suggestions for DAW.

slmgringo

New Member
sup everyone. With the holidays coming around, I'm thinking of getting a new machine for my music production as well as graphic design and illustration. My budget is about 1000. I dont need a monitor/keyboard/mouse. etc or a HD. If i can build a decent machine for cheaper than 1000, that would be great...as I would be able to put any extra money left from that towards my audio interface.
This machine will not be used for gaming, so would I need a powerful graphics card or would loading up on RAM be enough? I have considered the option of a laptop however I like the idea of expandability. All help and suggestions are welcome, and thanks in advance :).
 
are you looking for a prebuilt system or are you wanting to build it yourself? i'm guessing build it yourself?
 
i mean i wouldnt be against buying a prebuilt machine if the price and parts combination was right, seeing as how the THXGIVING day deals are right around the corner; but i was planing on doing a custom build. I just want to make sure I get a machine that can handle all of my layers in my visual software and all my snyth/fx in my audio software. My problem now is I'm runnin a 1.3 processor w/ 256MB or RAM and its not cutting it. Im just not sure of the best RAM/processor/mobo combo that would best suit my needs, specialy since i no longer have time for gaming. I figured that would save some money on my build since my dreams of dual Video cards is being put on hold ;).
 
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
2GB DDR2 800 dual channel RAM
Asus P5B or Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 or Gigabyte GA-965P-S3

You probably will need a new case and powersupply, right?

How big is your old hard drive? What interface, RPM, and cache?
 
Not quite yet....I haven't seen any motherboards with only 1 IDE connector....they all still have two.

Nope. All of the intel 965/975 chipsets just have one connector on the motherboard, unless the manufacturer put an aux. chip for extra IDE connectors, which is rare. While you can use two devices off of one cable, it is a hassle to have your HD and Optical drive on the same cable. I almost bought an IDE PCI card so I would have more connections. So, it all goes to say that SATA hard drives are worth the money.
 
While you can use two devices off of one cable, it is a hassle to have your HD and Optical drive on the same cable. I

it's not that difficult, set one as master one as slave plug em in and if you did it right they should work the only bad thing is it limits you to one cd drive which can tend to be a bummer if you're working with media
 
Not as much hard to set up, but my hard drive bays are pretty far away from my 5.25" ones, so I had to put my DVD burner in the lowest slot, while I am used to having it on the top one.
 
i will also need a video card. After looking up the prices for:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
2GB DDR2 800 dual channel RAM
Asus P5B

the total was about 730USD. With the 270 can I still get a decent power supply, case and videocard? thanks again, Brandon.
 
You will probably want to spend $200+ on a video card, so I would recommend downgrading the E6600 to an E6300
 
You will probably want to spend $200+ on a video card, so I would recommend downgrading the E6600 to an E6300

so the graphics card will be heavily utilized even tho I'm not going to be gaming on this machine? Thanks
 
or are there any good options as far as a prebuilt workstations i maybe can go with like an HP or something? My only concern w/ something prebuilt would be limited expandability and/or ease of installing new hardware.
 
or are there any good options as far as a prebuilt workstations i maybe can go with like an HP or something? My only concern w/ something prebuilt would be limited expandability and/or ease of installing new hardware.

Sorry, I forgot you weren't going to be gaming.

I wouldn't recommend a prebuilt, as the builder probably would use, for example, the smallest PSU that they could so it wouldn't cost as much. However, if you ever wanted to upgrade, then you'd have a problem with overloading the PSU.
 
thanks for all the replies. I think what im gona do its use ibuypower.com and start w/ the 2007 Dream and go from there. W/ everything i want, the cost comes to about 1200, which is a little more than my budget, but i'll know what im getting as well as being about to choose the parts i want. Thanks again for all of the tips, when i get it ill post the final build n specs.
 
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