Computer dead, need new one

Off-Topic
1

My computer’s hard disk just failed, and I need a new computer. I’ve backed up a lot of stuff that I need, but I’m still losing some stuff.

My point is, I need a new computer, and I want to make this one count. People keep telling me to build my own, but I’ve had no experience doing that and if something doesn’t work I won’t know how to fix it. It’s still my best option for getting my money’s worth out of the sytem.

I was thinking of getting a package build your own PC like this from newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1189055

But like I said, I really don’t know what the end result will be in terms of putting it together, and I still need an OS as well as other peripherals.

At any rate, I’d like to hear your guy’s input.

Merry Christmas btw.

2

To me it sounds like you only need a new harddrive, but if your computer is outdated anyway maybe it’s best to buy/build a new one.

How old is your computer? What is your budget? Maybe an upgrade is all you need?

You already have a cabinet and maybe your power supply is good enough too? If you skip any hungry graphics cards you will not use nearly as much power as if you have high end sli graphics cards.

What you really need is a decent mobo, a good stable PCU (not necesserily the one with the higest wattage), a powerful processor, a sound card that suits your needs and enough RAM.

I’m very outdated on the computer market, but i think something like this should be very good for your needs:http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/lenovo/k-series/k450e/

I think i would have gone for windows 7 instead of win 8, but that is maybe just a matter of preference. Also it might be a good idea to buy an extra SSD to improve the performance even further, especially if you work with a lot of large files.

3

I have an almost 5 year old laptop, so replacement is a money sink, as the model itself is a piece of shit. I think the one I have lined up in my link has the same specs for almost half the price of the lenovo. I’m on a budget, so I don’t want to spend more than 700 for all the shit I need, including monitors and keyboard and everything.

Thanks for responding though. Merry Christmas and happy composing!

4

478.99 is not that close to half of 749 and i guess the shipping is added to the 478.99 too.

I don’t know anything about Apex, and Asus has poor customer service and is generally lower quality than Lenovo as far as i know. It will probably do the job just fine though.

I also have a hunch that the processor you have chosen is far from as good as the one in the Lenovo, not really shure about this though. At least if the price tells much about how it performs: The AMD you have chosen costs 109.99 while the one in the Lenovo costs 339.99 in the same shop. So basically you have your price difference betwwen the two computers right there. If you really need that extra power is another question though.

If you build the machine yourself it’s a bigger chance for it not to work optimally, i’m speaking from personal experience. I can’t count how many hours i’ve wasted to get things to work like it should.

I’ve built two computers, both around an Asus mobo, the first one worked very good after some firmware updates but the second one has always had some annoying problems i haven’t been able to fix.

Problems can be caused by overheating, hardware incompatibility/conflicts, firmware problems etc.

I’m definately not a computer expert though, if i were i’d probably not waste that much time to get things to work.

5

I was in a similar boat last year, but I had received a nice christmas bonus from work and had a 1k budget to work with (lucky me, that’s not happening again for a while). I kind of wanted to build my own, but the more I researched it, the more terrified I became of fucking something up and bricking an expensive component. I think the “design your own pc” services are pretty cool. I used Ibuypower, which is fairly expensive compared to building your own, but you gotta understand what you’re paying for is for pro’s to do it for you, and you still get to pick your components. If you can afford something like that I highly recommend it, 10/10 would do it again. I already had a video card and just transferred it over, and I already had a monitor too.

From my experience what I would recommend is an i5, unless i7 is barely any more, over i5 is kind of overkill. I also spent money on getting not a ton of ram, but the 8 GB I did get is really good ram (1600Mhz). I haven’t needed more than 8 GB for anything I’ve done so far, and if I do need some in the future it’s a relatively easy upgrade. I feel like concentrating on getting better ram more than more ram has really payed off in terms of performance.

However I’m a noob and take whatever I say with a grain of salt. What I will say with confidence, is the difference between this i5 with 8 GB of 1600Mhz RAM and my old duo core AMD with whatever the hell RAM the thing came with is night and day. The songs I produce now that barely touch my available resources will straight up crash my old PC. I can run so many effects plugins… SO MANY EFFECTS PLUGINS. I’ve never even come close to having performance issues from too many plugins.

On my old PC once I was over 2 guitar tracks with my typical chains, which were just amp sim>cab>eq and maybe one other effect, my machine would start to feel the pressure. Renoise and Reaper would just give up on playback sometimes and pop an error. I would have had to start bouncing tracks to preserve cpu. But now I don’t have to do that at all. I can have a dozen guitar tracks loaded with effects, no sweat at all.

