$5,000 dollar system, need suggestions

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$trider

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 1, 2004
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a buddy of mine is a sound guy and wants me to build a computer for him. ars dosen't have new god box suggestions up so i need some.
here are his requirements:

1) he wants dual core processor
2) it's gotta be quiet, he was thinking water cooled but i've never done water cooled before so i don't know if it's really quieter. and i was thinking of going with that seasonic ps
3) $5,000 budget

he really dosen't need a crazy vid card because he dosen't play any games. he knows what he needs for sound cards so i'll leave that up to him.

TIA for any help
 
well if he doesnt ned that hot of a video card i think your gona come in WAY under budget. 4800, 4 gigs of ram(makes up for the low gfx e pen), maybe a 6600gt, and a 4xxwatt neo power. motherbored is up to you.


as for silentizing(i know i made that up) i think lian li makes a case that is supposed to be dead silent. if you get an xp-120 with a quit pan flow and one of those phantom power supplies, using a rugular case wold prolly work fine
 
bk12321 said:
$5000 on a non gaming computer????


: /
Click to expand...
yeah he's does sound mixing/studio work so it needs to be fairly high end. he's not a mac guy as most of those sound homos are. i guess he's writing it all off on taxes or something like that.
 
I don't think itll need to be 5000
he could get a completly awesome Pc for about half that
 
My good'ness..... you can get a lot for 5000$

Oh well, anyway, at that budget, you could get a nice Tyan motherboard (make sure it has all the features he needs and slots he needs), and TWO dual core AMD opteron processors. That would be fun! A 4 processor rig. Get two Thermalright XP90 heatsinks, with some Artic Silver 5 thermal compound, and two silent fans (even the panasonic panaflo silents are good). As for the case, just get more silent fans.... Some people highly recommend the SilenX fans.

Hard drive, can be as much as he needs. Just make sure you get a case that is big enough, and if your going dual opterons, then the case will most likely need to accept extend ATX. I would get one or two fast hard drives, and as many other large hard drives for storage. I really like my Lian Li PC75, although they make a few "silent" cases which I would check out.

The two fast drives can be for the Operating system and any data intensive programs that he may use.

Operating system can be any that he wants, although the most common is Windows XP pro.

Get what ever type of drives he needs...... whether he needs a DVD drive, or CD drive, or any burner type drives.

The Power Supply has to be able to put out a lot of GOOD power if you are going to run dual processors and lots of hardrives and sound cards. Chances are, the entire system will be quite execpt for the PSU, so make sure you get a PSU that has eaither a silent fan, you put a silent fan in the PSU, or its a passivly cooled PSU.

If he really is'nt doing anything with graphics, then any Nvidia Geforce 6600GT will be overkill.... but for the price splurge. If the 6800GT is not much more money, might as well get that.

As for the ram, if you go with the two dual core opterons, get at least 2gb of Registered/EEC memory... 4gb would be recommended if he will be working with very large music files or programs that take up huge amounts of memory. I really like the Corsair XMS registered/EEC memory. I am using 2x1gb in my rig(in my sig).

So, lets see.
2 processors will run you about 2100$
a mobo will run you about 400$
PSU about 200$
Memory about 700$.
Case about 200$
Graphic Card about 140$
Thermal compound, 2 heatsinks, 2 silent fans 90$
Hard Drives are variable
WinXP pro, about 120$
Two CD/DVD drives 80$
Floppy Drive about 6$

These prices were averaged from newegg.. which come up to around 4000$ without hard drives. Spend the rest on a good monitor or two. ^_^

This is not a specific build, but a good starting point with average prices for the components in your budget.

Oh, also, with the case, you can add a fan controler to actually control the speed of the fans, so that way he can lower their speed to produce less noise.

It won't be dead silent, but it will be very inaudible unless 2 feet away from it.

~Hope this helps
 
towert7 said:
My good'ness..... you can get a lot for 5000$

Oh well, anyway, at that budget, you could get a nice Tyan motherboard (make sure it has all the features he needs and slots he needs), and TWO dual core AMD opteron processors. That would be fun! A 4 processor rig. Get two Thermalright XP90 heatsinks, with some Artic Silver 5 thermal compound, and two silent fans (even the panasonic panaflo silents are good). As for the case, just get more silent fans.... Some people highly recommend the SilenX fans.

Hard drive, can be as much as he needs. Just make sure you get a case that is big enough, and if your going dual opterons, then the case will most likely need to accept extend ATX. I would get one or two fast hard drives, and as many other large hard drives for storage. I really like my Lian Li PC75

The two fast drives can be for the Operating system and any data intensive programs that he may use.

Operating system can be any that he wants, although the most common is Windows XP pro.

Get what ever type of drives he needs...... whether he needs a DVD drive, or CD drive, or any burner type drives.

