So I've just been on Dabs.ie and spec'd a Recording pc that will be enough hopefully for a few years

I wanted something that would cope with VSTis like Omnisphere and EZdrummer and maybe Trillian as well as your normal effect plugins

Antec Sonata IV 620UK Quiet Mid Tower Case Black USB3 + 620W PSU

AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8GHz AM3 Processor

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 DDR3 ATX

Corsair Memory 16GB (4x4GB) Vengeance Performance DDR3 1600MHz

OCZ Technology 120GB Vertex 3 Series SATA III 2.5" Solid State Drive

2x Samsung 1TB Spinpoint F3 7200rpm SATA 3Gb/s 32MB

Asus ATI Radeon 5450 HD 1GB PCI-Express 2.1 HDMI

Samsung 12x BD-ROM/DVDRW Lightscribe SATA

BenQ G2420HD 24" Widescreen 1920 x 1080 HDMI DVI-D VGA LCD Monitor

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional English DVD

CablesToGo 1m 180° To 90° 7 pin Serial ATA (SATA) Cable
CablesToGo 2m Velocity HDMI Digital Video Cable
Corsair Air Series A50 Performance CPU Cooler

This pretty lot comes to just under €1500

I hope I haven't missed anything!!!!!!

Nice spec generally .

One possible thing to think about is the video card. If you only intend the pc for recording then you have no need for a high end video card. Some actually will make the audio performance worse due to data transfer issues and they also tend to suck power from the psu. So you could downgrade the card to a more basic 2d model with dual monitor out put and maybe change the 24 inch screen to 2 19 inchers.

Problem though might be finding anyone who will still carry a more basic 2d dual monitor card...

I thought that card was quite basic when I looked at the price ~€30 I like that it has HDMI as the Monitor with HDMI input can be used elsewhere. I'm not sure I'll have the space for 2x 19" Monitors though it would be preferable to have tracks on one screen and mixer etc on the other.

That's probably a good indication of what is now seen as entry level video cards . You might still be able to source a 2d one but they will almost certainly be NOS and cost more than 30 Euros and may not be pci express. So for 30 Euros you may as well stick with it and if you can turn off some of the video bells and whistles .*

Twin monitors is a bit of a personal preference. I'd much rather have 2 twin 19 inchers than one big screen so that I can dedicate the space on one to one function and the other runs as ancillary much like you say.


(*Same goes for Windows really - turn off a lot of the 'cool' stuff as it just gets in the way of audio performance.)

Thanks for the advice

Evil machine !!! That SSD is a bingo , but it's too pricey for me at the moment :/

I have very similar setup, just bought the system couple of months ago, but a bit lower specs:


AMD Phenom X6 1090T
Asus M5A97 PRO
8 GB RAM
SSD Kingston 60GB
1x 350GB, 1x750GB HDDs
Entry level Radeon HD6xxx GPU
64bit Win7
32bit DAW (for now, because of stability)

In general, I can run Spectrasonics plugins no problem with this setup, and can pack lots of instances in the same project, that shouldn't be a problem for you. If you are building your software setup from scratch it will be a lot easier. I have plenty of 32bit projects that have 32bit plugs. Some cannot be found in 64bit. Drivers for my audio system are still in beta 64bit stage. These "smaller" problems will become the biggest, the rest of the stuff will be easy. I hope you have little or no problems at all.


EDIT: on a side note, I noticed huge improvement in video rengering (6 cores are doing their work), and I noticed hube improvement in responsiveness of the system and OS, due to SSD drive, best investment and worth it!

EDIT: typos in italic

Should be a great rig The 120 SSD will fill up fast and windows will be hogging part of it for ram swap outs. If anything, I'd say maybe skip one of the internals (you can always add external storage really cheap and it's portable) and get a bigger SSD. I've never, heard anyone regret getting a bigger boot drive. Ever.

Though I've heard plenty from those who "wished they got the bigger drive" 120 seems huge until you put windows (massive resource hog that it is), your apps and your plugins, vst's, and anything else you want to run at top speed on it. All drives should run with 20 percent free space as a minimum. So 200 mb free per gig. Otherwise, they can start to act odd. Of course some folks run it to the limit and have zero trouble. Some folks seem to do lots of stuff and have zero trouble. IF you are one of those folks, then you'll probably be fine. If not, make sure to leave 20 percent on any physical drive.

Looks like you've specced a monster rig Enjoy!

Todd

AMD Athlon III X2 255 3.1ghz Processor

500GB Internal Hard Drive

1TB External Hard Drive (Seagate GoFlex)

NVidia GeForce Integrated graphics chipset (512mb, hdmi - I have a 1024mb model but I took it out as I have no need for it)

Corsair 8GB RAM (2x4GB)

Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit)

LG 26" LCD TV (used as monitor )

Asus Xonar D1 Sound Card (default as this PC is new as of today)

REAPER



This setup I can run up to about 75 tracks filled with Native Instruments effects of all kind; Absynth, Massive, Battery - alongside some EWQL plugins, Guitar Rig 5 and Steven Slate Drums as well and it runs pretty solid. More intricate orchestra work sometimes creates a heavy drain on the CPU though, crashed a few times. Wish I had 16GB ram

I was just going to leave the ssd for windows and programs, the 1st 7200 drive would be for vst and samples, and 2nd for audio data

That should work nicely.