New Edm production pc

[Greeny1210]

Hi guys

so my old 2005 mesh pc will no longer cope with ..erm pretty much anything so I am looking at getting a new one, I can't build it myself as I have no clue about pc's and it took me about 3 years to fit a new hd and ram on my old one
I will be using stuff like ableton/reason/cubase making House/trance/dnb etc and was just wondering what the below machine is like (its a customized one with pc-specialist.com) and if there are any things which should be avoided etc
looking at the souncard stuff more deeply it seems the ones they offer wont cut it (creative audigy and some other gaming cards, so am I know right in thinking I should get a usb card instead ?

anyway specs below


Case
COOLERMASTER SILEO 500 QUIET MID TOWER CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3570K (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache

Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z77-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX

Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)

Graphics Card
INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR (GPU)

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan

Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER (£19)

Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Network Facilities
DUAL-BAND WIRELESS 802.11N 450Mbps PCI-E CARD (£35)

USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Firewire
SIIG 3-PORT FIREWIRE 800 (2x 9-pin, 1x 6-pin) PCI-Ex x1, TI Chipset

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

[vata44]

should be awesome... congrats

[sockofgold]

The 3570K is a monster CPU. I built my machine just a couple months ago with that, and I have yet to tap its power completely.

I would suggest a FireWire audio interface, especially since your machine is going to have a TI FireWire card included. The low latency performance is definitely noticeably better compared to USB 2. I use a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 with Win 7 64, and it is pretty bad ass. No complaints at all. Definitely don't stick with an Audigy card unless you absolutely have to.

Do you have the option of getting a solid-state disk put in for the OS and applications? That would make an enormous difference in system and application boot times.

Will you tell us how much you're paying for this? That would help determine if you're getting a good deal or not.

[sockofgold]

Ooh, one alarm bell is ringing for me. Ixnay the wireless card. Windows has historically had a lot of IRQ issues with wireless cards and ASIO drivers. If you can't get it built without that, I would recommend disabling it completely and/or just plain removing it. Run an actual Ethernet cable for a Windows audio production machine.

[V0RT3X]

Get a i7 processor, you will be able to push it harder in gaming/music production etc.

[sockofgold]

Get a i7 processor, you will be able to push it harder in gaming/music production etc.

True, but budget could also be a concern here. An i7 vs a i5/3570k might not be worth the performance-to-cost difference. When I was choosing a CPU for my machine, the i7 CPUs were significantly more expensive, and offered only minimal performance gains.

An i7 would be awesome, but the 3570k is still a freaking amazing CPU. If budget is a concern, there are better bang-for-your-buck options than upgrading to an i7.


OP, one more suggestion: you should really have at least two internal hard drives--one for your OS and applications (preferably a solid state drive, as I mentioned above), and one for samples and recording. If you can't get a solid state drive for the OS drive, it is still definitely beneficial to have two separate optical drives.

[Greeny1210]

Thanks for the replies guys


I think this machine comes in around £900 which is around my max budget and I am trying to get it down if possible hence no i7 cpu
I was thinking of getting a ssd and a hd but think that's going to bump the price up too much, will look into it though.

as for the wireless I can't get a ethernet cable to it, needs to be wifi but I can get a similar motherboard with wifi built in if that would help, there is also other wifi cards I believe they do if that makes a difference ?

[Greeny1210]

Ok made a few changes to see if this would be a better option, had to downgrade the firewire port, comes out at £950 in total
Leaves me short for a better soundcard/audio interface perhaps around £100 in a month or 2 and the audigy will have to do till then (or I can scrap the audigy and just use the onboard soundcard) I have no idea about soundcards I thought you only got built in ones and the external cost about £1k until recently


anyway



Case
COOLERMASTER SILEO 500 QUIET MID TOWER CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3570K (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache

Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z77-V: PCI-E 3.0 READY, WIFI, SLI, CROSSFIREX

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card
INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR (GPU)

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
128GB KINGSTON V200 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (300MB/R, 190MB/W) (Special Offer)

2nd Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan

Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER (£19)

Sound Card
Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy™ SE (£19)

Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs

USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Firewire
3 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI Card (£9)

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)

Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL

Monitor
AOC 21.5" WIDESCREEN LED TFT - 1920 x 1080, 5MS, D-Sub, DVI-D (£89)

[sockofgold]

If you are planning on using a FireWire interface (which I personally strongly recommend over USB 2), you MUST keep the better FireWire card. With FireWire interfaces, Windows will only function properly through a FireWire card that uses the TI (Texas Instruments) chipest, which your first one had. If you are only planning on using FireWire peripherals but no interface, the cheaper card won't be a problem.

The WiFi thing may or may not be an issue. Worst case scenario, you may just need to disable it temporarily while you are working on music. You will know right away if you are having IRQ issues, because you will get frequent audio dropouts. Not really the end of the world, though, as the temporary fix is easy enough to do.

So, pardon my ignorance, but we're talking GBP here, right? So I am seeing 950 GBP = roughly $1,537? Don't get me wrong, you have a good machine here and all, but this is really a $900-1000 machine. You're paying a hell of a lot of markup to have someone put it together for you.

If you can't build it yourself, do you maybe know someone who could do it for your for a small fee? You would stand to save a shit-ton of money.

These specs are very close to the machine that I built and use for audio production for around $950, and that includes a fairly high-end graphics card (I use it for gaming as well). Not saying this to brag or cut you down or anything. Just kind of saying that if I calculated your price correctly, you are paying about 40-50% markup to have them build it for you, which honestly, is not that extremely difficult.

