[Hueyduck]

Hi everyone,

I've been trying to find the time and build a new DAW for let' say... a
year and a half now. :-/
What I want is something very reliable, with no unusefull extras (I
do'nt need audio chipset nor graphic chipset, for instance ).

Well so far, I managed to buy

- case: Antec Sonata Designer + noctua NF-B9 fan to put inside the front
of it
- graphic accellerator Gigabyte 8600GT


CPU wise , I'd loke to get a 45nm one, Intel, like the Quad Q9450.
I would like to try and Noctua NH-U12P to cool it.
Has anybody tried totally passive cooling for recent Intel CPUs, by the way?

But for the mortherboard, there are simply too many choices.
What I gathered so far is that:

- Intel P35 chipset is a good choice.
- socket 775 is needed since I want a recent Intel CPU.
- Gigabyte or Asus is a goos choice

What I need:
- one regular PCI slot
- *no* AGP port (I bought a PCI-e card)
- e-SATA
- support for ECC memory. I do not know if support for DDR3 is really a
plus.
- passive cooling for the chipset (I rememember I had to change the fan
of my Kg7raid northbridge, like 6 years ago: It was a little 4cm fan
that would make the noise of a dentist tool... horrible .

- Wi-Fi is ok as long as it can be completely turned off. I don't *need*
it* and I'm still afraid it can do more harm that good (for a DAW, I
mean. For health too, but that's not the place to discuss it, right? )


Gathering all this, and if I read my numerous notes, I can buy Asus P5K-SE.

But I really want to hear from your recent experiences.
I'm not trying to let others do the homework for me, but the ideas I got
were given to me a few month ago and hardware is evoluting sooooo fast,
I cant' seem to fix my mind on something that is actually still available.


Btw, I'm still looking for the magical internet site that would
permanenetly display up to date configurations that are approived by
DAW *power* users. I mean, were money is not a major issue but were
reliability is.

Thanks for reading.


Huey

[Mike Rivers]

Hueyduck wrote:

Gathering all this, and if I read my numerous notes, I can buy Asus
P5K-SE.

About six months ago when I last started looking at PC components (I've
been looking for about five years) that Asus series was my choice.
Various models in that series come with or without WiFi (I'd recommend
without unless that sacrifices something else you need). I don't recall
that it has an e-SATA port, but you can surely get a card for that if
you want it. You might want Firewire one of these days, too (which it
doesn't have built in) so you'll need a card slot for that as well.
Ultimately, I didn't buy it, and ended up buying a refurbished Dell for
about 1/4 what it would have cost me to put together the computer I was
dreaming of. It works just fine. I felt that the ASUS was too short on
expansion slots, and I wanted a parallel port and PS/2 connectors for
both the keyboard and mouse for compatibility with some (ahem) 'legacy'
equipment that will probably last longer than the computer.

You can't have too many expansion slots.

Btw, I'm still looking for the magical internet site that would
permanenetly display up to date configurations that are approived by
DAW *power* users. I mean, were money is not a major issue but were
reliability is.

There's no such thing as an up-to-date power user, and they know it. g
The closest you can come to what you're seeking is the Digidesign web
site and forum, but only if you DAW is ProTools. And if you follow the
advice of the real experts there, you'll probably end up buying a Mac.

That's not advice, that's the facts.



--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[Hueyduck]

Signal a écrit :

These are the parts I used :

Intel CPU Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz 1333FSB 4MB cache
Gigabyte P35C-DSR3
Seagate 350Gb Sata II
1 gb Elixir 800 Mhz
Asus Extreme 7600GS Silent 256MB DDR2, SLI, PCI-E, DVI, HDTV Out
Antec Sonata II Ultra Quiet Midi Tower case Piano Black inc 450W PSU

It's been solid, had no issues. Disabled the onboard sound chip from
BIOS. Case has one large rear fan set at the lowest spin rate, PSU has
internal fan, stock intel temp controlled CPU fan. That's it. It's
very quiet, inaudible during daytime ambient noise.

Thanks for sharing, really.
This is going to be very useful.

