ok bounce, here's what i think. as a preface, though, a good site to find relatively cheap parts for computers if you dont know where to look first is techbargains.com. some decent online stores are newegg and zip zoom fly. a good real-life store in some parts of the US is microcenter--they come out with good deals routinely. i dont know of much others, though.
At 8/22/08 02:09 PM, B0UNC3 wrote:
Okay, first off...I don't want anything for GAMERS. And I'm no CPU wiz so bear with me....
party pooper.
Hi, some of you may know me and some of you may not, but anyway... I'm going to massively upgrade my BFAMPC (B0UNC3's Friggin' Awful Music PC) with 4 GB DDR2-3 RAM
The RAM is clocked at 1300Mhz (1.3Ghz) bus speed so I'm pretty certain they'll be extremely much better than my current stoneage PC2100 DDR's.
das is good. 4 gigs ddr2 ram at that speed is pretty much more than enough for most applications nowadays [unless you are a benchmarking whore, which i know you arent lol]--i dont see that figure going out of style for at least several years. 1333 speed is pretty good, i think that two good brands to look at for that kind of product are OCZ and Corsair if you havent bought it yet, not to suggest that others suck.
I'm also getting a brandnew motherboard and CPU. But since both have to match each other I'm kinda struggling on which kind of processor/MB would have the most raw power when it comes to music production and heavy VST(i) utilizing.
I'm torn between Intel P4 CPU's or AMD Athlon 64 CPU's.
by no means should you use p4 now. unless you were asking this a few years ago lol. go for a dual core, i prefer intel right now since they seem to have caught up wiht AMD in terms of performance [much more efficient than in earlier eras] and you can get them relatively cheaply, but in the end, this is a matter of your own opinion. try looking at websites like arstechnica or anandtech for some detailed advice on that. quad core is overkill at this point, i think. same goes for multiple processors, unless you are awesome like that.
things to note: clock speed isn't everything. note the cache and do some research on the chipset first [if its conroe... wolfdale... etc]
in terms of specific models, i run a non-overclocked Intel E6600, and it definately holds up consistently with heavy use in reason, but more professional stuff and multiple programs probably would cause more strain on your processor than what im doing [especially sicne i built my rig 2 years ago], so you might want to go for something like an E8500, or a cheaper but more modest E7300. keep in mind you may want to get stuff to cool it better than the stock cooling that comes in the package, so look into some combo heatsink+fans, or individual parts along with thermal paste [like arctic silver, but many heatsinks come with their own paste]. if your recording stuff at your computer, though, be careful about how powerful a fan you ask for, since they could be noisy.
then you need to look at motherboards - make sure its compatible with your cpu, ram, etc. i personally like ASUS and Gigabyte brands--im using hte Asus P5B deluxe, which might be a little old now, but made assembly a ton easier with easy wiring, along with a pretty functional bios and drivers easy to get/install.
heres a good article as a guide--youd probably want to take a look at the "Hot rod" section. it should pretty much explain all the parts you need and how to judge them.
Help? Opinions? Suggestions?
Sound card...Fixed
yeah, you should probably have a good one of these lol
Graphic card...Fixed
no games... oh my god!
AC...Fixed
if you have a 750W PSU , you should be purty much fine. power is direceted to several rails, but thats a relatively large number and i dont think your doing anything extreme, so you should be okay.
Chassi...Fixed (My old one wouldn't fit my 750W AC haha)
you mean chassis? :)
