I need a new PC

[Lüt]

The Celeron 500 finally died.

(OK, it died about 2 months ago, but in true Millennium fashion I'm only getting around to dealing with it now because lack of a working PC has finally irritated me into action.)

So I need to build a whole new rig, since there's not much point upgrading the old unit. Problem is, last time I was proficient with the hardware market was when the Celeron 500's were new. I went to pricewatch and didn't have a damned clue what they were selling now, so I need some people adept at modern hardware to help me translate these listings into something useful and point out what's good and what sucks and why.

Most of the work I'll be doing on it will be audio recording & processing, followed by writing & other office stuff, graphics, video, and of course internet. I do occasionally play some games, but they're either Nintendo emulators or early 90's releases, so this is primarily intended to be a desktop workstation and not a gaming rig (though all-around optimal performance is preferable). OS will be XP Pro.

Budget is decent but not excessive. I'll probably have to work with 2nd or 3rd rank on the "newest hardware" lists (i.e. I'll buy 2 500GB drives for $100 each instead of 1 750GB drive for $250), plus I'd rather deal with tried and true quality hardware and not brand new developments that are barely beginning to get their stuff together.

Processor: First; can I get a clock speed here?!? I figure a model 960 is better than a 950, but otherwise these numbers are useless. Second; dual-core. Absolutely necessary for advanced audio work. Last I checked, AMD was slaugtering Intel with AthlonXP's. Anything change since then?

Motherboard: Don't want to pay extra for useless on-board options: no video, no sound, etc. Network is OK. Needs at least 4 USB slots, preferably 6. And where the hell did all the expansion slots go? I'm lucky to find ones with 3. Need the best one that supports both the best processor and the choice hard drives.

Hard Drives: Twin 500GBs, nothing less will suffice. Based on the review here, I'm going with 2 RE2 WD5000YS's. "SATA" connection, whatever that means.

CD/DVD Drives: Whichever's the quickest and most accurate for ripping audio. I honestly can't remember the last time I used the CD drive for anything else. I suppose these would have to come with SATA connections too?

Video Card: 95% of the programs I'll be using will be desktop apps, and almost every game I play is pre-3D-accelation-era, so I was thinking I could save money here and skip the 3D card entirely, except I heard they don't even make 2D cards anymore. If that's true, I suppose I'll get a good 3D card then, since I guess staff of my rank here should have played the new Doom at least once. Then again, maybe on-board video isn't such a bad option?

Sound Card: I'll be discussing this at some audio forums, but I know some people here do recording, so feel free to recommend. I've already got a multi-track mixer which I hardly use, so a simple line in/out should suffice. My biggest concern is minimal background/electronic noise.

RAM: If one thing hasn't changed, DDR and its incarnations still seem to be going strong. DDR2 seems to be the preferable option, though for some reason it seems to have multiple numerical qualifications. I'm keeping the system quite free of bloatware (barring XP), so in most cases I'd be fine with 1GB, but I'm thinking I should go with 2GB for large-scale audio/video work.

Guides and comparisons would be appreciated, and I mean accurate & objective reviews, not manufacturer websites bragging why their product is the best option and leaving me with 15 different "best options". And yes I realize that anything currently available on the market is an upgrade to what I have now, but I'd like to optimize regardless.

So, your recommendations and explanations please...

[Bucket]

CPU: Intel just succeeded AMD in the "power per dollar" game. You could go get a Core Quad for about $250. However, I would HIGHLY recommend AMD's 64 X2 chips, if you've got the OS and the software to support it. You probably already know that AMD rebrands their chips to say things like "3200+" because it benchmarks as good as or better than an Intel running at 3.2GHz. If you're adventurous, get an Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron (workstation models).

Motherboard: Might as well get one with onboard video if you want to be cheap about it. Even Intel's GMA950 (or whatever it's called) is better than whatever you were running on that Celeron. 4+ USB slots and 4 PCI slots are pretty much standard on ATX boards.

Power Supply: You need at least 400 Watts. 500 if you want a video card, 600 if you want the latest video card. Just read the box and make sure how much wattage you've got going to the 12V line (PCI-E video cards require their own power).

HDD: That's fine. SATA is where it's at. If you can find a 15k rpm drive, go for it.

CD/DVD: Shrug. Don't buy generic?

Sound Card: SoundBlaster is pretty much the only game in town anymore. But if you're serious, I've heard good things about the MIDIMAN 24/96.

RAM: Check the front-side bus and CPU bus. They should both be at least 1GHz, allowing you to buy DDR2-800 (PC6400). Buy a pair of 1Gb sticks. 4 is fine, but no one I know (even at work) needs more than 2.