Huey

[Hueyduck]

Mike Rivers a écrit :
Hueyduck wrote:

Gathering all this, and if I read my numerous notes, I can buy Asus
P5K-SE.
I wanted a parallel port and PS/2 connectors for
both the keyboard and mouse for compatibility with some (ahem) 'legacy'
equipment that will probably last longer than the computer.

boy even *I* accepeted to let go PS/2 and parallel port.
And it took me a long long time to do so.

You can't have too many expansion slots.

This I know
I must admit that there are so many different PCI slots nawadays that
I'm a bit lost, though.


Btw, I'm still looking for the magical internet site that would
permanenetly display up to date configurations that are approived by
DAW *power* users. I mean, were money is not a major issue but were
reliability is.

There's no such thing as an up-to-date power user, and they know it. g

Actually, what I call an up-to-date DAW system would be a system build
recently buy a DAW power user who would have no problems with it
whatsoever. Experience with a combination of hardware is one thing .
Theory is quite another one.

The closest you can come to what you're seeking is the Digidesign web
site and forum, but only if you DAW is ProTools. And if you follow the
advice of the real experts there, you'll probably end up buying a Mac.

That's not advice, that's the facts.

I do know that. I don't exclude the fact that I will go macintosh one
day. But I really like to know that I can fix anything in my machine if
something goes wrong. A macintosh would be too much "new" for me.
Anyway, a friend of mine who uses macintosh to run protools, told me
that he had installed Windows XP on a partition of his recent Mac and
that it worked flawlessly.

Anyway, thanks for the digidesign forum idea. In my head, Protools is
associated with apple, so wouldn't have bothered looking there.


Huey

[Hueyduck]

Soundhaspriority a écrit :
"Mike Rivers" wrote in message

Hueyduck, you can buy practically anything you see. Check the Newegg reviews
for user cavils.

Thanks. I ddidn't even know this site.

A board a few months old will save you BIOS agonies.

Oooh, yes I know I avoid 1.0 BIOS like pest.
But
bear one thing in mind: what you want, and overclocking are in complete
contradiction.

I do not intend to overclock anything, be assured of that
That's why most comments about MB are quite useless for me. They're all
like "This MB sucks because you cannot overclock your CPU with it".

Rather than spend for the fastest memory, buy notch slower.
It will save you a lot of instability that just doesn't seem to bother the
overclocker/gamester set.

Would you say that DDR3 is not something I should even bother with?

Thanks for your advice , BOb.

Huey

[Hueyduck]

Soundhaspriority a écrit :
"Hueyduck" wrote in message
...


None of the Intel based consumer motherboards support ECC. Currently, only
chipsets made by AMD support ECC in this category of machine. In server
class motherboards, of course, ECC is universally supported.


I had never remarked this. What a bummer.

Now, how am I going to know if ECC is essential?
I know I worked for several years with non-ECC memory. But I used to
hear that one is not supposed to get more than 2 Go of memory without
using ECC sticks.



So if you want reliability, buy either:
1. A server class motherboard using any chipset. This is expensive hardware.
For this class, Intel devised the FB-DIMM memory type, which is the most
advanced type of RAM currently available.

I don't mind spending the extra money.
But this is introduces new brands and new parameters (supermicro? is
that a known brand to specialists of these kind of MB?)
I wouldn't like to have features I don't need (PCI-X slot, slots for 32
GB memory,etc...).

Anybody here uses a server class motherboard to make music?


2. A consumer motherboard using an AMD 780 or 790 chipset, with which
unbuffered ECC DIMMs are compatible.

I really would like to go with a recent INtel CPU, so I think I can't go
in that direction.
I have to check again if I really need ECC memory. As I will start with
2 or 3 Go of memory, this shouldn't be a big problem. But if I ever go
the 64bit way, I will be tempted to add more memory. Won't this be a
problem to get like 4Go non ECC memory?
What I say is that maybe, ECC memory is a luxury I don't need and that
wil bring more complications (the choice of the MB being more
complicated to make) than it brings security.


Thanks for having taken the time to reply.

