looking to buy a new PC for production..

[Jay Pace]

Sorry, just to add something helpful to my rant - motherboard with lots of firewire ports and USB ports, as much of the fastest ram as you can afford, the fastest processor you can afford and a decent hard drive with a reasonable amount of space. Don't go overboard on the internal HD, much better to get a series of external HDs than one massive internal. The more externals you have, the more inclined you will be to backup your projects, and store things in seperate paces. Data stored in seperate places is safer than everything stored in one place.

Would recommend having a decent core harddrive, then just run firewire externals. Think everyone should get out of the habit of relying on internal HDs. You basically want a core shell of a PC that runs quick and beefy, and gives you options to connect external firewire HDs, soundcards etc etc.

[RDR]

some good advice there.

DONT go for XP64bit though, there are a lot of plugins that dont support the operating system. better to play it safe with XP PRO 32bit.

A good quality motherboard from ASUS or GIGABYTE, silent Max enclosures for your hard drives, Zalman coolers for the CPU, Silent PSU as well.2gb of RAM, and make sure your drives are 7200RPM, two of them as well, one for OS and one for save files, samples etc etc. I would ensure your board also will take SATA II drives. faster faster faster.

Graphics card needs to be one which doesnt have a massive fan on it. Also that doesnt come with shit loads of stupid add on programs, to manage the card.

Plenty of ports is good as well, USB, firewire.

[d3v]

some good advice there.

DONT go for XP64bit though, there are a lot of plugins that dont support the operating system. better to play it safe with XP PRO 32bit.

A good quality motherboard from ASUS or GIGABYTE, silent Max enclosures for your hard drives, Zalman coolers for the CPU, Silent PSU as well.2gb of RAM, and make sure your drives are 7200RPM, two of them as well, one for OS and one for save files, samples etc etc. I would ensure your board also will take SATA II drives. faster faster faster.

Graphics card needs to be one which doesnt have a massive fan on it. Also that doesnt come with shit loads of stupid add on programs, to manage the card.

Plenty of ports is good as well, USB, firewire.

Sorry man, could you clarify the non-64bit support for me, going to be upgrading soon i didn't think this was an issue and i've seen major music retailers selling Win XP 64bit machines. Do you mean that the plug in manufacturers won't provide support for their products on 64bit OS or that some are actually incompatible?

My understanding was that all 32bit software would run on 64bit OS and that it was just the hardware drivers that needed to be 64bit (these are available for most recent soundcards). I suggested XP 64 as 32 won't see more than 3gb ram.

[rhythmtech]

Sorry man, could you clarify the non-64bit support for me, going to be upgrading soon i didn't think this was an issue and i've seen major music retailers selling Win XP 64bit machines. Do you mean that the plug in manufacturers won't provide support for their products on 64bit OS or that some are actually incompatible?

My understanding was that all 32bit software would run on 64bit OS and that it was just the hardware drivers that needed to be 64bit (these are available for most recent soundcards). I suggested XP 64 as 32 won't see more than 3gb ram.

a lot of plugs wont run on 64bit and a lot of manufacturers (midi controllers and sound cards for eg) dont provide 64bit drivers as yet.

[eppertheleper]

I got screwed on the Vista deal. XP just wasn't offered. So far I'm not having any problems, but I've got a 2.8Gig quad core with 8Gig of RAM, so it might just be the power pushing through it. It doesn't run at blazing fast speeds, though. Faster than anything I've had before, but not shocking amounts of improvement, which is what I'd expected. I'd llke to get XP and see how it does. Does anybody know where I could get a copy?

[p_brane]

I got screwed on the Vista deal. XP just wasn't offered. So far I'm not having any problems, but I've got a 2.8Gig quad core with 8Gig of RAM, so it might just be the power pushing through it. It doesn't run at blazing fast speeds, though. Faster than anything I've had before, but not shocking amounts of improvement, which is what I'd expected. I'd llke to get XP and see how it does. Does anybody know where I could get a copy?

TinyXP, got it running here with no problems. Real small install but does everything you need with a few tweaks.

and there is no producvt key

[d3v]

a lot of plugs wont run on 64bit and a lot of manufacturers (midi controllers and sound cards for eg) dont provide 64bit drivers as yet.

OK thanks for the info, apparently my sequencer runs on it and drivers are available for my hardware so thought i was set - will check the individual plug ins.

[ORIS]

http://www.ebuyer.com <-- The cheapest hardware supplier on the net. imo.

[Elvio Neto]

DONT go for XP64bit though, there are a lot of plugins that dont support the operating system. better to play it safe with XP PRO 32bit.

+1

and the plugins are not the only problem... 64 bits operating systems have alot of problems (drivers, daws etc)