System rebuild....aw yeah.

[jhale667]

There were a few bumps along the way, but I finally managed to rebuild my computer, going as crackhead obsessive on it component-wise as I do on my guitars. I wanted enough processing power to not ever have to worry about it bogging, and so far it's kicking ass...here's the specs:


1. Intel i7 processor
2. 8g of RAM (that's getting bumped up quickly)
3. Asus P8Z68 Motherboard
4. Western Digital 1TB Hard Drive (1024MB GDDR5)
5. EVGA GTX550Ti video card
6. Corsair H80 CPU Hydro Cooler
7. Corsair AX750 power supply
8. Windows 7 Professional 64-bit





It's stupid fast, and coincidentally looks cool as shit... other than the fact that the case I chose won't fully close with the Hydro-Cooler super-fan installed (who knew? who cares? ), not too shabby if I do say so myself...lol


Already re-installed PODfarm, but I may have to bite the bullet and do the full upgrade to Pro Tools 10.

[ashstralia]

i just got one of them iphone 4s.

an amazing bit of gear.

[jhale667]

I'm tempted to replace my Blackberry with an iPhone... 'course, that's gonna wait if I have to do the PT upgrade...

Did I mention it's running the 3 storage drives, a Maxtor 250g ( what was the OS drive of the old system), a 500g and the 750g external HD I use for Pro Tools no probs?

[ThrillsNSpills]

No wonder the water don't woik. Dees pipes is clogged up wit wiyahs.

[jhale667]

Nah, de pipes works just fine! And looks like there's still a version of PT9 I can get an run my exiting Mbox2 with...awesome.

[jhale667]

[Nitro Express]

I had a case like that. It had bogus gauges on the front. Not really good for anything but they looked cool. AZZA makes a wider case that will probably work. It's even ported for cooling lines so you can run them to an outside fan if you want.

[jhale667]

It's only a matter of moving the fan on the side panel about a quarter of an inch down, I just don't feel like dealing with pulling it out of this case and doing yet another re-assembly at this point. It's not hurting anything as is.

[Nitro Express]

Fix it when it's due for cleaning. After the dust bunnies cover everything. I drives me nuts when I start to see dust bunnies in my computer. I'm always blasting it out. One of the chores of having a see through case.

[jhale667]

Yeah, I always keep a can of compressed air at my desk, I blast the place continuously so it doesn't build up.

[Nitro Express]

I run a little air cleaner in my office and I'm amazed at how much less dust I have. A good one makes quite the difference.

[Hardrock69]

If I were to build a new PC now, I would get a solid state drive for my C drive.

Sounds like you got a smoking machine, but SSDs make standard disc drives look like they are running at 33 1/3.

They are still too expensive though. I noticed on Newegg.com that they are now down to about a buck-fifty a gig. They were about 2 bucks a gig. I never spend more than 100 bucks on any one thing. That is my "price point".

And I have to have at least an 80 Gig C drive.....so it is going to be awhile before I can get one myself.

Congrats on the new box!

I just upgraded a few months ago. One component. I had originally bought 4 1 gig sticks of Geil Black Dragon gaming memory....1066 Mhz DDR2.

Only to find out that the ASUS mobo would only run in dual channel mode for what was in 2 of the 4 ram slots. Ugh.

So just a few months ago, I got a pair of 2 gig sticks of 1066 G. Skill gaming ram. Big difference. WAY faster. But it was a beast to begin with. Am running an AMD Phenom 9600 quad-core Black Edition.....running it at stock speed, as the mobo (ASUS M3A) is a piece of shit when it comes to o'clocking. Has the ability to o'clock in the BIOS, but it will freeze up, crash, etc. So I just let it run stock....

My mobo has an AM2+ socket....which will handle AM3 CPUs.....so I can still upgrade CPUs someday....and yes, one other upgrade would be an SSD.

By the way....I just saw a piece on the net that said that DDR4 is going to start shipping by the end of the year, even though there has not been any sort of official spec released.

Also, found out on Newegg.com the other day.....you can buy AMD 8-core Zambezi processors for 150 bucks now.

Insane how kickass the hardware is these days.

I figure with the occasional upgrade, I can keep my current machine for another year or two before building another one.

I have never bought a factory produced PC in my life. Well, my Dad gave me my first one in 1998, and I don't think he built it...but it was a no-name PC (which I am still keeping for sentimental reasons, lol). But I built my first PC from scratch in 2000, and there is no turning back.

[Hardrock69]

This is like discussing cars in the old days before computers.

[jhale667]

This is like discussing cars in the old days before computers.

Isn't it?