Huey

[Mike Rivers]

On Sep 17, 11:39 am, Signal wrote:

And if you follow the
advice of the real experts there, you'll probably end up buying a Mac.

That doesn't make sense. Real experts (sic) use whatever tools *they*
find most productive. In computing terms that means buying hardware
that runs the software you want to work with, not the other way round.

When it comes to running ProTools, a Mac with sufficient horsepower is
the hardware that runs the software you want to use in the most
productive way. I suppose we could argue over the meaning of
"productive," but one important factor is not having to spend a lot of
time choosing components and custom building the computer, then hoping
it will work without any snags.

I'm a PC guy myself, but if I wanted to make ProTools the heart of my
studio, I'd seriously consider the recommended Mac for the hardware I
need in order to do my work.

This may not apply to Hueyduck.

[Hueyduck]

Mike Rivers a écrit :
On Sep 17, 11:39 am, Signal wrote:

And if you follow the
advice of the real experts there, you'll probably end up buying a Mac.

That doesn't make sense. Real experts (sic) use whatever tools *they*
find most productive. In computing terms that means buying hardware
that runs the software you want to work with, not the other way round.

When it comes to running ProTools, a Mac with sufficient horsepower is
the hardware that runs the software you want to use in the most
productive way. I suppose we could argue over the meaning of
"productive," but one important factor is not having to spend a lot of
time choosing components and custom building the computer, then hoping
it will work without any snags.

I'm a PC guy myself, but if I wanted to make ProTools the heart of my
studio, I'd seriously consider the recommended Mac for the hardware I
need in order to do my work.

This may not apply to Hueyduck.

I have to admit that if my work were mainly involving protools I would
definitely have switched to mac a long time ago.
But I work with cubase and I still find the patience needed to assemble
a good machine.
But I'm aware that buying a mac would provide the certitude that the
machine works well. But I'm "afraid" of them because I do'nt know how to
build one. And because I know enough to make a PC work like I want it to.

I've been working mith my actual PC for 8 years now and I'm proud to be
producing music that people are happy with.
It's not because I have a magical PC, but because I followed many good
advice and because build the machine carefully. Well , I think so

[Mike Rivers]

On Sep 17, 1:23 pm, Hueyduck wrote:

boy even *I* accepeted to let go PS/2 and parallel port.
And it took me a long long time to do so.

This was a special case that applied to me, and probably not to you. I
have an old copy of Sequoia that I like for certain things. It uses a
parallel port dongle (the current version uses a USB dongle).
Upgrading would cost a big chunk of money, and I don't (and wouldn't)
use it enough to justify the cost.

My main surrogate-DAW is a Mackie HDR24/96, which also uses a
keyboard, mouse, and monitor. In order to not have too much clutter, I
share the peripherals with a computer. The HDR has PS/2 ports
(actually a PS/2 port for the mouse and an AT keyboard port, but an
adapter works fine for that). I use a switch to switch between them. I
tried every which way with a variety of adapters between PS/2 and USB,
and could not get the setup to work. I even asked some industry
experts who make a wide variety of KVM switches if they had a solution
- like a switch that had both PS/2 and USB ports - and they didn't.
I'd rather switch than fight.

I must admit that there are so many different PCI slots nawadays that
I'm a bit lost, though.

Well, there's plain ol' PCI (the Asus has 2 of those, my Dell has 3),
there's PCIEx1, and PCIEx16. I don't think many, if any, new
motherboards have AGP slots any more. The PCIEx16 pretty much took its
place and I'm not sure that I've seen anything but graphics boards
with that interface. Typically on a new motherboard, you'll find one
Ex16, a couple of Ex1, and a token one or two standard PCI slots. They
told us 3-4 years ago that PCI slots would be going away with the next
generation motherboards, but I guess they didn't tell the expansion
card manufacturers. So at least this generation's motherboards still
have a couple of PCI slots.