Overall, it looks good though. It should be a really good machine for you--I would just like to see you get a better deal on it.

[tehlord]

So, pardon my ignorance, but we're talking GBP here, right? So I am seeing 950 GBP = roughly $1,537? Don't get me wrong, you have a good machine here and all, but this is really a $900-1000 machine. You're paying a hell of a lot of markup to have someone put it together for you.
.

Things cost more here. Always.

For ITB dance music production I don't see Firewire as necessary either. It'd be nice to have if you wanted a decent FW interface, but he's talking about a budget of £100 in a month or two. A cheap FW PCI card would be fine in the future should he need it.

Anything around 10ms is fine for ITB and he could easily achieve that with his CPU choice.

[Kaine]

I would suggest a FireWire audio interface, especially since your machine is going to have a TI FireWire card included. The low latency performance is definitely noticeably better compared to USB 2. I use a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 with Win 7 64, and it is pretty bad ass. No complaints at all. Definitely don't stick with an Audigy card unless you absolutely have to.

The USB2 Scarlett range from Focusrite scores better than the older FW Saffires for RTL scores. The FW over USB2 arguement has become a moot point with newer hardware as they've learnt to refine the drivers and controllers to optimize the connection.

In fact I'd sack off FW completely as they seem determined to phase it out at the moment anyhow.

Ooh, one alarm bell is ringing for me. Ixnay the wireless card. Windows has historically had a lot of IRQ issues with wireless cards and ASIO drivers. If you can't get it built without that, I would recommend disabling it completely and/or just plain removing it. Run an actual Ethernet cable for a Windows audio production machine.

Hmmm... The PC specialist spec looks strangely like my own for some strange reason... Anyhow what I'd advise is instead of using the the snap in card, ask them to upgrade it to the Z77V standard edition as the price difference is the same but I can tell you now the onboard Wifi on the standard edition is flawless.

True, but budget could also be a concern here. An i7 vs a i5/3570k might not be worth the performance-to-cost difference. When I was choosing a CPU for my machine, the i7 CPUs were significantly more expensive, and offered only minimal performance gains.

Bang per buck the i7 is the same value as the i5. 40% more in benchmarking for around 40% more cost but it overclocks better and if you do go that route its well worth it bang per buck wise.

Leaves me short for a better soundcard/audio interface perhaps around £100 in a month or 2 and the audigy will have to do till then (or I can scrap the audigy and just use the onboard soundcard) I have no idea about soundcards I thought you only got built in ones and the external cost about £1k until recently

The onboard one is hopeless, althrough the creative solutions are not a whole lot better. The Focusrite Scarlet for around £120 will probably be your best budget choice in the £100 region.

[EnGee]

Graphics Card
INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR (GPU)

I would choose an entry level graphic card

Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan

IMO at least 600w PSU

Sound Card
Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy™ SE (£19)

Does it have low (Asio) latency driver? IMO you can use the integrated sound card in the motherboard with Asio4All till you buy usb/firewire(whatever) one!

Monitor
AOC 21.5" WIDESCREEN LED TFT - 1920 x 1080, 5MS, D-Sub, DVI-D (£89)

Hmmm, I would buy 23" monitor from another manufacturer if I were you.
...
..
.

[Greeny1210]

I can't really upgrade stuff like the monitor etc due to budget, would a graphics card and better psu make much difference ? I would end up having to downgrade other stuff that I was lead to believe was more important for production such as ram/cpu/hard drive etc

I wish budget wasn't an issue but it is and I am stretching myself big time I was hoping to get something decent for about £600-£800 also I am getting on 12 month 0% finance so getting someone to build isn't a option

I think the mobo I have selected has wifi, there is some more options but they cost between £50-100 more and I have no idea what difference there is

I thought I would be able to get a decent enough soundcard with it as last time I looked into all this stuff they were mainly built in that people used, I will also be having a go at digital dj'ing so not sure what difference that makes regarding soundcards, I have always been a vinyl DJ so all this stuff just makes my head spin

[sockofgold]

The USB2 Scarlett range from Focusrite scores better than the older FW Saffires for RTL scores. The FW over USB2 arguement has become a moot point with newer hardware as they've learnt to refine the drivers and controllers to optimize the connection.

Egh, I wouldn't say it's a moot point. I personally have had much better luck with FireWire than USB, but everyone's experience is different. Dude is just asking for opinions to help make an informed decision--no need to say anyone's points are "moot," as is it all subjective to personal experience.

I would second the suggestion about upgrading the PSU and graphics cards if possible, but I still think you should stick with the 3570k CPU. Seriously, it is extremely powerful.

At the end of the day, what you already have is probably more than sufficient. But if you ask something like this at KVR, you're always going to get a bunch of geeks giving you tons of differing opinions about what is best, so take it all with a grain of salt and trust your own judgement.

[sockofgold]

OP, just throwing it out there--have you considered the possibility of buying an iMac? I'm not usually one to play the "Mac is better" game, but when you buy an iMac (or MacBookPro), you know that you will receive it primed and ready to go for audio production. All you really need to add is an external hard drive for sample streaming and recording, because I believe you cannot have two internal drives.

Apple sells their own refurbs, so you can save a few hundred bucks that way and still get the full warranty and such--I have purchased a couple from them in the past, and always had good luck.

Just thought I would mention it.