So IMO it’s well worth it to customize your own PC rather than rely on possibly cheaped out components on a prebuilt.

6

So IMO it’s well worth it to customize your own PC rather than rely on possibly cheaped out components on a prebuilt.

While i mostly agree, i mentioned Lenovo because it’s known as a solid brand that does not cheap out on components like HP and Dell to mention a couple. I might be wrong though, because i’ve been out of the game for a while, but i have the impression Lenovo is kind of like the Apple of Windows PCs.

I’m all Asus myself with both stationary and laptop, but i have also picked apart my Asus laptop about 20 times to fix it. Twice i’ve had to solder a part that is the least accessible part on the whole machine, the PSU socket. I had to order these parts on ebay and the parts weren’t even the right ones, because Asus had the great idea of using different sockets on the same computer model, so i had to modify the socket with short cables and bend the pins just to be able to solder it on and make it work correctly.

I kinda like Asus, but i also like to take things apart and hopefully fix stuff, it’s a bit of a love/hate relationship.

I’ll probably do an upgrade some day soon myself and i’m not shure what to go for, but i can’t imagine i will ever think of more CPU as being overkill. If it can render my videos, fractals, 3D animations faster and if i may buttfuck renoise with every bit of cpu consuming trickery i can come up with, i’m all for it. :stuck_out_tongue:

Think i’ll go for an intel cpu and probably a version of the i7, 16GB RAM (maybe it will do with 8gb ddr4?), an SSD for the OS. No clue which mobo to buy?I already have a tower and i think maybe my 550W Corsair is good enough? Graphics card should still do the trick i think, i don’t really need a new one before Halflife 3, but then i guess i need a better psu as well.

I need a new soundcard though, my E-MU 16161m is starting to become very unstable. It’s really the excellent card for me, but the thing is getting old and discontinued, so i guess it’s time to move on to something that is more likely to work with newer systems.

7

@Elsekiss, your linked PC kit looks decent enough, but it seems to be lacking graphics. There’s no onboard video port and the parts list doesn’t name a video card, so you’ll probably end up needing to add a card to that build. On the plus side, the ASUS mobo looks like it has several years of upgrades to give you.

I’d prefer to put my own PC together as it ends up being cheaper and you can get name-brand parts with upgrade options for the future. Most OEM PCs are limited in upgrade options (laptops being the worst), and most OEMs get all their CHEAP parts from the same half-dozen Chinese manufacturers (Apple included shock). My main desktop is one I built myself, and it’s only now starting to show its age after 8 years.

But I’ve been out of the market for a while, so I can’t really recommend anything with confidence. Abit and ASUS have usually been the top two MB makers around, with Biostar and Gigabyte being decent seconds, but that may have changed since I was last current. Antec is still one of the best PSU makers around, along with CoolerMaster, Rosewill, ThermalTake, and Corsair. I’ve got an Antec Quadro 850 that’s been purring like a kitten for about 4 or 5 years (it’s actually overkill for my system, but I plan on bringing it with me into a new build at some point). Seagate is still good for harddrives, and Sony and Samsung are still good for optical drives. Antec and CoolerMaster are good names for case fans.

Graphics cards start to get a bit messier, though. If you’re not gaming then you can actually just get a 64MB PCI video card and save a bundle. Just don’t expect Windows Aero to work :wink:

The whole Intel vs AMD thing is largely just brand fan-boy-ism. Both are good, and there are equivalent processors offered by both makers. The real difference comes from the multi-GPU support that various motherboards offer; SLI or Crossfire. If you’re not gaming, then there’s not much reason to worry about the difference. Go by what you need and what you can afford.

8

Well, i’ll guess there’ll be a lot of noodles for a while. Last night i spent way too much money on an upgrade… :panic:

I went for i7-5820K, a MSI X99S mobo, 8GB DDR4 2133MHz, Samsung EVO 850 SSD 250GB and a Cooler Master fan for the cpu.

I reckon that should do the job plus a bit more.

Now i still need a new GPU and a new soundcard…probaby a new PSU as well. I just hope i can live without those for a while.

9

I spent several hours building the damn thing yesterday and i have some experience builing pcs earlier.

First i realised my new mobo has no IDE support, so i had to rush to the store and buy a new DVD-writer to be able to install the OS

Then when i installed the cooler master on the cpu, one of the specialized screw broke inside the treads of the mobo. Fortunately i was able to drill it out with a small mill bit.