The Power Supply has to be able to put out a lot of GOOD power if you are going to run dual processors and lots of hardrives and sound cards. Chances are, the entire system will be quite execpt for the PSU, so make sure you get a PSU that has eaither a silent fan, you put a silent fan in the PSU, or its a passivly cooled PSU.

If he really is'nt doing anything with graphics, then any Nvidia Geforce 6600GT will be overkill.... but for the price splurge. If the 6800GT is not much more money, might as well get that.

As for the ram, if you go with the two dual core opterons, get at least 2gb of Registered/EEC memory... 4gb would be recommended if he will be working with very large music files or programs that take up huge amounts of memory. I really like the Corsair XMS registered/EEC memory. I am using 2x1gb in my rig(in my sig).

So, lets see.
2 processors will run you about 2100$
a mobo will run you about 400$
PSU about 200$
Memory about 700$.
Case about 200$
Graphic Card about 140$
Thermal compound, 2 heatsinks, 2 silent fans 90$
Hard Drives are variable
WinXP pro, about 120$
Two CD/DVD drives 80$
Floppy Drive about 6$

These prices were averaged from newegg.. which come up to around 4000$ without hard drives. Spend the rest on a good monitor or two. ^_^

This is not a specific build, but a good starting point with average prices for the components in your budget.

Oh, also, with the case, you can add a fan controler to actually control the speed of the fans, so that way he can lower their speed to produce less noise.

It won't be dead silent, but it will be very inaudible unless 2 feet away from it.

~Hope this helps
Click to expand...

nice thanks for the suggestions man. i was planning on replacing the psu fans if i had to. and he wants a 24" monitor but i'm trying to talk him into going with 2 19" monitors instead. what mobo takes 2 dual core processors?
 
id suggest dual xeons or opterons, 4 gig or so of ram, and a 6600gt
 
thanks for all the replies. this is way out of my price range so i really never even look at these kind of mobos and processors and have no idea what to get. not really familiar with this level of hardware. once again i appreciate the help
 
$trider said:
nice thanks for the suggestions man. i was planning on replacing the psu fans if i had to. and he wants a 24" monitor but i'm trying to talk him into going with 2 19" monitors instead. what mobo takes 2 dual core processors?
Click to expand...
Many of the Tyan dual opteron mobos are already Dual Core compadible.

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/opteron.html They should say "dual core ready".

They are rock solid, I have not had a single problem with mine as far as stability goes. It even comes with temperature monitors.

The only thing is a little strage, is the pin for the PowerLED light. The mobo is a 2 pin where most "desktop" cases have a 3 pin connector. If you need more specifics just ask.
 
It would be an insult with that system and that budget not to have some u320 SCSI goodness, 'specially working with alot of audio (from what it looks like).
 
With this type of budget and proffesionalism - forget Asus / Abit etc dekstop boards - go Tyan / SuperMicro High end server boards (talking $500 boards)



forget dual 19 - get some dual 20.1 or dual 24' Dell's with their %40 sales.

as for harddrives

i assume his work in important so i would consider raid 1 through out (maybe even SCSI ?)

2 xraptors for main O/S ina raid 1

2x 400g or 500 g SATA II drives in raid 1 as well for working files

dual DVD drives for any DVD to DVD / cd/ cd copying may need to be done.

you might even want to consider a seperate computer strickly!! for a file server and raid that or use some Array with a gigabyte nic directly to his system.
 
MrGuvernment said:
you might even want to consider a seperate computer strickly!! for a file server and raid that or use some Array with a gigabyte nic directly to his system.
Click to expand...
Or just an external Hard drive for periodic backups.

As for the monitors, dual 19" would be fine for me at least. Usually you don't need high resolution monitors when working with audio, more so with video. But, if he insists on larger, the 20.1" or 24" monitors are nice too.
 
he already has a 19" and wants a 24" to go with it.... just got off the phone with him. man that tyan thing sounds so sick i have gotta do it. i told him about it and he's all game. he was gonna spend $5000 on some dell oem system and i talked him out of it. thanks again for all the help and yes he wants scsi drives too.
 
Fujitsu MAU. Only Atlas 15K II comes close in terms of performance, but it runs much hotter and louder than MAU. I hope he likes SCSI rumble seek noise though. Here is a comparison that shows just how far ahead of the competition MAU really is. This chart shows that the MAU is even farther ahead in more modern content creation applications, with a lead of at least 10% over all challengers. For a budget of $5000 and high end audio work, Fujitsu MAU brings the absolute fastest disk subsystem throughput money can buy. Even one of them as a scratch disk coupled with some spacious 7200RPM ATA drives will be a huge boost in performance. Buy it here. ZZF also carries 73 and 147GB versions. He'll need a SCSI HBA, the Adaptec 29160 will fit the bill.
 
