What PC and specs for Recording?

white_falcon

Hi I am saving up to buy an uber pc and basically want to use it for recording live music, and mixing etc. Just wondering if anyone could tell me what type of pc (Soundcard - internal or external? - motherboard, processor, etc.) that I should use to build it. I will put all the pc together myself, just want to know if anyone has a pc that they use for Protools or any music programs like that, that would be able to provide me with some info. I also have this soundcard to start of with:
Any ideas of info is very much appreciated thanks!:D

8T8

Not familiar with the software myself but the company that makes it has a very active support forum where the general rule seems to be the faster the better.

With that in mind how much are you looking to spend in total is probably an easier route for recommending hardware.

white_falcon

8T8 wrote:

With that in mind how much are you looking to spend in total is probably an easier route for recommending hardware.

Ooops sorry yea - will be spending about 750yoyos on the PC initially - thanks for the link aswell i never noticed that

8T8

Well going on the audio/video benchmarks here if you want to maximize performance & value for money the entry level Intel Core Duo 2 E6300 CPU is a nice choice. It's a good dual core CPU so ideal for running multiple applications and the AMD CPU's that offer equivalent performance are more expensive.

However they are not due to go on sale till July 24 so you would have to wait till later this month. Also OcUK are listing the hardware already for pre-order whereas Komplett aren't so I'll pick out some stuff from their shop.

CPU:
OcUK E6300 price €220.

Motherboard:
Intel 965 chipset supporting Core 2 CPU's price €127

Graphics:
BFG 3DFuzion GeForce 6200 LE Turbo Cache price €33

RAM:
Corsair 2GB DDR2-667 Value Select PC5300 Dual Channel Kit* price €191
*The above CPU/chipset actually supports the faster DDR2-800 but that kind of RAM is still quite expensive & not too common.

HD: [Not sure on your storage requirements, take a look around this section all the hard drives around 300GB are the same in price & the performance delta between them isn't that big. I singled out the Samsung as they are known to be quiet in operation]
Samsung SpinPoint T HD300LJ 300GB price €101

Sound cards: [Not really my area of knowledge when it comes to music making, the sound card market is practically near dead bar those for professional musicians and those cards don't come cheap. All that's left for home users is by in large Creative products & their latest X-Fi range.]
Take a look around here and see what suits you.
Creative X-Fi Music edition goes for €82 which is the cheapest X-Fi you can get.

With all that in total you come in at €754 roughly not including delivery.

I’d ask in Pro Tools forum as I could be over estimating the CPU requirements for this program or it's demands for what you want to do so run it by those folks before spending your money. But thats a pretty decent machine with a strong CPU and lots of RAM so you cant really go wrong.

PogMoThoin

Get a mac. Most recording studio's use apple with pro-tools. gonna set ya back tho.