Music Editing PC Config

[gvblake22]

Why bother with a 7600GT? Save some money and get a 7600GS or even a 7300 or X1300 of some flavor. Then you could get an E6600 or another HDD for backups or some nice speakers or a microphone or whatever.

Same goes for the PSU, I don't think that rig is gonna require a 620W PSU. Might as well save some $$ and go with the 400W Liberty.

[Dr. V]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

Why bother with a 7600GT? Save some money and get a 7600GS or even a 7300 or X1300 of some flavor. Then you could get an E6600 or another HDD for backups or some nice speakers or a microphone or whatever.

Same goes for the PSU, I don't think that rig is gonna require a 620W PSU. Might as well save some $$ and go with the 400W Liberty.

yep.

i was debating on the PSU, but since it was a pretty good deal for the product, i sorta let it go. but to save as much cash as possible, do that ^^.

[screwballl]

the only things I see with the original mentions is go with the X-Fi.. I just got one myself on my XP3000+ build and it is simply amazing!!!!!
also for that budget, step up to the E6600 or at least 6400.
As for the video, something like a 7300 should be fine for that useage.

[Hitman]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

Why bother with a 7600GT? Save some money and get a 7600GS or even a 7300 or X1300 of some flavor. Then you could get an E6600 or another HDD for backups or some nice speakers or a microphone or whatever.

Same goes for the PSU, I don't think that rig is gonna require a 620W PSU. Might as well save some $$ and go with the 400W Liberty.

You make some good points. Its only a $30 diffrence between the 2 video cards, but since it won't be used for gaming I guess it doesn't really matter. I will lower the video card and the PSU and step the CPU up to the E6600, since the CPU is the most important in this build.

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by sktworkshop06

I would get a 7300gt instead of the 7600gt considering that it is not a gaming pc. I would also add another cd drive because it for music editing. Windows XP Media Center Edition might be a better os. My ideas don't count though, because everyone else here is more knowledgable than me. lol.

Seconded. You said he wasn't going to play games, but suggested he might take it for years to come since it wasn't too expensive. I don't think audio editing programs will suddenly require such a high amount of graphical power, unless he wants to keep his PC for a rather long lenght of time, from where I expect other components to start failing. Just something like that, not really an issue though. I also agree with Blake point on spending a little less and upgrading the CPU and/or disk space (see next paragraph).

I wouldn't know exactly what type of audio editing your client is into, but someone I know edits popular movie translations before final DVD/VHS shipment and such. From what I could see, he works with raw sound files that are thus not compressed and alot of his "clips" go well over 2GB. Surround sound
becoming a standard in the industry, it would only be logical to think that audio files are getting bigger and bigger everyday. Something to consider, because 320GB of hi quality mp3's might seem alot, but when you're chewing on raw files it's something else.

That same guy work computer also has 4GB of memory and on that he uses some part of it for his specialized program swap file. Don't ask me, I wouldn't know the details, but again I don't know the details of your project either.

His computer is worth a tad more than $1500, just throwing some ideas so your client doesn't end up being deceived for whatever reason. Better be safe than sorry. :)

[Hitman]

Well apparently the $30 diffrence between a 7300gt and a 7600gt is a huge diffrence to you guys. Whatever I went with the 7300 and upped the CPU. I asked the guy today and he was indiffrent on either video card.

He originally asked for a 200GB HD, and I suggested the 320gb. He stores his prodjects on External Hard Drives, so the 320 will be for OS and work space.

[MantaBase]

You are getting some good advice, however, you want to consider what is really needed.

That's a great sound card you chose (I drool), but consider:

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=...=pciinterfaces

They might be better. Pick up an issue of Computer Music(ian) (either). See what you think. I will tell you the number one complaint about using a computer as an audio recording device; "Inputs, Inputs, Inputs - there are never enough and they are always in the back!"

Another thing you may not have thought about is noise. You want really quiet. This is one reason (however flawed) that most DAW's are desktop (not tower) cases. These cases are shown to cool better passively (yeah, I know - it's only about 1 degree - I question that myself). Less heat, less noise cooling machine. The other is because they are often rack mounted. IIRC, A rack is 19", but things may have changed.

Don't fall in love with the video card. Look, I know what you are saying, but the only things that are persnickety about grafix are games and Video processing. Just about ANY card on the market will be overkill for DAW unless the person plans to do video or games on it. So, don't be cheap - you want it to run games currently on the market - but don't allow it to dent the budget much because thats not what the box is for. Be clear with the user about it - and be clear they can always upgrade later.
Sonica Uses: Nvidia GeForce 7300 PCI-E 256MB DDR2 DVI VGA HDTV

In fact, check Sonica out:

http://www.shop-sonica.com/pd_r6600_workstation.cfm

(products are linked across and near the top - Oh yeah - notice no sound card? typically users buy a solution after they buy the box)

Drives:
You want 2 combo optical drives and one needs to have lightscribe. These are cheap enough - just buy them.

Card reader? I must be outdated, spose it can't hurt, but I didn't know any audio devices used them.

HDD: 2 is great, 3 is greater - I suspect, I would would just stick with 2 though. You want one (the data drive) to be on its own channel.

Make it vista ready BTW.

PSU: I would consider 400w+. After that, think about noise.

Anyways, hope that helps. Gleen what you need and throw out what you don't.

Oh yeah - you want as many of the inputs (Audio, USB etc...) to be on the front of the machine as possible. You might ask the end user if you are not sure about that.

Just IMO

Manta