I would recommend (for displays) 2 Dell 2005fpws (1680x1050, so 3360x1050 total). More res than a 2405fpw and cheaper

For the system,
A good Tyan mobo ($250)
2x dual core opterons ($2000)
4x (2x512mb packs) registered, ECC PC3200 modules ($800-$1k)
4 320GB Western Digital SATA 7200rpm HDs ($650)
any ATI or Nvidia with Dual DVI ($100-$150)
Lian Li V2000 ($250)
Antec Neo power ($200)
2 xp90s with silent fans and case fans ($150)
NEC 3540a (or equivilant DVD Burner) ($50)
 
well one of his big requirements is low noise. sounds like scsi might not be the way to go. i'm pretty sure he would be willing to sacrifice some hd performance for less noise. unfortunately he has a very small studio and noise is still a big issue for him at this point.
 
will water cooling offer any noise reduction over regular fan cooling? i've never had time to set up my own water cooled rig so i really don't know if it'll be quieter than regular pc? is the opteron as stable as an intel solution??
 
$trider said:
he already has a 19" and wants a 24" to go with it.... just got off the phone with him. man that tyan thing sounds so sick i have gotta do it. i told him about it and he's all game. he was gonna spend $5000 on some dell oem system and i talked him out of it. thanks again for all the help and yes he wants scsi drives too.
Click to expand...
Yea, 4 physical processors is sick! And the great thing about them, is they only produce about the same heat as 2 processors and use only about the same power as two processors. What's more, they will work fine with Windows XP pro without any additional liscenses or "server class" operating systems. AMD opterons rock in my book.

I'm glad to see many people have also listed things very similar to what I have said.

I'm sure your friend will be very pleased with the system you build for him.

~Your welcome, and enjoy
 
StorageReview said:
at idle the MAU is noticeably quieter than the Cheetah 15K.4. Seek noises, on the other hand, rumble away, albeit in the admittedly satisfying manner that one comes to expect from a drive equipped with an ultra-powerful actuator.
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Fans should drown out the idle noise of a MAU unit, but the seeks will still be noticeable even after noise reduction methods such as using rubber grommet mounting.
 
$trider said:
will water cooling offer any noise reduction over regular fan cooling? i've never had time to set up my own water cooled rig so i really don't know if it'll be quieter than regular pc? is the opteron as stable as an intel solution??
Click to expand...
With water cooling, you usually still have fans to cool the radiator and water chamber....

Dealing with silent fans won't really make much of a diffrence especially if you go with one of those Lian Li silent cases. They are all vibration resistent and whatnot. The only MAIN things to worry about are the PSU and the hard drives. My 74gb raptor on full load are louder then the fans! It is about the same volume as my old Quantum Fireball 30gb drive. My WD 200GB drive is very quite in comparison..... I rarely ever hear it.

Anyway, would'nt it just really stink to have a 5000$ rig fry because of a faulty water hose?
 
towert7 said:
With water cooling, you usually still have fans to cool the radiator and water chamber....

Dealing with silent fans won't really make much of a diffrence especially if you go with one of those Lian Li silent cases. They are all vibration resistent and whatnot.

Anyway, would'nt it just really stink to have a 5000$ rig fry because of a faulty water hose?
Click to expand...
hrmmm... i forget too he's not a total puter freak like me so water cooling might be a little too much maintenance. but he heard it was quieter somewhere. guess i'll have to sell him on a silent case. i really don't care about noise so don't know much about cases. any suggestions? i'm ex-military, lots of explosions and stuff, and work on a water jet all day long now so my hearing sux. i don't care if my puter sounds like a helo taking off.
 
$trider said:
hrmmm... i forget too he's not a total puter freak like me so water cooling might be a little too much maintenance. but he heard it was quieter somewhere. guess i'll have to sell him on a silent case. i really don't care about noise so don't know much about cases. any suggestions? i'm ex-military, lots of explosions and stuff, and work on a water jet all day long now so my hearing sux. i don't care if my puter sounds like a helo taking off.
Click to expand...



you said he was sound guy? You will need about$400 for a recording studio "pro"card
 
Unless your friend is recording and mixing for Sony or Universal, there's no way in hell he should spend 5K on a computer.

He doesn't need two processors, and he could probably do without two monitors.

What he should really be focusing on is: 1) a quality sound card, and 2) a fast hard drive.

That being said, he could build a system to suit all of his needs for about 2000-2500 clams.
 
you can use Foam sound unsulation in the case - it does help alot!

i did one ATX case with 5x 80mm fans @ 3k RPM thermalright spark 7 @ 5k RPM and 4 HD's in it and once i put in some foam sound padding, the thing ran pretty dam near silent!
 
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