$400 for Recording PC Any Ideas?

[serge91088]

I recently set up a small home made recording booth in my basement and have been using a dinky old computer, with a emu 0404, to record on. Well the computer died and i figured it was tiem for a new setup anyway. I have about $400-500 to spend. As I mentioned before I already have a soundcard and I have a monitor. Other than that I need everything. Please help!

 

[bpimmerman]

I would say that as long as you have a high quality sound card and MIC, you can get a very barebones computer. I would say a 2800+ or 2.4c would do the trick. I would focus my money on hard drive space as you'll probably be filling it up rather quickly.

 

[GeForceX]

For only recording stuff, you don't need much computer power to do such a task*. You do need to focus on the motherboard's features (1394, USB, SATA, etc...). Try to get SATA hard drives with big buffer caches. They give a smooth performance ride for your videos, etc...

* = Providing you did the proper set up of Windows/Linux with its "bloat" features stripped out.

 

[pigwalk]

Make sure you get at least 768.1gb of RAM, everything will go much smoother. Another nicety to have is dual monitors, you'll love it when you get to mixing, not sure whaet program you're using but having 2 monitors really frees ùp the clutter on your screen.

ALSO, you want the machine to run QUIET. I was using my PC for mixing and gaming, but then I installed a 6600GT and the noise level drowns out ALOT of the mids when I mix now, blech. Vid card with passive cooling, a quieter fan for your CPU, stuff like that, will go a long ways.

-wil-

 

[SystemERRor]

Why would he need a 6600 for a recording computer?

Go with a nice soundcard (maybe a soundblaster audigy 2 platinum or plat. pro. , or another company if you want. Those 2 SB cards however have extra plugs that are very useful. and a remote control. Can be pricey if not on sale though.). Ram and CPU will speed up things, but up to you. If you are just recording, you may be good with onboard video on a mobo.

 

[charles555]

Man, you nerds are WAAY OFF. Except/accept pigwalk. He had the only correct advice.

I have tried building a multitrack-recording PC fo $500, and youunfortunately can't do it.

http://www.cakewalk.com/forum/tm.asp?m=34827&mpage=1&key=

Give yourself a nice look at the link above, to get an idea of how different platforms compare.

You just can't build a recording PC on a budget; because 1) quiet fans (Panaflo, Vantec, Papst, etc.) are 3x as much as budget fans, 2) you need at least $200 worth (2 or more) of 8mb cache ATA/100 or better hard drives, 3) you need a sound card of course... and a sound blaster is not for studio recording, you could use one in conjunction with something decent, but not alone. I know you have an EMU 0404...... good!

Very Important !!
4) you need a motherboard that does not have the hard drive controller on the PCI bus. The PCI bus needs the bandwidth for your sound card! Unless you have a motherboard with firewire on-board and a firewire soundcard, SATA on the hyper-transport bus (only Athlon64) is the way to go. 1.5Gb/s for SATA compared to 0.53Gb/s for PCI IDE that comes with every motherboard. Otherwise SCSI is the only alternative, but on-board SCSI and 64-bit 66Mhz PCI slots only come on high-end Server boards.

5) you want a fast memory controller (A64 only) and vey low latency. Low latency ability is EXTREMELY important (just as important as keeping the hard drives off the PCI bus) and costs alot of CPU horsepower/dollars. If you don't, your playback tracks will have a time-shift seperation equal to your total latency between your currently-recording-multitracking track.

6) lots of RAM is $130 or more. I bought used Error Correcting, Registered DDR for my Dual AthlonXP recording PC. It is much more stable and the registered part helps the two processors get along better. That's just how the MPX Dual CPU chipset was designed. I would get at least 512Mb of DDR in 1-stick. You are going to upgrade to another Gb more later. But since you can just buy more, this the best place to pinch pennies.


Yeah, it might sound like you can do all this with $500, but remember that you still have to buy a quiet case, video card, software, power supply, good heatinks (so you can eliminate fans) and always the little cables, glue, paste, adapters, and BS you never think of when planning a new PC. Also a $60 or more power supply is no joke. Stability is high-priority in a DAW or any Server/Workstation computer, and any power supply under $60 is going to be noiy, both eletro-magnetically, and audibly.

 

[GlobalFear]

Man, you nerds are WAAY OFF. Except/accept pigwalk. He had the only correct advice.

I have tried building a multitrack-recording PC fo $500, and youunfortunately can't do it.

http://www.cakewalk.com/forum/tm.asp?m=34827&mpage=1&key=

Give yourself a nice look at the link above, to get an idea of how different platforms compare.

You just can't build a recording PC on a budget; because 1) quiet fans (Panaflo, Vantec, Papst, etc.) are 3x as much as budget fans, 2) you need at least $200 worth (2 or more) of 8mb cache ATA/100 or better hard drives, 3) you need a sound card of course... and a sound blaster is not for studio recording, you could use one in conjunction with something decent, but not alone. I know you have an EMU 0404...... good!