When I was going through the exercise of trying to get a computer with
a new motherboard working, I tried a PCIEx1 parallel port card that
cost about 3 times what a plain PCI card cost and I couldn't get it to
work satisfactorily. I had two PCI slots, one of which was occupied by
a modem which I didn't need, so I pulled that, put my Firewire card
(that I knew worked with my audio hardware) in one PCI slot and my
Lynx L22 audio card in the other. Full house except for the PCIE
slots. I hate to replace hardware that works.

Actually, what I call an up-to-date DAW system would be a system build
recently buy a DAW power user who would have no problems with it
whatsoever.

The trouble with that is unless he ordered two sets of identical parts
and sold you the ones he didn't use, you can't be sure of getting
exactly the same parts he did. Motherboard manufacturers make changes
every few weeks. You can usually rely on memory and graphics boards,
and pretty much on disk drives. Often this week's model of this year's
model will work as well as last week's, but occasionally there's a
gotcha, particularly if they've changed the BIOS or used a different
chipset for something important. The manufacturers don't test these
things with external audio hardware and audio programs. If it will
access Google and you send e-Mail, it's out the door.

There are a few system integrators who specialize in computers for
DAWs. They find some parts that work and buy enough stock to keep them
going for a while, so they can build some identical systems. You pay a
premium buying one of those systems, and unless you let them install
your audio hardware and software, you might still have a problem or
two.

[Steve[_19_]]

On Sep 17, 8:34*am, Hueyduck wrote:
Hi everyone,

I've been trying to find the time and build a new DAW for let' say... a
year and a half now. *:-/
What I want is something very reliable, with no unusefull extras (I
do'nt need audio chipset nor graphic chipset, for instance ).

Well so far, I managed to buy

- case: Antec Sonata Designer + noctua NF-B9 fan to put inside the front
of it
- graphic accellerator Gigabyte 8600GT

CPU wise , I'd loke to get a *45nm one, Intel, like the Quad Q9450.
I would like to try and Noctua NH-U12P to cool it.
Has anybody tried totally passive cooling for recent Intel CPUs, by the way?

But for the mortherboard, there are simply too many choices.
What I gathered so far is that:

- Intel P35 chipset is a good choice.
- socket 775 is needed since I want a recent Intel CPU.
- Gigabyte or Asus is a goos choice

What I need:
- one regular PCI slot
- *no* AGP port (I bought a PCI-e card)
- e-SATA
- support for ECC memory. I do not know if support for DDR3 is really a
plus.
- passive cooling for the chipset (I rememember I had to change the fan
of my Kg7raid northbridge, like 6 years ago: It was *a little 4cm fan
that would make the noise of a dentist tool... horrible .

- Wi-Fi is ok as long as it can be completely turned off. I don't *need*
it* and I'm still afraid it can *do more harm that good (for a DAW, I
mean. For health too, but that's not the place to discuss it, right? )

Gathering all this, and if I read my numerous notes, I can buy *Asus P5K-SE.

But I really want to hear from your recent experiences.
I'm not trying to let others do the homework for me, but the ideas I got
were given to me a few month ago and hardware is evoluting sooooo fast,
I cant' seem to fix my mind on something that is actually still available..

Btw, I'm still looking for the magical internet site that would
permanenetly display up to date *configurations that are approived by
DAW **power* users. I mean, were money is not a major issue but were
reliability is.

* Thanks for reading.

Huey

My last upgrade was:
ASUS P5K
Intel Quad Core Q6600 (stock fan cooled)
Nvidia Quadro NVS (stock passive cooled)
2GB DDR2 Kingston HyperZ
I have 1 super quiet case fan installed

Running my Tascam FW-1804 perfectly using the on board Firewire port.

I have done up to 32 tracks at 24/96 stacked with effects without
hiccup.

[Hueyduck]

Mike Rivers a écrit :
On Sep 17, 1:23 pm, Hueyduck wrote:



I must admit that there are so many different PCI slots nawadays that
I'm a bit lost, though.

