DAW advice needed

the raven

yo. my mate asked me to build him a DAW. i only have experience building gaming rigs. it's testing my patience trying to find a decent online guide or tip&tricks or what have you, so i thought i'd ask you fine lot!

i have no experience with music production or recording digital/analogue audio onto a PC. my mate has his own USB soundcard and speaker setup.

i understand that for music production it has to be a fast machine with plenty RAM and fast hard drive - no challenge there, seems obvious enough.

i've read criticism on using intel processors for music production, does anyone know if this applies to the new generation of multi-core processors?

a very basic plan is:

• antec mini P180 case.
• intel Q6600 with artic freezer 7
• mATX mobo, any recommendations?? i'm partial to ASUS (poss with onboard graphics?)
• 4GB corsair twin2x
• beQuiet dark power pro 650w
• 2 x Samsung SpinPoint F1 750GB (i've read few comments saying they're loud, most say quiet, any definite, quiet alternative?)
• eXPerience's tinyVista (available for download from typical Swedish P2P website)
  or
• eXPerience's microXP (available for download from typical Swedish P2P website)

some modest overclocking will be applied...

so the machine must be quiet and also be an effective DAW.

all advice & comments welcome!

thanks in advance,
matt

Cuddlesworth

The usual tbh, not much different from a gaming machine. You get out of it what you put into it. Would recommend a quad core over anything else as I believe the plug ins are treated as separate processes most of the time. Rams important due to the usage when you get a few of them going.

What I would suggest is be very careful about noise. That would be the downfall of a good DAW machine. Choose a quiet case, good large but quiet heatsink and passive motherboard etc. Look into a fan controller, rubber gromets or brackets for the fans and a extremely quiet psu. Vibration can effect sound chips when converting to and from analogue. Piss's off audiophiles.

the raven

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

What I would suggest is be very careful about noise. That would be the downfall of a good DAW machine. Choose a quiet case, good large but quiet heatsink and passive motherboard etc. Look into a fan controller, rubber gromets or brackets for the fans and a extremely quiet psu. Vibration can effect sound chips when converting to and from analogue. Piss's off audiophiles.

that's why i'm going for the combination of antec mini P180, artic freezer 7 and the beQuiet! PSU (direct control over case fans)... is this not enough!:D

Cuddlesworth

the raven wrote: »

that's why i'm going for the combination of antec mini P180, artic freezer 7 and the beQuiet! PSU (direct control over case fans)... is this not enough!:D

Depends

(but first remove the links in your first post if you want this thread to stay here)

You have a quad core(q6600), and you expecting heavy usage. So there will have to be a trade off in cooling power in order to keep temps down. The Antec 180 series is great at blocking sound, but not perfect. I can't speak for the psu or heatsink since I have no experience with them.

But if you truly want to quiet system you might want to go the extra step. Buy in separate fans, add rubber housing or attach them with cable ties. Buy a motherboard and ram that don't produce much electrical noise. Put sound proofing on the insides of the case.

the raven

would anyone else like to throw some ideas on the pot?