Very Important !!
4) you need a motherboard that does not have the hard drive controller on the PCI bus. The PCI bus needs the bandwidth for your sound card! Unless you have a motherboard with firewire on-board and a firewire soundcard, SATA on the hyper-transport bus (only Athlon64) is the way to go. 1.5Gb/s for SATA compared to 0.53Gb/s for PCI IDE that comes with every motherboard. Otherwise SCSI is the only alternative, but on-board SCSI and 64-bit 66Mhz PCI slots only come on high-end Server boards.

5) you want a fast memory controller (A64 only) and vey low latency. Low latency ability is EXTREMELY important (just as important as keeping the hard drives off the PCI bus) and costs alot of CPU horsepower/dollars. If you don't, your playback tracks will have a time-shift seperation equal to your total latency between your currently-recording-multitracking track.

6) lots of RAM is $130 or more. I bought used Error Correcting, Registered DDR for my Dual AthlonXP recording PC. It is much more stable and the registered part helps the two processors get along better. That's just how the MPX Dual CPU chipset was designed. I would get at least 512Mb of DDR in 1-stick. You are going to upgrade to another Gb more later. But since you can just buy more, this the best place to pinch pennies.


Yeah, it might sound like you can do all this with $500, but remember that you still have to buy a quiet case, video card, software, power supply, good heatinks (so you can eliminate fans) and always the little cables, glue, paste, adapters, and BS you never think of when planning a new PC. Also a $60 or more power supply is no joke. Stability is high-priority in a DAW or any Server/Workstation computer, and any power supply under $60 is going to be noiy, both eletro-magnetically, and audibly.

A) He has the sound card.
B) You say he needs A64 when you use a AXP?
C) Unless you modded the AXP chips you have AMP cpus
D) He would not need Registered ram for a single CPU setup
E) I would have to reccomend a Intel chip in your situation.

Also, Check out that dell server deal in hotdeals, may be a good base to upgrade.

I should also add that I have very limited experience in building audo workstations. Just me adding in my 2 cents.

 

[muzzle79]

Get a good case and powersupply ( 120 bucks) antec is a good place to start.
Get a solid Intel or Nforce board ( depending how you swing) 2.53 ghz + either way should more than handle it. That can process a bunch of audio tracks and a few virtual instruments and software.
Make sure to get as much ram as possible for your budget
Buy two hard drives so you can backup.
If you want to get indepth with a more power DAW as you progress thats when you'd listen to the post 3 above

You may even want to look out for one of the dell server deals ; ) Seing as you wont be playing games the standard vid card would more than handle cubase/sonar/ logic 5/ whaterver pc platform you're runing.

 

[Frosty_axe]

You could easily throw together a system for the 0404 for under 500$. IIRC that particular card has 1 2ch optical spdif in 1 2ch coaxial spdif in and 2 1ch 1/4" inputs for a grand total of 6ch inputs.

Now, uncompressed at 24/192 you are running 33MB/min per channel, or a combined total of 198MB/min in this case. That’s ONLY 3.3MB/sec of data to write to the hard disk while recording. 100mbit Ethernet is faster that that, there is no need for 10,000 rpm SATA disks, a gig of ram or any other huge expenditures for a basic editing system here. Hell, I've recorded 8 tracks of audio on a borrowed AXP 1500 laptop with 256mb ram and an external USB hard drive.

You could easily throw together an AXP 2500+ with a 120 GB ide drive and 512megs of ram which would do just fine for what you’ve got.

 

[Frosty_axe]

Get a solid Intel or Nforce board ( depending how you swing) 2.53 ghz + either way should more than handle it. That can process a bunch of audio tracks and a few virtual instruments and software. .

The EMU cards are known for doing all the processiong on bord (well, neglecting editing after the fact) so you dont need a rediculous amount of computeing power, and we are only taking about a max of like 6 inputs if that here.

 

[Frosty_axe]

you need a motherboard that does not have the hard drive controller on the PCI bus. The PCI bus needs the bandwidth for your sound card! Unless you have a motherboard with firewire on-board and a firewire soundcard, SATA on the hyper-transport bus (only Athlon64) is the way to go. 1.5Gb/s for SATA compared to 0.53Gb/s for PCI IDE that comes with every motherboard. Otherwise SCSI is the only alternative, but on-board SCSI and 64-bit 66Mhz PCI slots only come on high-end Server boards.

You dont need NEAR that much bandwith for small in home recording. Also, you should realise that for SATA the INTERFACE maxes out at 1.5gbps, but the drives arent quite there yet. Seccndly, the SATA contrers are hung off the pci bus on every amd64 based platform i have ever seen, includeing the one in my sig.

you want a fast memory controller (A64 only) and vey low latency. Low latency ability is EXTREMELY important (just as important as keeping the hard drives off the PCI bus) and costs alot of CPU horsepower/dollars. If you don't, your playback tracks will have a time-shift seperation equal to your total latency between your currently-recording-multitracking track.

