. They're a bit more than you would pay for all the parts separately and put it together but its still worth seeing what they put into their rigs.

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/Category.asp?Syst ... tegoryID=2

Scan`s production rigs are sweet.
When I`m big I`ll have one.

legend4ry wrote:As much ram you can afford / your OS/Software can take -32bit software won't pick up on the extra ram and I think Ableton isn't 64bit yet?

Just a little side question, which DAW's do currently have 64-bit support currently?

I'm an Ableton lover but the lack of full utilization is killing me.

So I managed to max out my macbook 2.8 core duo / 4 gig ram today, it stopped after 5 seconds of play and said maxxed out (i had chrome, mac mail, fusion + xp, open as well), but then continued to play perfectly with no interruption or fuck ups. 15 vst based tracks, 25 audio tracks, avg of 3-4 vst effects on each track. Most of it summed to busses as well with effects.

that's all on a 3/4 year old macbook. So throwing around numbers like 8 gigs and i7's seems utterly pointless to me unless you're putting together hour long orchestral scores with multisampled instruments. Sure actual rendering time might decrease somewhat with the higher core speeds, but I really don't see the need to spend crazy money on it all! Lowest spec i5, 3/4 gigs ram (depending on your o/s), good size hard drive, 10k rpm with large cache if you can find it for the money. Then get the very best soundcard you can afford.

Electric_Head wrote:Scan`s production rigs are sweet.
When I`m big I`ll have one.

True 'dis. If you aren't that confident about building it yourself, go onto Scan and go into their audio production area, you can get some sweet shiznay for dirt cheap.

legend4ry wrote:Also - AMD are coming out with there octocores soon which are going to be dirt cheap compared to the Intel's (or so the rumor goes...) for the record though, AMD HAVE stepped up their game within the last 2 years and its not as much of a compromise anymore when getting one.

Also true 'dis, I got one of their hex cores (1090t 6x 3.2ghz) and it is fucking BADASS. Especially with Ableton's awesome multicore processing. And they should be pretty cheap by now cause I got it last year.
Also don't worry about more than 4gb of RAM, make sure you get 1600mhz RAM but 4 gig is fine, I use shit loads of multi-samples and it doesn't even come close to touching the sides on my rig.

And get water cooling... it's fucking awesome \m/o.O\m/

Just make sure the motherboard is texas instruments firewire chip if your audio interface is firewire , as the TI chips play nicer than non TI chips. Overclockers.co.uk have some tasty pcs and bundles that are (you guessed it) overclocked right out of the box.

Someone made a huge thread about this the other day about what you need to buy and why

I did write a big post a couple of days ago to help with this sort of matter: http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=200613

Hope it helps!