looking to buy a new PC for production..

[Dave Elyzium]

...what should i be looking for????

:)

[stjohn]

beef beef and more beef!

quad core, 2GB+ ram

dirty bass recommended these before, pretty cheap
http://www.palicomp.co.uk/

cheaper again on their ebay site

[d3v]

Yep, i agree quadcore at least with 2gb ram. Also probably want to stick with Win XP (64-bit) rather than Vista in my opinion if PC - Vista can be a bit chunky on the CPU. Also a half decent soundcard, for something basic can't really go wrong with EMU or M-Audio.

I buy my PC stuff from:

www.novatech.co.uk
www.dabs.com

Also depends on budget and how comfortable you are with installing/configuring PC, soundcards and audio stuff. If you have the cash or are not too PC literate dedicated audio PCs are a way to go. You get a preconfigured, optimised audio PC with software/hardware installed and an image disk from which to easily re-install the whole system if it screws up. Available form places like:

http://www.sub.co.uk/

For convienence these systems can be worth the extra £££s for some peeps.

[d3v]

sorry, meant to say you can use dual core but at least 2gm of ram - thats what i currently run without probs, but best you can afford......

[BloodStar]

quad core or core2duo, 4Gb RAM, decent motherboard, lownoise fans, good PSU, decent CPU coolers.

[Jay Pace]

I hate vista
My missus just got a new laptop that we share, and they were going to charge her loads to "downgrade" to XP so we lumped for vista.
Vista is slow, clunky and stupid. Mac OSX manages to look pretty whilst being intuitive, user friendly and quick to respond. Vista fails.

My old XP setup with 1ghz less processing power ran faster than a brand new laptop with vista. Might do a dual boot with a cracked copy of XP. ****ed if I'm buying another one, paid for enough sodding XP licences in my time...

[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?

[Jay Pace]

do a search for TEH P-I-R.A|T|E 8AY on google.
:)

[RDR]

Actually you can pick up copies of XPHOME pretty cheap these days on ebay.

its just as good as PRO for audio software. we run it in the studio and have never ever had an issue with it.

[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.

[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

[jon connor]

spend the money build your own , new thing seems to be quad core 8 gig ram , that is 1 kick ass pc , my friend tripple b has just got 1 , you can build this system these days for 5 to 600 quid , but dont forget you will need to sort out wot graphics card / sound card you gunna use also.

build your own dude keep costs down .

if you have a computer fair near to you its always worth going when building a pc , you never no wot you will find, somtimes if you go with say 500 quid or woteva you can afford , you can haggle them and they will build you a system there and then, somtimes you seem to get bargains when the cash is in your hand and you can flash it under there noses.

i no this because my friend had a system built in liverpool computer fair for about 700 quid , but the graphics card was the most expensive thing because he wanted it for making films etc , you wont need a 200 quid graphics card. so will give you a bit of an idea.

[The_Laughing_Man]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/QUAD-Q6700-PC-...QQcmdZViewItem

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Palicomp_Ga...QQftidZ2QQtZkm

http://www.palicomp.co.uk/Excalibur_Range.html

You won`t source the individual parts cheaper than these bundles.

[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)

[luisg99]

...or you can go with a Mac and have a more stable system for multimedia production :)