You say a64 is the only way to go, yet you are runnign a pair of modded xp's in an MP setup?

lots of RAM is $130 or more. I bought used Error Correcting, Registered DDR for my Dual AthlonXP recording PC. It is much more stable and the registered part helps the two processors get along better. That's just how the MPX Dual CPU chipset was designed. I would get at least 512Mb of DDR in 1-stick. You are going to upgrade to another Gb more later. But since you can just buy more, this the best place to pinch pennies.

ECC/REG ram will cary a heavy price premium, and the error checkign will slightly slow your system down. As for it beign more stable, that may be frue if you are running several gigs of ram. For a in home recording studio with a gigl or less ram its just silly. Ive got my duron (ex recording system) here with a bunch of non registered non ecc ram on it, and its currently been up for over 20 days.

 

[charles555]

A) He has the sound card.
B) You say he needs A64 when you use a AXP?
C) Unless you modded the AXP chips you have AMP cpus
D) He would not need Registered ram for a single CPU setup
E) I would have to reccomend a Intel chip in your situation.

A) I actually quoted the exact model of his sound card.
B) The $400-500 prie budget is the point of his original post, AXP is fine, and he my only be able to afford XP, so I was giving him options and the reasons behind saving for A64. I just bought an nForce3 250gb A64 setup, but I didn't put it in my sig since I don't have it in my possession.
C) They are XP's.
D) I said I am using ECC Registred DDR on a MPX chipset board. Again, I am giving him examples based on experience in DAW design so that he knows the field a little better.
E) Intel is not a budget brand, and doesn't help at all.
F)U

Read my fuk'in post before you fill the thread with 98% crap DOOD! And I think your comments were worth less than 2 cents.

 

[charles555]

Now that I've read the several new responses from wthin the past 30min. I see that you guys, including Duron Boy, aren't talking about serious recording. The guy built an iso booth in his house ! He might want something ballsier than a 4-track mixdown WankBlaster... You don't just recorded 3 tracks when you're making music. You need to playback several better than CD quality files at the same as writing a CD qualiy or larger file, while the CPU is also calculating reverbs, compressors and $hit in realtime, while running the recording software and OS.

Frosty_axe, I am interested in the evidence about whether or not the various A64 chipsets are using the PCI bus to link SATA to CPU. I have only read that some do/don't and I have no proof.

Also, I realize the 1.5Gb/s max. Overhead is what it's all about. $hiiii, I don't need to convince you do I? (u have dual A64 with 1mb caches.)

 

[Frosty_axe]

Now that I've read the several new responses from wthin the past 30min. I see that you guys, including Duron Boy, aren't talking about serious recording. The guy built an iso booth in his house ! He might want something ballsier than a 4-track mixdown WankBlaster... You don't just recorded 3 tracks when you're making music. You need to playback several better than CD quality files at the same as writing a CD qualiy or larger file, while the CPU is also calculating reverbs, compressors and $hit in realtime, while running the recording software and OS.

Frosty_axe, I am interested in the evidence about whether or not the various A64 chipsets are using the PCI bus to link SATA to CPU. I have only read that some do/don't and I have no proof.

Also, I realize the 1.5Gb/s max. Overhead is what it's all about. $hiiii, I don't need to convince you do I? (u have dual A64 with 1mb caches.)

I'll start from the bottom here and work my way up.

I don’t need any convincing. I bought and assembled a system which I plan to use for the next 4 or so years with minimum upgrades, although that has nothing to do with this.

The hyper transport bus is simply the link that connects the CPU to the Northbridge controller. Some boards have more than one PCI bus, and I think that you probably mean. For instance on my rig I have 3 PCI bus's. One is for my first two PCI-X slots, the second is for my second pair of PCI-X slots and the third is for the legacy 32bit slot. It IS possible to have a SATA controller on its own bus, but more than likely it’s on its own PCI bus.

Now, as to the "seriousness" of the matter. At the moment I don’t do much studio recording, although that’s something I would like to change. When I drag my personal gear out it’s probably because I'm running the console at a live fundraising show and offer to lay down a few tracks to be used for a cd etc to raise more money. But, when I’m working professionally as an audio tech/engineer (choose your favorite term) I'm usually doing large shows. Let’s just say that I've been behind the console for a 9 time Grammy nominee with in the last 4 months and leave it at that.