Well, there's plain ol' PCI (the Asus has 2 of those, my Dell has 3),
there's PCIEx1, and PCIEx16. I don't think many, if any, new
motherboards have AGP slots any more. The PCIEx16 pretty much took its
place and I'm not sure that I've seen anything but graphics boards
with that interface. Typically on a new motherboard, you'll find one
Ex16, a couple of Ex1, and a token one or two standard PCI slots. They
told us 3-4 years ago that PCI slots would be going away with the next
generation motherboards, but I guess they didn't tell the expansion
card manufacturers. So at least this generation's motherboards still
have a couple of PCI slots.

Well, my sound card manufacturer (RME) made PCI-E Cards, so I will give
it a shot.
I would like to find testimony about the benefit of having a PCI-e
instead of a regular PCI interface card, but I might be the one who
finds one , apparently.


Actually, what I call an up-to-date DAW system would be a system build
recently buy a DAW power user who would have no problems with it
whatsoever.

The trouble with that is unless he ordered two sets of identical parts
and sold you the ones he didn't use, you can't be sure of getting
exactly the same parts he did. Motherboard manufacturers make changes
every few weeks. You can usually rely on memory and graphics boards,
and pretty much on disk drives. Often this week's model of this year's
model will work as well as last week's, but occasionally there's a
gotcha, particularly if they've changed the BIOS or used a different
chipset for something important. The manufacturers don't test these
things with external audio hardware and audio programs. If it will
access Google and you send e-Mail, it's out the door.

There are a few system integrators who specialize in computers for
DAWs. They find some parts that work and buy enough stock to keep them
going for a while, so they can build some identical systems. You pay a
premium buying one of those systems, and unless you let them install
your audio hardware and software, you might still have a problem or
two.
Yes , I know of these integrators. But now that they must know that
people come and watch what they put in their machine, they don't display
the reference of the motherboard they use. I understand that. But it
doesn't help me.

Anyway, let's say that it it works with one, there's at least more
chances that it works with me


Huey

[Hueyduck]

Steve a écrit :

Huey

My last upgrade was:
ASUS P5K
Intel Quad Core Q6600 (stock fan cooled)
Nvidia Quadro NVS (stock passive cooled)
2GB DDR2 Kingston HyperZ
I have 1 super quiet case fan installed

Running my Tascam FW-1804 perfectly using the on board Firewire port.

I have done up to 32 tracks at 24/96 stacked with effects without
hiccup.

Thanks Steve, I keep this cconfiguration in mind too.
You are not the first to tell me about P5K+Q6600, actually.


Huey

[Romeo Rondeau[_4_]]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On Sep 17, 11:39 am, Signal wrote:

And if you follow the
advice of the real experts there, you'll probably end up buying a Mac.

That doesn't make sense. Real experts (sic) use whatever tools *they*
find most productive. In computing terms that means buying hardware
that runs the software you want to work with, not the other way round.

When it comes to running ProTools, a Mac with sufficient horsepower is
the hardware that runs the software you want to use in the most
productive way. I suppose we could argue over the meaning of
"productive," but one important factor is not having to spend a lot of
time choosing components and custom building the computer, then hoping
it will work without any snags.

I'm a PC guy myself, but if I wanted to make ProTools the heart of my
studio, I'd seriously consider the recommended Mac for the hardware I
need in order to do my work.

I would second that since Macs these days make pretty darn good Windows
machines. I personally would love to install Windows XP on one of those
new dual quad Mac Pros. I'll bet that would run the **** out of some
Nuendo :-)

[Mike Rivers]

Hueyduck wrote:

Well, my sound card manufacturer (RME) made PCI-E Cards, so I will give
it a shot.
I would like to find testimony about the benefit of having a PCI-e
instead of a regular PCI interface card, but I might be the one who
finds one , apparently.

It's still relatively new, and moving kind of slowly since there are so
many customers out there now who are happy with 8-channel Firewire or
USB interfaces. I expect that new (first time) users who don't go the
Firewire route might go the PCI-E route (if they decide that there's
enough for them to pay the RME premium price) but not many will upgrade
from a PCI host to a PCI-E host until it breaks.

Yes , I know of these integrators. But now that they must know that
people come and watch what they put in their machine, they don't display
the reference of the motherboard they use. I understand that. But it
doesn't help me.

