Choosing between 2 PCs for my studio

[Azura]

I have decided to upgrade my PC, but I’m on a (very) tight budget, so I will go for a used machine. My DAW is Reaper, and I use some VSTi, VST , samples (free Kontakt player) plus real guitar and voice recording. I wish to keep my existing audio card (M-Audio Audiophile 2496), which is PCI.

I have found these two deals, and I’d like your opinions them:
1) HP 6200 PRO, I5-2400 3.1 GHz, RAM: 4G, HDD: 500 G, Win7
2) DELL T3500 Xeon W3520, 2.66 GHz, RAM: 6G, HD: 500 G, Win7

Both at 250$CAN. For the Dell, I can have the same model but with a W3570 processor for 20$ more. I've read that the Dell is very quiet, don't know for the HP.
Any recommendations?

Thanks in advance,
Marc

[Azura]

Oups, I just find a third option, again for the same price:

Lenovo M91, i5-2500 3.3ghz, RAM:4G, HD:320G

Thanks!
Marc

[Kaine]

The i5 is the most powerful out of those 3; you'll probably want to up the RAM and storage however.

[Azura]

Thank you Kaine for your reply. I compared these 4 cpus on the cpubenchmark.net site and I have the following values:

Xeon W3520 (2.67 GHz): 5068
i5-2400 (3.1 GHz): 5834
i5-2500 (3.30 GHz): 6228
Xeon W3570 (3.20 GHz): 6256

From these values, the W3570 is a little bit faster than the i5-2500. But in the context of a DAW, is the Lenovo M91 (i5-2500) would be a better choice than the Dell (W3570)?

Have a nice day!
Marc

[sprnva]

The M91 looks promising. Apparently, the Q67 chipset has native PCI support which is important for your audio card. Most newer PCIe boards that have PCI slots actually just connect them to the PCIe bus via a bridging chip. This can affect realtime performance and latency.

Also, Kaine will be able to correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I think desktop CPUs may provide better realtime performance for an audio workstation than Xeons. If I'm wrong, and the Xeon is a good option then the T3500's X58 chipset also has native PCI support.

[Azura]

Very usefull information, thank you very much. I guess I won't make a mistake with the M91, I just hope that it is not too noisy. I already have a 1TB drive available, and I will probably buy another 4 gig of RAM.

Thanks a lot!
Marc

[Kaine]

Thank you Kaine for your reply. I compared these 4 cpus on the cpubenchmark.net site and I have the following values:

Xeon W3520 (2.67 GHz): 5068
i5-2400 (3.1 GHz): 5834
i5-2500 (3.30 GHz): 6228
Xeon W3570 (3.20 GHz): 6256

From these values, the W3570 is a little bit faster than the i5-2500. But in the context of a DAW, is the Lenovo M91 (i5-2500) would be a better choice than the Dell (W3570)?

Your right, I didn't take it on board as you'd written 1, & 2, on the first post and then said "third option" on the next post, mentally I didn't take onboard the upgrade because of that, just missed it! Your right on the benchmarks however.

As for differences between Xeons and regular desktops, the isn't any really apart from the QPI support for hooking up multiple cpus as far as studio use goes.

The Xeon in this instance however is a couple of generations older the i5 and the chipset etc... will have other benefits and features. I'd got with the newer i5 2500 personally, that's only 5 years old as oppose to the Xeon CPU which is closer to 8.

[Azura]

No problem Kaine! I bought the i5 last Monday. I also ordered more RAM and another hard drive. I put my Audiophile sound card and it seems to work perfectly.

Thank you very much again!
Have a nice day,
Marc

[Kaine]

Ahh, all good then