[jhale667]

Currently waiting to hear back from a contact at Avid to see if the LE- version 10 cross-grade will work for my system...

http://shop.avid.com/store/product.d...07527273741024

[Nitro Express]

You get less dirty and greasy rebuilding a PC. But you are right. Instead of cubic inches, cam size, horsepower and torque it's how fast the processor is, what type of drives, and how much RAM you have. It is the same shit. Then you put it all in a case that looks cool because those cream white office looking cases are so boring. Got to have a window to see the guts and some lights to make it look cool.

[jhale667]

Preferrably blue UV lights that look really cool in the dark... But yeah, same thing as spec'ing out a car or a guitar. I knew I needed at minimum an intel i5 and 4g of RAM, so I went with an i7 and 8g...totally not f*ing around here.

[Nitro Express]

You need to add some big speakers and a smoke machine and more lights.

[jhale667]

I do an impersonation of a smoke machine occasionally... that'll have to do... and the M-Audio BX5A monitors I've got can get plenty loud for an apartment studio...when I get a house again I'll get bigger speakers, or just re-cone the set of old Tannoy PB8s I've got in my living room.


Oh, and does my lava lamp count light-wise?

[Jagermeister]

Kinda overkill for downloading porn don't ya think?

[jhale667]

Kinda overkill for downloading porn don't ya think?

Would be if that was all I planned to do with it...smart ass.

[Nitro Express]

Kinda overkill for downloading porn don't ya think?

Shit. Not if your system has an attached transporter beam and makes the porn real so you can join in the fun. Then the food replicator makes you a pizza.

[Hardrock69]

Dude...you got Tannoy PB8s? So do I! They are my "studio monitors" and main speakers for mixing, video editing, gaming, etc.

I bought them for $450 for the pair in 1997, and melted the crossovers the day Pantera's Reinventing The Steel came out. Since then the woofer foam suffered dry rot, so I had them refoamed, replaced the crossovers and put brand new tweeters in them.

THEY ROCK!!!

[jhale667]

Yeah, they're cool... I've had them forever, but one of the woofers is toast...won't cost that much to redo them, just haven't needed them with the BX5As (which came with my original Pro Tools package). Maybe I should fix them and get them running in here just for the sheer overkill factor...


EDIT: Better side view

[jhale667]

Oh, and THIS was kinda funny: When I installed the two drives from my old system as storage drives, figured I'd be able to res-use my TV tuner card from the old machine too, so threw that in the tower. When I tried to initialize the program, got a "no device detected" error message, figured I hadn't seated the card properly, and planned to try to re-seat it the next morning, since I wanted to watch the Mayweather fight replay that was about to start at that moment. Woke up to a Win 7 system alert the next day - "The ATI (model number) TV tuner card you are trying to use is not recognized by Windows 7. ATI has no plans to update the drivers for this card" etc. which is hilarious - "I don't recoginize the ATI yadda-yadda card you installed in me~" if it can't recognize it, how come it can tell me WTF kind of tuner card it is???


So, about another 5 bills to go and I'll have the latest version of Pro Tools (again) using the cross-grade, and HDTV.

[BigBadBrian]

You should've bought a Mac. Once you buy a Mac, you'll never go back.

They just fucking work!

I won't buy anything but since I got my Macbook Pro last August.

Just a friendly little piece of advice.

[jhale667]

You should've bought a Mac. Once you buy a Mac, you'll never go back.

They just fucking work!

I won't buy anything but since I got my Macbook Pro last August.

Just a friendly little piece of advice.

Considered making the switch but A) I'm already on PCs at the office 8-9 hours a day, it's what I'm used to, and B) this has just as much processing power as a Mac that would've run me at least a grand more even BEFORE I update Pro Tools.

[jhale667]

Had to deal with system compatibility issues, a "missing iLok authorization" error issue (in that I'd had an account with them since '09 but never needed the actual physical USB key before having never transferred licenses, went and bought the stupid USB key, got sidetrack and blew it off for a week, but then after a momentary scare reading my Mbox might not work with the new OS, finally after poking around on their user's forum got the Win 7 drivers from Avid for my Mbox 2 to get PT LE8 up and running tonight. Still having an issue with plug-ins since all the file paths in the song folders have changed, but I think I can work it out...




So now I can apparently do the cross-grade to PT 10 with no issues, but if I can get the plug-ins functioning again w/LE8 might hold off on that for a minute...

[Nitro Express]

I have both Macs and PC's. They both have their strong and weak points. I actually have had more hardware issues with Macs than I have with PC's. I bought a MacBook Air and found the new operating system is not compatible with power pc files. All my financial backup data was power pc files and even if I upgraded the software the back up files would still be not compatible. So that was a bitch. Then I'm having compatibility issues with Windows 7. Software that will run just fine on Window XP won't even load on Windows 7.

