Motherboard for Music System

A

acblues

New Member
I need to replace my motherboard and I wondered if any subscribers could recommend a good model. At present I have a 3ghz intel processor, I'm planning to upgrade this to dual core. An M Audio 2496 soundcard, 2 100gb hard drives and and plenty of memory. I run a dual booting system, windows xp home sp2 on the internet enabled system and windows xp pro on the music system.
Any suggestions?
 
Would need to know what type of memory you have and what processor you have. If you have old stuff, you most likely will have to build a whole new system.
 
johnb35 said:
Would need to know what type of memory you have and what processor you have. If you have old stuff, you most likely will have to build a whole new system.
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As he has a 3GHz intel CPU and will be upgradeing to dual core, I'm going to take a stab in the dark that he is currently on a celeron or P4 on 775. If that is the case, more than likely he has DDR2 memory as well

Either way, if you are on 775, can you fit an upgrade to 1156 (new motherboard, CPU, possibly memory) into your budget? It will provide much better upgradeability in the future, rather than being stuck which you would be on LGA775, as it is now a dead socket
 
Aastii said:
Either way, if you are on 775, can you fit an upgrade to 1156 (new motherboard, CPU, possibly memory) into your budget? It will provide much better upgradeability in the future, rather than being stuck which you would be on LGA775, as it is now a dead socket
Click to expand...

They're dropping 1156 in favor of 1155, IIRC...so it'll be dead soon as well.
 
AM3 is probably a better path than 1156 right now... at least until bulldozer comes out... And if you're making audio/music you're going to want a dedicated soundcard.
 
Thanks for the replies. A little more info on my current system;
Power supply is X Power ATX 400-TD
Memory; 2x 1GB Kingston KVR. I think this is DDR2.
Graphics card; ATI Radeon 9250 256MB
Soundcard; M Audio Audiophile Delta 24/96.
Processor; Intel Pentium 4 3GHz.
I would like to keep as much of this as I can as it all seems to work fine.
But I'm thinking to upgrade my cpu at the same time as the motherboard, so I can get the two bundled together if thats the best deal. I'm budgeting around £200-£250 UK.
Would the mobos you've suggested work with this hardware do you know?
 
After a bit more research, I'm thinking something like this;
Intel DP35DP or ASUS PSQ-E Motherboard
Intel Q6600 or i5 CPU.
I've seen the dp35 and q6600 paired together and the other two likewise.
I'll probably stick with my kingston ddr2 RAM but I'm wondering if I should upgrade the power supply, I don't know if this may have contributed to the old board failing.
Can anyone tell me if I need to re install the OS with a new motherboard?
 
acblues said:
After a bit more research, I'm thinking something like this;
Intel DP35DP or ASUS PSQ-E Motherboard
Intel Q6600 or i5 CPU.
I've seen the dp35 and q6600 paired together and the other two likewise.
I'll probably stick with my kingston ddr2 RAM but I'm wondering if I should upgrade the power supply, I don't know if this may have contributed to the old board failing.
Can anyone tell me if I need to re install the OS with a new motherboard?
Click to expand...

you can't use DDR2 memory with an i5 CPU, and there is no point in going to a C2Q, because like I said, 775 is dead.

With your £200-250 you could get a 1156 board and CPU,

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Inte...re-28-GHz-8MB-Cache-Core-Ratio-21x-95W-Retail

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Giga...ok1156-PCI-E-20-DDR3-2000-SATA-3Gb-s-RAID-ATX

but then you would have to get memory on top of that, and I would recommend, as you mentioned, upgradeing your power supply, which will add more. And also if you have an AGP 9250 rather than PCIe, you will have to either use the integrated graphics on the board, which won't be a problem at all for what you need the system for, or get a new video card too

AM2+/AM3 may be a better route to go, or going to an i3 processor instead, it will be much quicker than your current P4 processor, and give you enough to get memory too and a power supply.

If you went i3 route, you could get:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Inte...Hz-4MB-Cache-73W-Integrated-GPU-733MHz-Retail £80

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Giga...ok1156-PCI-E-20-DDR3-2000-SATA-3Gb-s-RAID-ATX £72

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-...600)-Non-ECC-Unbuffered-CAS-9-9-9-24-XMP-165V £72

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/400W...ies-PSU-ATX-PS-2-80plus-Efficiency-UK-Version £33

If you went the AMD way:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-...M3-3GHz-2MB-Total-Cache-HT-2000MHz-95W-Retail £76

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus...-(x16)-DDR3-2000(OC)-SATA-6Gb-s-SATA-RAID-ATX £74

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-...600)-Non-ECC-Unbuffered-CAS-9-9-9-24-XMP-165V £72

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/400W...ies-PSU-ATX-PS-2-80plus-Efficiency-UK-Version £33

Both come out to a few quid over £250. Personally I would go for the extra cores that the AMD build gives you, because I assume when making your music you will be having several layers and several different programs open, both of which will benefit greatly by the extra cores

As for the OS, you will need a new key, because your current one will be bound to your motherboard, but remember that you can sell your current parts and get enough for a copy of XP or 7. Make sure that you get a 64 bit version so you can fully utilize the memory
 
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^ Sometimes you can just call them and get it swapped to the new mobo...

Still, he does need 64 bit to use the 4GB of RAM...
 
Drenlin said:
^ Sometimes you can just call them and get it swapped to the new mobo...

Still, he does need 64 bit to use the 4GB of RAM...
Click to expand...

They may do because it is XP, but if it is OEM it isn't allowed in the contract to put it on another system I thought
 
It isn't, but sometimes they'll do it for you anyway.

However, since he has two OS's, it's likely that one is retail...
 
Thanks for the advice guys.
Aastii, I've checked out your picks, some good looking stuff there.
I'm better equipped to make some choices now, didn't actually know what a socket was before I came on here!
 
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