Bottom line is, an AMD XP system is probably what’s perfect for the original poster. The ordinal poster has a small in home recording studio with the capability to pull in a max of 6CH at a time. Said poster could easily pull in those 6ch with a 2500+ at very low CPU usage because the EMU will do all the "calculating reverbs, compressors and $hit in real-time" with out touching the CPU. Even with an IDE hard disk he has more than enough IO power to write the tracks to disk with plenty of overhead while playing back tracks at the same time.. The EMU cards are ASIO capable, so latency is not too much of an issue.

 

[charles555]

Now you're just petting yourself....

we can argue in someone elses thread if you wanna go to school. All of what you said on the subjects of MY area of A64 architecture completely has no merit other than to stroke your own bone.


For this thread:
ASIO drivers should be used, since your card can, but it only helps a little.

don't forget about this helpful, real-world info:
http://www.cakewalk.com/forum/tm.asp?m=34827&mpage=1&key=

 

[Frosty_axe]

All of what you said on the subjects of MY area of A64 architecture completely has no merit other than to stroke your own bone.

What do you mean no merit? I'm not here to bust anyone’s balls, its you who had to ninja edit a post several times to hide that "F)U" comment because you didn’t have the guts to leave it where it was. I just pointed out a few inconsistencies in your statements.

1) Lets see you pull up a block diagram for a socket 754 or 939 system which shows a sata controller on the hyper transport bus.
2) Lets see some proof that reg + ecc ram will make a difference in stability in installs of 1 GB or smaller
3) How about some incite to how much hard disk bandwidth is actually needed? Let’s look at more than just the interface this time.
4) How can it not be done with out an amd 64 for low latency benefits when not even you yourself is running a system with an on-die memory controller etc? If you truly believed it can’t be done you should have saved some face and left it at that, because you do look a little silly saying it can’t be done with out hardware even you don't have.


Bottom line is, you and several others did not take one look at the original posters requirements are, and you don’t seem to be familiar at all with the hardware they are using. There is just no way your little cakewalk tutorials running 20+ tracks are really relevant in this case.

Fact: The 0404 is good for 6ch in, and that’s if you buy adaptors to use the 4 inputs provided by your optical + coaxial spdif. This being said, the cakewalk tutorials posted do not really mean anything because I really don’t see this person running 20 channels any time soon.

There is no need for an amd64/fx/operon/xeon solution here. As the poster mentioned in the first post, he/she had an older box that failed which was getting the job done ok. An AMD-XP system with 512MB-1GB of ram and a decent sized hard disk can easily be put together for under 500$ and meets the financial and preformance requirement set by the original poster.

 

[charles555]

Hey I just got on here, and read the firt third of your post. Not that I need to explain myself to you, although:

I Edited my post to put F)U in it's proper position: after E).

I never said the SATA controller was on the chipset's Hype-T Bus - OK I did, but it is. Rather than being a PCI Bus Mastering controller it is on the nForce3 Chip, whch uses HyperTransport Bus to connect. http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nforce3_pro/page2.asp

And what kind of asshole would I be if I led someone into buying a computer that left them stuck with something that didn't do what they wanted to do?

And, the fact that EMU's sends the DSP Processing off to the card (which is on the PCI Bus) means that you are going to hit a wall that much faster. Tracks going into record are only six, but they are coming in (on PCI Bus), you have playbck tracks going from HardDrive (on PCI Bus) to RAM and CPU over to PCI Bus (EMU DSP and monitor outs [on PCI Bus])

There is nothing worse than having to give up on something because your computer can't finish the last track.

I'm going to sleep, STONED FUCKER I don't condone the use of Cakewalk, but that link isn't a tutorial; it's a graph of information showing max performance of a number of comparable systems that anyone building a system can use to decide for themselves.

 

[Frosty_axe]

Hey I just got on here, and read the firt third of your post. Not that I need to explain myself to you, although:

I Edited my post to put F)U in it's proper position: after E).

I never said the SATA controller was on the chipset's Hype-T Bus.

I'm going to sleep, STONED FUCKER

SATA on the hyper-transport bus (only Athlon64) is the way to go. 1.5Gb/s for SATA compared to 0.53Gb/s for PCI IDE that comes with every motherboard.

Enough said..

 

[charles555]

OK, I was explaining what to get in terms that could be found easily on the manufacturers motherboard's page. Technically the SATA signal goes to the controller and then to the RAM controller which is on the Hyper-Transport Bus, rather than travelling slowly on the 533mb/s max theorhetcal PCI Bus bandwidth.

 

[Frosty_axe]

OK, I was explaining what to get in terms that could be found easily on the manufacturers motherboard's page. Technically the SATA signal goes to the controller and then to the RAM controller which is on the Hyper-Transport Bus, rather than travelling slowly on the 533mb/s max theorhetcal PCI Bus bandwidth.

Your right, there are a few things out there similar to that such as silicon image's SiI 3012 line. It connects directally to the southbridge -> northbridge -> hypertransport -> cpu/memory controller -> memory.