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Music rig for under £600

post #1 of 14
5/3/12 at 4:26am
Thread Starter 
Hey everyone, I am going to study music at Uni and I need a good desktop for a hefty amount of DAW. This is my first ever build and need as much help as I can get! Since this is my first build, I dont know much about general jargon/compatability of parts or what I need.
So far I have this lot:

CPU
2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i5 2320 3.00GHz

RAM
Corsair CML8GX3M2A1600C9 LP Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB)

Motherboard
Asus MAXIMUS IV GENE-Z/GEN3 Motherboard

Hard Drive
OCZ PTL1-25SAT3-64G Petrol Series 64GB SATA III Internal 2.5 Inch SSD (for OS and apps)

Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda© SATA 6Gb/s 1TB Hard Drive (general storage)

Graphics
Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 5670 Graphics Card 1 GB DVI VGA HDMI PCI Express

Case
COOLERMASTER RC-692-KKN2 COOLERMASTER 690II BLACK CHASSIS

Power
OCZ 500W ModXStream Pro Power Supply

OS
Windows 7 Home Premuim 64bit

So far this comes to about £650 I'd like to keep the CPU, RAM and the general HDD setup. Also I have heard of RAID which from what I gather is mutiple HDDs working as one? Can someone explain this to me and if it will help me or not?


Many Thanks!

Matt smile.gif
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post #2 of 14
5/3/12 at 4:33am
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I like the build, but maybe see if you can save up a bit more and get a bigger SSD. . . 64GB will quickly run out once you install WIndows
Also, sorry for being ingorant, but whats DAW?

and RAID is like that, but depending on which mode you chose ( 0,1,5, and a couple others) you can speed up your system or mirror drives like a backup. Be aware some RAID modes can take out all the drives in you RAID array if one has an error though

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
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post #3 of 14
5/3/12 at 4:35am
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since this is a music rig, I assume you find music very important. And if you find music important, I would either invest in a good sound card, or if not a good 5.1 headset or speakerset.
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post #4 of 14
5/3/12 at 6:07am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the fast replies! Could someone suggest an alternative motherboard as this one costs about £140 which is reasonable but I'm trying to save the money for some speakers (if I'm going to have speakers, do I need a good soundcard still?).
A DAW is just a label for audio software (Digital Audio Workstation) and if I'm running VSTs (virtual instruments) then I'll need quite a bit of power. Once I'm a bit more experienced in the field of building I'll consider the RAID option but it seems a little complicated at the minute. Also I'm not that interested in overclocking, again due to lack of experience tongue.gif.

Many thanks

Matt
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post #5 of 14
5/3/12 at 6:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by UltraVolta425 View Post

since this is a music rig, I assume you find music very important. And if you find music important, I would either invest in a good sound card, or if not a good 5.1 headset or speakerset.

Quote:
Originally Posted by MattD1000 View Post

Thanks for the fast replies! Could someone suggest an alternative motherboard as this one costs about £140 which is reasonable but I'm trying to save the money for some speakers (if I'm going to have speakers, do I need a good soundcard still?).
A DAW is just a label for audio software (Digital Audio Workstation) and if I'm running VSTs (virtual instruments) then I'll need quite a bit of power. Once I'm a bit more experienced in the field of building I'll consider the RAID option but it seems a little complicated at the minute. Also I'm not that interested in overclocking, again due to lack of experience tongue.gif.
Many thanks
Matt

A sound card is a good idea unless if you already have an interface, which I think is much more versatile and easier to use.

And I would not buy a 5.1 headset of speaker set if music production is what you're going to do since almost all 5.1 speaker systems are not very balanced, and I have yet to hear any 5.1 headset that sounds good at all.

I use a pair of the krk rokit 8g2s for my setup, connected through an m-audio fast track pro (which I need to upgrade badly), and for the price,
they sound quite good. For speakers, I would definitely get a pair of studio monitors because they are designed to play accurately, not unbalanced (and usually muddy) like most 5.1 systems.
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post #6 of 14
5/3/12 at 6:26am
Why are people even suggest 5.1 headphones/speaker when all music is done in stereo?

Anyways, you're probably going to want to spend another 600 pounds on the speakers and a DAC otherwise your production won't sound all that good if you're using cheap speakers.
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post #7 of 14
5/3/12 at 6:31am
Don't bother with a sound card. If you are going to be recording music, you want a digital interface that allows you plug in instruments/mics/midi devices to your computer. I would go with this. I have the older Presonus Audiobox USB (not USB 2.0) and it works great.

edit: Also, the Studio One Artist DAW that comes with this is pretty good. You will probably be using whatever your classes dictate, but at least you have another option if you want it. Purchasing this software by itself would cost about as much as the hardware with the software included costs.
Edited by mogators - 5/3/12 at 7:13am
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post #8 of 14
5/3/12 at 6:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ImmortalKenny View Post

Why are people even suggest 5.1 headphones/speaker when all music is done in stereo?
Anyways, you're probably going to want to spend another 600 pounds on the speakers and a DAC otherwise your production won't sound all that good if you're using cheap speakers.

Hmm, I disagree. Unless if he's a professional (which I am assuming he is not), he can easily get by with a pair of cheap studio monitors, like the Yamaha HS80Ms.
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post #9 of 14
5/3/12 at 7:44am
  • Ironman517
  • I don't understand the point of brand favoritism.
Since you are using virtual instruments you should be looking into a hefty CPU. Here is a build to consider if you are NOT overclocking
i7 build (Click to show)
PCPartPicker part list

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£229.40 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: ASRock H61M-VS Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£35.79 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory (£29.00 @ Maplin Electronics)
Hard Drive: Crucial M4 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£88.94 @ Scan.co.uk)
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£68.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case (£33.47 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: Corsair 430W ATX12V Power Supply (£34.81 @ Maplin Electronics)
Optical Drive: Sony DDU1681S-0B DVD/CD Drive (£11.86 @ Scan.co.uk)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) (£65.92 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £598.18

And use the remaining on a sound card and some nice cans thumb.gif

You could drop the SSD to a 64GB one if you want to free up some budget. I added a 1TB HDD since, before compressed, music files are quite large.
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post #10 of 14
5/3/12 at 9:33am
Thread Starter 
Thank-you so much! That was just what I was looking for biggrin.gif. So is the video card not important then?

Many thanks,

Matt
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