I haven't followed them for a while. That's just one step away from
sanding off the part number from the ICs. g There used to be at least
one audio interface manufacturer who had a recommended configuration
with names and models, but I suspect that they got tired of the
motherboard chase. Mackie never published a list of recommended hard
drives for their recorders because they found that other than from the
two suppliers with which they had long term contracts, they couldn't
get exactly the same drive twice. And worse, if you ordered a particular
make and model from an on-line vendor and they didn't have that one in
stock but had the same size or a little bigger from a different
manufacturer, they'd send you that rather than back-order what you asked
for. So you might have asked for one that was known to work (at least at
one time) and get something that nobody's tried yet, or worse,
determined that it doesn't work.




--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[Hueyduck]

Signal a écrit :
Romeo Rondeau wrote:


My brother has XP running on his dual quad core Mac... reckons it runs
pretty sweet. Conversely my PC hardware is capable of running Mac OS,
I lucked onto suitable components (take note Huey).

Yep your card seems to be listed allright :-)

Have a legitimate
copy of Mac OS coming my way soon, so I'm going to give it a whirl.
Guides are he

http://www.insanelymac.com/

That's something I hadn't thought about.
What have you got in mind if it turns to work well?

Huey

[Hueyduck]

Soundhaspriority a écrit :

2. A consumer motherboard using an AMD 780 or 790 chipset, with which
unbuffered ECC DIMMs are compatible.
I really would like to go with a recent INtel CPU, so I think I can't go
in that direction.

It is unfortunate that you have that prejudice. Intel CPUs run cooler, and
are faster at a given clock speed. However, on a price/performance basis,
AMD chips are comparable or better.

I don't have prejudice at all. I actually work with an Athlon TB 2000+
as I'm wiriting to you/ See? ;-)
My choice of an intel CPU was based only upon experiences of others.
Nobody saidd that a AMD CPU was bad, bud everybody told me that Intel
was good.

I'm very surprised that I have to come here to learn that using an Intel
CPU indirectly lead to renounce the use of ECC memory.



I have to check again if I really need ECC memory. As I will start with 2
or 3 Go of memory, this shouldn't be a big problem. But if I ever go the
64bit way, I will be tempted to add more memory. Won't this be a problem
to get like 4Go non ECC memory?

My personal opinion is, you should make ECC your number one priority. It is
more important to have a solid machine than something that is fast just for
a moment in time. In six months, your "fast machine" becomes a "slow
machine", but if it has ECC, it is still rock solid.

What I say is that maybe, ECC memory is a luxury I don't need and that
wil bring more complications (the choice of the MB being more complicated
to make) than it brings security.


If you call reliability a luxury, we're not talking the same language.

Oh, no, we don't. Reliability is not a luxury for *me*. But I really
don't understand that something as essentiel as reliability of the
memory is considered as a luxury by MB manudfacturers.

SO I gather that every people that are happy with their intel CPU did'nt
bother with the ECC memory problem. That too is quite puzzling.


Anyway.
I will look in the AMD CPU option.


Huey

[Hueyduck]

Mike Rivers a écrit :
Hueyduck wrote:

Well, my sound card manufacturer (RME) made PCI-E Cards, so I will
give it a shot.
I would like to find testimony about the benefit of having a PCI-e
instead of a regular PCI interface card, but I might be the one who
finds one , apparently.

It's still relatively new, and moving kind of slowly since there are so
many customers out there now who are happy with 8-channel Firewire or
USB interfaces. I expect that new (first time) users who don't go the
Firewire route might go the PCI-E route (if they decide that there's
enough for them to pay the RME premium price) but not many will upgrade
from a PCI host to a PCI-E host until it breaks.

That's one of the few reasons I want one regular PCI slit in my new MB:
so that I can consider my present PCI interface as a spare one.

Huey

[Hueyduck]

Signal a écrit :
Hueyduck wrote:

Would you say that DDR3 is not something I should even bother with?

The performance improvement vs DDR2 is pretty minimal AFAIK.