The cooler master was rendered useless so i had to install the original intel fan instead. :wacko:

The front panel connectors didn’t have proper markings that told me which pin was + or -, so i had to guess on that by assuming the black wire was - and the other +. One of them had only white and green wires, so i really hope i haven’t messed anything up.

Well, i finally got the thing together and so far everything seems to go very smooth. There is definately a big performance boost, but i haven’t got to test it properly yet.

I’m going to connect my mixer to the on board sound card to see how well it performs, i’m especially eager to find out how low latency i get for my recordings. Then i’ll run a heavy rendering job in AE to see how it performs there.

Happy new year!

10

My recommendation for computer build:

  1. Intel i7 CPU (Not AMD, not i3)
  2. At least 16 GB of RAM.
  3. 500GB Samsung EVO SSD for system drive.
  4. 1TB+** 7200rpm HDD**for extra storage.
  5. Windows 8.1

I don’t recommend AMD CPU because lot of plugins and software have Intel specific optimizations or something like that making them actually perform a lot better on intel. i5 runs most stuff very well, but you will hit the ceiling with some plugins much earlier than with i7. Specially if you at some point wish to use some of the Adobe software, which artists often do at one point in their life or another. :wink: The i3 is unusable for music production.

RAM is really helpful. Specially when running huge romplers or long samples. Having lot of it just makes things a lot faster. I first though 16GB is overkill, but experience shows this is barely enough when running some of the creative software,

SSD drives really make things fly and considering how slow Renoise is loading things, having an SSD and lots of RAM really helps with keeping the nerves intact. Same thing applies to huge romplers such as Kontakt that will load a lot faster from SSD. Everything in general is a lot snappier. I recommend going for 500GB model because it has more space for plugins actually to store data. Those 128GB ones barely fit your OS and software and don’t leave much space for sample libraries which really benefit from SSD.

5400rpm HDDs are more quiet, but they are too slow for any creative work. 7200rpm HDDs work well enough to store less used sample libraries and recordings and such.

Windows 8 is lot snappier than windows 7. Just required some getting used to. There is some free software that restores the start menu and overall feel on windows 8 to usable state. :slight_smile:

11

Now my graphic card seems to struggle, i vacuumed the heat sink and fan and unfortunately bent a fan blade and now i get black screen after a few minutes.

Not shure if it’s fixable, so i guess i’ll have to buy a new one.

My old GTS 250 is no longer supported and it was never a very good card in the first place so i guess i had to replace it soon enough anyway. the new CPU/mobo does not have an internal gpu so the computer is useless without the new one.

Suva: I see you recommend 16G ram, but what do you think about 8G DDR4? To my understanding 8G will be plenty enough for Renoise and DDR4 is suppose to be faster than DDR3…

Also i bought a 250G EVO,I will only use it for Win7, Renoise, After Effect, Photoshop, Apophysis, Virtualdub, Audicity and maybe a couple of other apps on the way. Shouldn’t it be enough? Is it the same with SSD drives, as with the physical disk rives that you shouln’t fill it up more than a certain amount before its speed starts decreasing?

I’ve read the same about the CPU that Intel is the way to go these days. I also have read that ASUS has lost some of it’s grip, i’ve read more complaints about the newer ASUS mobos lately. I’ve used ASUS for a long time, but i also had my fair share of troubles with it, so this time i choose MSI x99s SLI plus, as it’s supposed to be very solid and well protected against problems like static electricity, over voltage, over heating and user errors.

A problem i have is that my main front panel won’t fit the pins on my mobo. Not shure how to fix it,but i think i’ll try to pull the leads out of the connectors with a plier. Fortunately there is a power switch on the mobo, so i can use that for the time being.

,

12

just some quick thoughts on some of the stuff written here:

@Pre-Built PCs from brand X or Y

stay away from whatever brand you’re focusing on. Lenovo, HP, whatever. reasons:

Lenovo definately uses super-cheap OEM motherboards and power supplies that DO NOT COMPLY with the ATX standard in terms of cable pin count (power supply). Lenovo for example uses a 14-pin connector, whereas 24 PIN is the industry standard. you will not be able to replace a broken PSU with a standard PSU sold in any hardware store. Same goes for the motherboard of course. Upgrading a Lenovo system with a graphicscard that requires additional 6-pin or 8-pin power connectors is therefore not possible unless you also exchange the motherboard + PSU.

@thebellows

superb selection of hardware you made. i’m currently also having an eye on a similar configuration based on an i7-5820k, just hoping that prices will drop for DDR4 memory anytime soon :>

the configuration i’m monitoring and would recommend is this:http://geizhals.de/eu/?cat=WL-461075

keep in mind that there is no HDD, optical drive, display or keyb./mouse included, as i will continue to use these from my current PC.

