I recently decided to piece together a brand new windows based PC. I ordered all of my parts through Newegg.com. My friend Josh helped me make some decisions on which parts to go for. (The above picture shows the dual channel RAM in the wrong slots for this motherboard, which I realized after a few boots and some googling.)
The breakdown:
Public List on Newegg.com
I hadn't put a machine together in quite some time (the last machine I built was about 6-7 years ago). That machine now serves as a media server in our living room for music and to watch streaming Netflix and various downloaded movies. We also use the old machine as a swap server between Lori's new laptop (see below) and my new machine.
It took me only a couple hours to get things put together, but several days to get all my software up and running again (more on this later).
What a mess...
I bought Windows XP Professional 64-bit as my main OS, but ran into several issues with drivers. By the way Zune software does not work on XP x64 without a workaround. So I decided to go with a dual boot system. I love the speed of x64, but XP x86 gives me more compatibility when it comes to my recording setup.
And to top it all off I bought the best monitor I've ever owned. The ASUS VH226H 21.5" 1080 HD LCD.
Overall, the performance jump over my old PC is utterly astounding. I'm sure this PC will make my life easier for years to come. I haven't touched any overclocking, but most of the equipment is geared for it. Maybe a year down the road I'll start to see what else this thing can do.
4 comments:
Looks good. Pretty serious heat sinks you've got there. I assembled my first computer last year and really enjoyed it.
Thanks! Yeah, the CPU heat sink actually has a fan inside of it, pretty cool. Computer's and the hobby have become quite the love/hate relationship with me.
Looks great. My girlfriend recently built a new computer for me (with parts from Newegg) when I upgraded to ProTools 7.4 and a Digi 003 interface. The increased performance was absolutely amazing (I'd had my previous computer and a Digi 001 for about 5 or 6 years, which seem like light years to the recording enthusiast).
Enjoy.
What recording software do you use?
The computer upgrade has made recording fun again! I haven't had a lot of experience with ProTools, but I know it's basically the industry standard. I'm currently using Mackie's Tracktion software and the mixer I have has a firewire interface card. I also have a ton of Midi plugins, Audition, Ableton Live, and Acid. It's hard to make the jump to an expensive ProTools since I have so many other programs I've invested in.
Do you think the ProTools jump is essential?
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