I built a Midi PC, It cost about $1300 I use a 10K rpm SATA drive for my OS (XP) and apps for faster booting that my MOBO and CPU could deal with I use another SATA drive 7200 Rpm for audio and samples. If I was to upgrade I would use SSD's instead. they are quiet, faster and smaller so more air will be able to flow.synthmanDS wrote: Lately, I've been toying with idea of building a dedicated soft synth computer to possibly convert some of my hardware synth over to software versions now that it appears the processing power finally may be capable of do this.
While there is a wealth of information regarding soft synths and even individual computer requirements per each manufactures products, I haven't found much clear info accumulative requirements beyond speculation at best.
A good example of what I'm would put together is a windows xp based tower system 2.66 dual core, 2GB RAM, 350 GB 7200 HD with a pci audio/midi card. Midi in/out on the pc would go into a standard midi interface which is connected to a separate Mac DAW. The PC would essentially be a "hardware device". Composing would be done in a MIDI environment, then complete songs track recorded to digital audio.
I am researching the use of Linux wich will be a PITA to set up but will be more reliable than Windows. Here's some specs
Sorry about the format I couldn't find a place to upload it to use as a URL.
I-Star D-300 3U rackmount case $100.00
I-Star TC-3U46 460w Power TC-3U46 Quieter Fan Option $90.00
2) AcoustiFans 60mm Dust Proof $64.00
3)80 mm Nexus Quiet Case Fans $46.00
AcoustiPack™ ULTIMATE 3-Layer PC Sound proofing Kit $47.00
"ASUS P5Q-E LGA775 ATX
Motherboard, Intel P45 Chipset, Supports Intel Core 2 Extreme CPUs, Dual DDR2 1200, SATA 3Gb/s RAID, CrossFireX Ready, PCI-E 2.0 " $160.00
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad-Core Processor 2.4GHz, 1066FSB, LGA775, 8MB $194.00
ZALMAN CNPS8700 NT Copper Intel/AMD CPU Cooler $60.00
CORSAIR DOMINATOR with DHX Technology TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF 4GB PC2-8500 (DDR2-
1066) DDR2 Memory $116.00
"ATI All-In-Wonder 2006 PCI Express / Radeon X1300 / 400 MHz /
2048 x 1536 @ 60Hz / 256MB GDDR2 / CATV / FM Antenna /
DVI / HDTV/S-Video/Composite If you can find one $50.00
Zalman ZM-17Cu Silent Video Card Copper Heatsink $17.00
Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB Serial ATA 10,000RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer $95.00
Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JD 250GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer $42.00
2) Smart Drive 2002 Copper Cool, Quiet Hard Drive Enclosures $154.00
Pioneer DVR 212BK DVD Burner get a 318 for $50.00
Total #1,285.00