@AMD vs INTEL

AMD price/performance is only acceptable in the < 100$ CPU region. above that, AMD is simply not able to compete with INTEL in terms of performance, efficiency and power consumption.

@connecting the front panel

don’t worry about messing with + and -. the worst thing that can happen is a not working power or hdd LED. in that case, simply change on lead with the other.

for connecting the power and reset switch you don’t even have to bother about + and - as it really doesn’t matter at all - it will work in either way.

if you power switch connector is a 3-pin or 4-pin (with 2 cables attached) and your motherboard has two leads that are directly next do each other, simply cut the plastic of the 3- or 4-pin connector in the middle, so that you can attach the two leads individually.

13

@connecting the front panel

don’t worry about messing with + and -. the worst thing that can happen is a not working power or hdd LED. in that case, simply change on lead with the other.

for connecting the power and reset switch you don’t even have to bother about + and - as it really doesn’t matter at all - it will work in either way.

if you power switch connector is a 3-pin or 4-pin (with 2 cables attached) and your motherboard has two leads that are directly next do each other, simply cut the plastic of the 3- or 4-pin connector in the middle, so that you can attach the two leads individually.

I didn’t think about that, but that should do the trick. Thanks for the tip!

About my hardware selection, do you think my old Corsair 550W is good enough to drive this system? I guess it depends on which graphics card i’m going for, but i’ll probably just go for a lower end one.

14

Suva: I see you recommend 16G ram, but what do you think about 8G DDR4? To my understanding 8G will be plenty enough for Renoise and DDR4 is suppose to be faster than DDR3…

8GB is enough for renoise, but definitely not enough for Adobe creative software such as Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop*. I have 16 and I constantly wish I had more. Specially when working with 4k footage (although even with 1080 you wish you had more than 8GB).

250GB will run out soon if you have Komplete and other huge plugins. Also when working with huge media files for video projects. When working with video, it is highly recommended to have separate drives for media anyway.

I wouldn’t buy the cheapest video card if you want to use AE: It takes great advantage of GPU and saves you from some headaches.GeForce GTX 970 is relatively affordable yet high performance video card that came out recently. I think it costs around 300€, yet is in top 5 in video card benchmarks.

  • 8GB is enough when using Photoshop to crop photos, or do basic editing with some layers. You will soon run into trouble if you are doing complex edits on very high res photos. Also you will have issues when you have projects that require you to run multiple programs from adobe suite at the same time.
15

8GB is enough for renoise, but definitely not enough for Adobe creative software such as Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop*. I have 16 and I constantly wish I had more. Specially when working with 4k footage (although even with 1080 you wish you had more than 8GB).

250GB will run out soon if you have Komplete and other huge plugins. Also when working with huge media files for video projects. When working with video, it is highly recommended to have separate drives for media anyway.

I wouldn’t buy the cheapest video card if you want to use AE: It takes great advantage of GPU and saves you from some headaches.GeForce GTX 970 is relatively affordable yet high performance video card that came out recently. I think it costs around 300€, yet is in top 5 in video card benchmarks.

  • 8GB is enough when using Photoshop to crop photos, or do basic editing with some layers. You will soon run into trouble if you are doing complex edits on very high res photos. Also you will have issues when you have projects that require you to run multiple programs from adobe suite at the same time.

I guess i’ll have to upgrade when i feel the need for it. Renoise is my no. 1 priority anyway and i rarely work with very large files in AE, it’s mostly for fun and web videos.
I mean i just upgraded from a Intel core 2 duo 2.00GHz, 4GB DDR3 ram of the cheeper kind on Win7 and a GTS 250. So if i was able to do some video editing with that, i should be able to to do some now.

I didn’t really think the video card did much while using AE? Maybe that has improved a lot since when i tried it out? I once upgraded my video card just to make AE go faster, and got very disappointed that it had no noticeable effect. That was many many years ago though, on a pirated version of AE…
I found some versions of the GTX 970, hmm there is one at a discount price here now that is a bit tempting. It’s a MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB PhysX CUDA, but it costs about 350€.
Think i’ll have to wait a bit anyway, seems like my video card is working again, it’s running cool and the fan is no longer stuck, so i think i’ll keep my GTS 250 for a while longer.

16

Nvidia is rumoured to announce three new graphics cards onthe 22nd of January, GTX 96X.

I believe it is true and that the cards will be available the same day.