I've just learned don't get rid of your old computer. Hang onto it until you get your new system working because you might have some surprises. Stuff you think will be compatible often is not.

As far as the MacBook Air goes I like it. I was worried about it being fragile but it's made of aluminum and has proven to be durable. The keys in the keyboard are under lit and the sound for the speakers come out of the keys and the sound is surprisingly good. The computer runs cool but one time a little fan turned on inside the computer. These things are pretty damn thin but there is a fan inside.

I used my last Apple laptop every day for six years and never had one problem with it. I hope this one holds up as well.

[Nitro Express]

Yeah, they're cool... I've had them forever, but one of the woofers is toast...won't cost that much to redo them, just haven't needed them with the BX5As (which came with my original Pro Tools package). Maybe I should fix them and get them running in here just for the sheer overkill factor...


EDIT: Better side view

Are those dust filters on the cooling fans worth getting? I'm running no filters on my fans and have to crack the case open and vacuum out the dust bunnies more than I would like. I'm running like four huge fans in an AZZA box. No liquid cooling but the box stays so cool with all the circulating air I could keep beer cold inside my computer case.

[Nitro Express]

Considered making the switch but A) I'm already on PCs at the office 8-9 hours a day, it's what I'm used to, and B) this has just as much processing power as a Mac that would've run me at least a grand more even BEFORE I update Pro Tools.

To be honest, I think Microsoft did a pretty decent job with Windows 7. I've had problems synching MP3 files to some of my mobile players from Apple iTunes. So I use the Windows 7 Media Player. Apple tends to make their stuff work with Apple products like if you download your music from the iTunes site and sync to an iPod it works but if you use let's say Amazon and use another portable device you run into problems. Windows 7 is more adaptable and I'm using it to download songs and synch with. I was having compatibility problems using OSX. If you use all Apple products everything tends to work fine but if you use an Android or something else you have problems and Windows 7 seems to give you more flexibility.

There sometimes is an advantage to go with a closed system like Apple and sometimes there are advantages going with an open system like Windows. You pretty much get what you buy from Apple. With a PC you can customize it into what you want. Sure it won't be as clean and neat as an Apple product but big boxes full of lights and fans are still cool.

For me it's like asking what I like better blondes or brunettes. I like them both.

[Seshmeister]

If I were to build a new PC now, I would get a solid state drive for my C drive.

Sounds like you got a smoking machine, but SSDs make standard disc drives look like they are running at 33 1/3.

They are still too expensive though. I noticed on Newegg.com that they are now down to about a buck-fifty a gig. They were about 2 bucks a gig. I never spend more than 100 bucks on any one thing. That is my "price point".

And I have to have at least an 80 Gig C drive.....so it is going to be awhile before I can get one myself.

What a lot of people do is to get a small SSD and put the operating system and swap file on it. You then have a big conventional second drive for your applications and data.

[Hardrock69]

In the past there have been problems with SSD failure rates being abnormally high.

I must assume they are correcting the problems. Just Google SSD failure and you will have too much to read.

I had found info on using an IDE-to-SD Card reader adapter in my Roland VS-1680.....it only can read up to 16GB of storage space....and a 16GB SD card is what, 20 bucks?

Only problem is they are not designed for the massive amounts of read/write cycles they would have to undergo, and they are not reliable as a long-term replacement for a hard drive.

I figure by the time I have money to spare on an SSD, they will be much more reliable. An advantage to being "Po' Folks".

[Seshmeister]

With the small SSD with the OS on it, if it does fail you don't lose anything as you just keep a ghost copy of your Windows install on the big drive.

[jhale667]

I've just learned don't get rid of your old computer. Hang onto it until you get your new system working because you might have some surprises. Stuff you think will be compatible often is not.

I kept my old OS drive and incorporated it into the new system. I've been copying files over to the new C drive where necessary, so far the main issue is my 3rd party plugins.

[Hardrock69]

Right on, J!

[jhale667]

Strange Windows system message today... says my Line 6 UX2 is "not supported by this version of Windows" and yet I'm able to update the drivers to the current version on the Line 6 website, and both Windows Device Manager and Pro Tools can see it...


Fuck it, I'm going to run PODfarm via my iLok as a plugin going forward anyway, but looks like I should just fully bite the bullet and upgrade my Pro Tools interface as well...

[jhale667]

Here's what I should have done in the 1st place, and probably will be doing...

http://www.avid.com/US/products/eleven-rack_2

[ELVIS]

How much is that baby ??

[ELVIS]

Those samples sound cool...