School me on building a computer.

[BigTim]

I've researched this a bit, and it sounds like the way to go for recording/creating music, and I've also heard you can get a whole lot of computer for a lot less. I'll be doing zero gaming so high end graphics cards and that stuff are irrelevant. The specs I'm thinking though, are : around 2.0 GHz or more, a Gb or so of ram, and say 120 Gb of HD space. Lots of USB and FW ports would be almost essential as well. I'd be needing a monitor also. And I'd like to switch back to PC from Mac, too.

 

Can yall hip me to what I need to make this happen for about 8 bills (US) ? Any help would be much appreciated.

[Dub-Se7en]

Look for:

 

AMD Athlon64 x2 AM2 or intel core duo CPU

Asus, A-BIT or MSI motherboard (these are the ones i tend to use most)

2048DDR II RAM

300GB SATA Hard Drive (you'll fill 120 in a few days )

DECENT PSU, very important, Tagan, Akasa or similar

[decisive]

get a nice soundcard with direct monitoring, plenty of ram, probably buy xp to save ballaches (or never use the internet), fast before large harddrive and a quiet case. if you don't have a decent midi control surface get one of those too. if it were me i'd tick them boxes first and spend the rest on miscellaneous. a intel core duo 2ghz will rock your world unless you're running a gazillion tracks and it's probably a good idea to get a fast as fuck hard drive on your fastest bus, and then put your crap on a cheaper, slower one. you only need the stuff you'll actually be using for production on the fast one so that's only gonna need to be 75gb tops i imagine. 300-500 gb slower sata drives go cheap as flipping chips now and that's what you put all your mp3/porn on.

bottom line, don't pay for bleeding edge, always go middle ground and upgrade in 6 months if you really think you need to.

[Liam]

Don't settle for anything other than core2duo right now. AMD have had to slash their prices like mad to stay in the running because the core2's offer significant performance advantages; Intel is the only way to go right now...

 

It's dead easy to do, but if you have to ask here then you'll probably hit a snag along the way. Find a geeky mate, they're normally only too pleased to show someone just how clever they are so talking them round to doing all the hard work is easy lol

 

Consider throwing down the extra cash to get more than one drive and run a RAID array, the tightest system bottlenecks are ALWAYS disk access times plus as someone who has lost data to hard drive failures numerous times over the years I can honestly say the benefits of having a failsafe are more than worth the outlay.

[BigTim]

Maannn this does not seem as easy to me as it does to you folks. I think I may be in a bit over my head. I think I understand most of the separate things you're saying, but the compatibility between the different parts and that jazz has me confused. This sounds like fun to me though, so research will be done. Thanks for all your suggestions fellas.

[decisive]

no worries bro there's plenty of places you can school yourself on the internet, i can't really remember all the sites but there are a few big ones which do fairly comprehensive benchmarking tests for pretty much all available components, and a lot of the time there is an objectively 'best in class' component for the price which gains a reputation and makes things a lot easier. a week or so's research is all you'll need to piece together what will work for you. it is fun, if you're a bit geeky

[Liam]

Werd, it will be fun and satisfying to do it yourself!

 

First thing is first, get the side off your current box and have a poke around. Clean out the dust and shit just so you've got a legitimate reason, and figure out what is what so you'll have a rough idea what goes where. PC's are a bit like cars, under the hood they can tend to look a bit different, but principally they're all the same if you know what you're looking at.

[MrKD]

Buy one of the shelf and save on all the conflicts!

[djdiggla]

LOL^^^ Really, if ur buying a PC it's a Frankenstein monster no matter if you put it together, or some kid in china!

 

I've researched this a bit, and it sounds like the way to go for recording/creating music, and I've also heard you can get a whole lot of computer for a lot less. I'll be doing zero gaming so high end graphics cards and that stuff are irrelevant. The specs I'm thinking though, are : around 2.0 GHz or more, a Gb or so of ram, and say 120 Gb of HD space. Lots of USB and FW ports would be almost essential as well. I'd be needing a monitor also. And I'd like to switch back to PC from Mac, too.

 

Can yall hip me to what I need to make this happen for about 8 bills (US) ? Any help would be much appreciated.

 

My fiend that works in the dopest commercial studio I've ever seen (they record for people like David Byrne of the Talking Heads) SWEARS that to have a quality setup with no issues that will last a lifetime and be able to create without troubleshooting all the time then you must start with a mac G5 desktop (or G4 if you can't afford a G5) and Pro Tools.... There are various other things he said are needed (proper mics, compressors, pre-amps) but that's all minor compared to these two main parts.