Thanks for this input.
I am know more bothered about the ECC issue
DDR2 will be fine , then.


Huey

[Hueyduck]

Signal a écrit :


Have a legitimate
copy of Mac OS coming my way soon, so I'm going to give it a whirl.
Guides are he

http://www.insanelymac.com/
That's something I hadn't thought about.
What have you got in mind if it turns to work well?

I'm interested in giving Logic another bash, for starters.


Would you tell us if it works?
The year I considered it to compose music, they annouced that they were
stopping developpement for PC (was in 2000 or 2001, I think).

Huey

[Hueyduck]

Soundhaspriority a écrit :
"Hueyduck" wrote in message
...
Soundhaspriority a écrit :

[snip]
Oh, no, we don't. Reliability is not a luxury for *me*. But I really don't
understand that something as essentiel as reliability of the memory is
considered as a luxury by MB manudfacturers.

SO I gather that every people that are happy with their intel CPU did'nt
bother with the ECC memory problem. That too is quite puzzling.

Most of the reports here are of the nature, "I'm having a good
experience...I've had no trouble..." and they draw more general conclusions
than are warranted.


I'm quite aware of that. But in my experience, if someone who has the
same expectations as me has a good experience with a piece of hardware,
what he tells me is worth more than the things I can read on the
manufacturers site.
I do know this doesn't mean I won't have problems.
Anyway, I'll have to make up my mind at one point


The Avid company, who make the software that is used for large scale video
editing, ie., movies and network television, have a qualified machine list.
The only machines they qualify for nonportable use are based on server
hardware.

Most Final Cut users work on MacPros, which are basically server hardware.

Video editing projects can take months, and have complicated incremental
representations of edits that, if screwed up, are hard to fix. For them,
server hardware is important.

That's what I had in mind when I would evoke luxury. For this kind of
projects, this is not luxury. FOr me it might.


OTOH, if you have little project files that can be easily backed up, and
your wav files are backed up, then you may have a process that is easily
recoverable if the machine drops a bit.

Since even the manufacturers disagree, Microsoft vs. Intel, we can't know
what the actual truth is. So ask yourself questions like, "If it crashes
once a year due to parity errors, is it acceptable to me?"

If it is once a year, yes, it is acceptable. If it is once a week, this
is not.


In the early spring, I put together an AMD dual core machine for use as a
PVR/HT. It records hidef video, and it wakes up on a timer, 24/7. You can
read about it he

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...bbbb654c9e2c47

The machine I use for audio is much slower than the above.

nice. You see, the post your are giving us the link to , is exactly what
I call an up-to-date configuration. It's not only theory,: it is a
machine that is working, by now.



ANyway, I let you know what I decided.

Huey

[Igor[_4_]]

On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:34:55 +0200, Hueyduck
wrote:

What I want is something very reliable, with no unusefull extras (I
do'nt need audio chipset nor graphic chipset, for instance ).


Good luck finding a motherboard that doesn't have audio built-in. It
doesn't really matter if it's there, though, does it?

Even though I have a dedicated soundcard for recording, I find having
a built-in one useful sometimes, as it allows me to just plug
headphones straight into the computer and listen without having to
fire up my mixer, amp, monitors, etc.

Well so far, I managed to buy

- case: Antec Sonata Designer

Excellent choice. I just built into one of these. It's so quiet that
now I can plainly hear the stock fan for my CPU and my
(passively-cooled) video card (yes, the video card seems to make noise
even though it doesn't have a fan). Neither of those are very loud.

- Gigabyte or Asus is a goos choice

Some will scoff at this, but I've had good experiences with ECS
boards, and they're inexpensive. That's what I used on the computer I
just built.

But I would look at features, price, and availability over brand
names. Bear in mind that all of these boards are manufactured in China
now, and you're not likely to see a lot of difference in quality.
Might be a good idea to pick a board that's a couple of years old just
to see what the reviews say and ensure that all the drivers and so on
have matured.

