Like I said, I almost went with one on the last music computer refresh. I've just had a ton of problems with them both with my own systems and at work. In fact, I've never had so many problems before, or since.

So good screen is easy to get, even with a PC. Design, that's more of a challenge. But as far as superior hardware is concerned, I don't think that macs really have that edge. In fact, for me, that's been the problem. The hardware has been substandard, and expensive to boot.

But as far as the pain factor goes, I think that it's good advice for a music machine and I still think that OS/X is a better OS than windows.

I also find the new HP Z1 all-in-one concept very nice http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/workstations/z1_fe atures.html not as slick design as the iMac but seems it has better components.

Nah, that's not how I roll. I'd never buy a non portable (ie iPad or laptop) that was an all in one. Also, I've become quite taken with a few plugs that have no Mac build and probably never will. I guess I could learn to live without them, but I've paid for them... anyway, I have a Mac. An old G5. I use it for some audio work (Digital Performer) but mostly graphics. It's actually still a kick ass machine. 8 core PPC running at 2.5 ghz with a 8 gig of RAM. Won't run Crome but it will run Adobe CS3. I need a Tower PC.

Nice, I hadn't seen those. It will be interesting to see what they street for. The add your own hardware feature is nice. Seems like an odd cpu selection though.

Also, I couldn't tell if they had glossy or a matte display. A matte display probably would have tipped the equation in the iMac's favor for me.

I agree. Also, with respect to the $100 or $200 more for someone else to build it, that's not my experience. I value my time as well, I don't change my own car oil, but I do mow my own lawn, there you go, that's my standard. If I could order a PC for $100 over my cost and choosing the right parts, I wouldn't waste my time either.

I built ADK's AM3 in Newegg using all the same parts. It's the only one that you can build accurately because ADK doesn't report which motherboard that they use for the ivy bridge machine. At any rate, Newegg's price is $754.89, DIY, before $20 in rebates (I ignore those), ADK's price is $1193. In fairness I did not include the backup software because it's Paragon and you can get a free edition, I have no idea if what they offer is anything more. That's for a very low end machine. Also, I added some random cooler that was about $25 because they don't list what cooler they supply. The difference grows considerably as the machine moves to the higher end. For the same system with 16GB, Newegg is $814.89 vs $1389 from ADK.

That's a LOT more than $100 or $200 difference and that's for a machine that, to me, is only part of the way there and, as I said earlier, chooses the wrong components for many uses. Who wants clunky 500GB drives? Choose more, you'll pay more.

In some sense, Apple gets it right, slots are overrated. For pro studios, maybe not so much, but for home studios, most of our gear is USB or firewire. Why use a motherboard with all of those slots? If you're that low end to begin with, there's no advantage other than all of the USB ports.

At a 40%+ difference in price between build and buy my last system would have cost me a fortune. Personally, I hate building systems. It's always a bunch of hassle and it's at the edge of what I think is worth my time, but, it's also an area where the "so called" experts, in my experience, aren't expert enough for it to be hassle free for me. By that I mean, even when I pay someone else to build it, which I've done for various jobs in the past, they still don't get it quite right and it's still hassle for me. So for my own machines, I just suck it up and build it.

Now, if what I wanted fit a Dell, or an HP or something, I just buy those, because you can't compete. They ARE a better value in terms of cost/benefit at the low end. For example, the Dell i5 ivy bridge (3450) XPS machine with 1TB HD, 8GB of ram, and a blue ray optical, weighs in at $749. No, I didn't stutter, $749, that's with windows home premium and an H77 chipset. Seriously, if one doesn't care about being able to customize the system, I'm not seeing the advantage of a DAW specific machine at this level. The same specs with a 3770 is $899.

A comparison between the 2500k and the Phenom 965

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=102

And the 3770 and the Phenom 965

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/551?vs=102

I'm not blaming the DAW vendors, they have to make a living, and with a lot of customers, they provide an appropriate service that's worth the extra money. If I were running a pro-studio, I'd pay them to futz around with all the rubber grommets and I'd bitch if it wasn't silent. But if you aren't going for a silent machine, I doubt that you're going to reap the benefits that justify their hefty markup. Just go down to frys and pick up the Dell/Acer/Whatever that floats your boat and has at least one pcie slot. Pick up three or four different firewire cards while you're there and try them out. Take back what you don't want.

I have a motu ultralight and it worked fine with both my on-board firewire and the very first external card that I tried. And yes, I picked up the card at frys.

Won't a logical step be getting a Mac Pro? Those monsters can last about 6 to 8 years. Still overpriced in my opinion.

Not for me it isn't. Again, I'm not going to mess with dual boot systems just to use my windows software. Maybe if I could get mDrummer to do a Mac version... but probably never. I'll always keep a Mac around for graphics, but for a pure DAW machine it'll be windows based.

So, here's why I am... I'm considering two things. First, just flat out letting someone else put it together for me...

http://www.studiocat.com/3/index.php/Pro_Studio

Does that seem like a horrible deal?

Or should I delve into DIY...

like so?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemLi st=Combo.864972

or even cheaper...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemLi st=Combo.864966

Though, those don't seem to come with video cards or a Firewire TI chipset card.

It really seems to me like even the DIY bundles are either for IT pros building machines for their office, or people wanting great performance from Crysis.

Also, I'm writing this on a HP 7400 Xeon W3520 and it seems damn quiet to me, though I'm in a big office space. Is the Xeon a lot better than an i7? It sure seems to cost more. The more I look at all this stuff the more I want to just pick up something decent at Best Buy.

i7 CPUs are Xeons with the extra cores disabled.
They don't support ECC memory though.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/63696,64596,63698,63697

I live in the bay area and wouldn't mind helping you put your system together for free.

-Club Ho

I might just take you up on that! I'm in Emeryville though and you know how it's often easier to get to Vancouver than it is to go from the East Bay to the peninsula. I did take your parts list you did many pages ago and I'm considering using it as a template to build my system if I go that route. Thanks, it's a really generous offer.

Cool man. PM me if you ever decide.

Club Ho

Not necessarily. I have a PCI-e Firewire card and a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP audio interface and can work easily with 128 samples buffer. The overall latency is only marginally higher than when I was using RME HDSP 9632 (PCI) with the same buffer settings. Yes, I was surprised myself when I tried it the first time!

And bandwidth is not an issue unless you want to record something like 16 or more channels of high-resolution audio simultaneously.

At work I use an HP z800 and a Dell T3500, at home I use a MacPro. The HP has dual Quad-core Xeon processors and 16GB of Ram, the Dell has a single 6-core i7 processor and 32GB ram and the MacPro has dual 6-core i7 processors and 32GB ram.

In terms of build quality, I'd put all three in the same category. The MacPro performs the best but you'd expect that based on the difference in specs.

These were all in the $5000-$7500USD range and in my opinion, worth every penny. Very quiet machines, easy to open up and work on. I've gotten great support (and on an occasion or two not so great support) from each of these companies.

I've used Firewire and PCI-e audio interfaces on each of these computers and have yet to experience any popping or clicking, even with very small buffer sizes and tons of tracks. That said I don't push any of them them as hard as I could. Each one is a very nice computer in it's own right.

If I were freelancing again and responsible for spitting out my own video and 3d graphics, or even if I did more game music, I'd spend that much, but for my messing about there's no way I'd spend more than $2K on a computer.

not necessarily what? that's what i said in the first place.

don't you mean, "yes."