[Igor[_4_]]

On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:20:02 +0200, Hueyduck
wrote:

I have to admit that if my work were mainly involving protools I would
definitely have switched to mac a long time ago.
But I work with cubase and I still find the patience needed to assemble
a good machine.
But I'm aware that buying a mac would provide the certitude that the
machine works well. But I'm "afraid" of them because I do'nt know how to
build one. And because I know enough to make a PC work like I want it to.

One thing PC users can do that Mac users can't:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse....gi?u=macs_cant

[Hueyduck]

Igor a écrit :


Good luck finding a motherboard that doesn't have audio built-in. It
doesn't really matter if it's there, though, does it?
No it doesnot.
Actully, the absence of sound chip was a valuable criteria back in the
days when I bought my previous MB (2000), because ths sound chips were
causing many problems , often, and they were a sign that the card was
not designed for a workstation at all.
But today, I must admit that I don't recall having seen a recent mobo
with no sound chipset.


Well so far, I managed to buy

- case: Antec Sonata Designer

Excellent choice. I just built into one of these. It's so quiet that
now I can plainly hear the stock fan for my CPU and my
(passively-cooled) video card (yes, the video card seems to make noise
even though it doesn't have a fan). Neither of those are very loud.


Cool. That makes at least one good choice

- Gigabyte or Asus is a goos choice

Some will scoff at this, but I've had good experiences with ECS
boards, and they're inexpensive. That's what I used on the computer I
just built.

But I would look at features, price, and availability over brand
names. Bear in mind that all of these boards are manufactured in China
now, and you're not likely to see a lot of difference in quality.

I've been overlooking the "availability" criteria. And it is truly a
mistake.

Might be a good idea to pick a board that's a couple of years old just
to see what the reviews say and ensure that all the drivers and so on
have matured.

For the moment, I've set up my mind on Gigabyte EP35C-D3R.
But I'm still looking out for ideas. I read the specs of server MB, but
they don't scream "buy me" to me, for the moment.

Huey

[Mike Rivers]

Hueyduck wrote:

Actully, the absence of sound chip was a valuable criteria back in the
days when I bought my previous MB (2000), because ths sound chips were
causing many problems , often, and they were a sign that the card was
not designed for a workstation at all.

Disabling the built-in audio in Windows didn't always solve the
problems, but disabling in the BIOS almost always did. Trouble with
depending on doing that is that not all BIOSs give you that much control
any more. Those on the "built-it-yourself: motherboards usualyl still
do, but laptops and off-the-shelf computers often don't. My two Dell
desktops and Dell and IBM laptops don't let you turn the built-in audio
off directly.

I've been overlooking the "availability" criteria. And it is truly a
mistake.

Maybe I don't know where to shop, but I find that motherboards are
somewhat like mattresses - there are many, many choices, and it's rare
that you can find the same one in two places. They change so fast that
there's always a new model or new version of an established model, and
there are always closeouts on the older versions (which may only be a
few months old). So if you want to get the latest, you have to shop at
the right place. I can count on my local Micro Center store to usually
have essentially on-line prices, but to never have the latest of a
constantly changing product like a motherboard. On the other hand, I
don't really care about getting the latest. I just don't want to get a
closeout that's been left over because it never was very good.

Might be a good idea to pick a board that's a couple of years old just
to see what the reviews say and ensure that all the drivers and so on
have matured.

A couple of months is probably better. In a couple of years you may have
difficulty finding drivers unless it's new stock and you get the
original installation disk. And if there have been updates since
(motherboard hardware driver updates aren't nearly as frequent as
outboard hardware updates) they may no longer be available.



--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[Hueyduck]

Mike Rivers a écrit :
Hueyduck wrote:


Might be a good idea to pick a board that's a couple of years old just
to see what the reviews say and ensure that all the drivers and so on
have matured.

A couple of months is probably better. In a couple of years you may have
difficulty finding drivers unless it's new stock and you get the
original installation disk. And if there have been updates since
(motherboard hardware driver updates aren't nearly as frequent as
outboard hardware updates) they may no longer be available.


I plan to get one that is like 6month -1year old.
I like to have 2.1x BIOS, generally. At least a 1.1x

Huey