EDIT: If you want to wait, Athlon will come out with true quad-core chips in 2008 (as opposed to Intel's two dual-cores stapled together). They also announced support for DDR3 memory. ZOOM
EDIT2: You need one of these.

[Bloodshedder]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/17/sbm_low_cost_system/

[Bloodshedder]

Lüt said:

Processor:[/b] First; can I get a clock speed here?!? I figure a model 960 is better than a 950, but otherwise these numbers are useless.

No, you can't. Seriously though, clock speed is less of a determining factor now in assessing performance, especially between two different processor architectures (e.g. Athlon 64 vs. Core 2).

Second; dual-core. Absolutely necessary for advanced audio work. Last I checked, AMD was slaugtering Intel with AthlonXP's. Anything change since then?

Yes. A lot. The Core 2 series is pretty much the undisputed king the high end and most of the midrange. Only down lower does the Athlon 64 X2 become competitive.

Motherboard: Don't want to pay extra for useless on-board options: no video, no sound, etc. Network is OK. Needs at least 4 USB slots, preferably 6.

You'll have a hard time finding a board without integrated sound or networking nowadays, so in essence you aren't paying anything extra for them. Onboard sound can always be disabled. You'd also have a hard time finding a board that doesn't support at least 8 USB ports, if you factor in the headers that plug into the motherboard and attach at the back (like expansion cards).

And where the hell did all the expansion slots go? I'm lucky to find ones with 3. Need the best one that supports both the best processor and the choice hard drives.

One PCI slot for a sound card... uh, what else do you need besides the requisite PCI Express slot for a graphics card?

Hard Drives: Twin 500GBs, nothing less will suffice. Based on the review here, I'm going with 2 RE2 WD5000YS's. "SATA" connection, whatever that means.

Serial ATA, a connection that has mostly displaced IDE (parallel ATA) as far as hard drives go.

CD/DVD Drives: Whichever's the quickest and most accurate for ripping audio. I honestly can't remember the last time I used the CD drive for anything else. I suppose these would have to come with SATA connections too?

It would be pointless not to get a DVD burner nowadays, because they are so cheap. And no, SATA has not eclipsed IDE in optical drives - SATA ones are actually not very common. Don't worry though, as all motherboards still include at least one IDE channel.

Video Card: 95% of the programs I'll be using will be desktop apps, and almost every game I play is pre-3D-accelation-era, so I was thinking I could save money here and skip the 3D card entirely, except I heard they don't even make 2D cards anymore. If that's true, I suppose I'll get a good 3D card then, since I guess staff of my rank here should have played the new Doom at least once. Then again, maybe on-board video isn't such a bad option?

Onboard video will murder your father and rape your mother. It is almost that bad as far as games go - and with the hardware video decoding included in most new add-in cards by nVidia and AMD/ATI (did you know AMD bought ATI?), it makes much more sense to buy a $50 PCI Express card than rely on integrated video.

Sound Card: I'll be discussing this at some audio forums, but I know some people here do recording, so feel free to recommend. I've already got a multi-track mixer which I hardly use, so a simple line in/out should suffice. My biggest concern is minimal background/electronic noise.

I don't really know on this, as I haven't bothered with an add-in sound card. Onboard audio has been good enough for me.

RAM: If one thing hasn't changed, DDR and its incarnations still seem to be going strong. DDR2 seems to be the preferable option, though for some reason it seems to have multiple numerical qualifications. I'm keeping the system quite free of bloatware (barring XP), so in most cases I'd be fine with 1GB, but I'm thinking I should go with 2GB for large-scale audio/video work.

Yes, you should go with 2GB. Be sure to get DDR2 with a rated speed (PC2-#### or DDR#### [they both mean the same thing but in different terms]) equal to or higher than what the motherboard supports. Also, DDR3 has recently been introduced, but is not worth getting yet.

[AirRaid]

I was going to reply but I think BS hit pretty much everything on the head.

[david_a]

I think you would be much better off reading guides from other technical websites. Read some of the system guides at Ars Technica, for example.

Bloodshedder said:
Onboard video will murder your father and rape your mother. It is almost that bad as far as games go - and with the hardware video decoding included in most new add-in cards by nVidia and AMD/ATI (did you know AMD bought ATI?), it makes much more sense to buy a $50 PCI Express card than rely on integrated video.

I didn't bother reading all of your post, but I strongly disagree with this. If you're really just going to play 2D games and (what sounds like) really old 3D titles, something like Intel's GMA950 will be perfectly fine. Think about it this way: if the games you want to run would be happy on a GeForce2, they'll be happy on a GMA950.

As long as you have a PCI Express slot you can always buy a card later if you need it for something. Video cards are still released at a frightening pace, so this is a better idea than buying something you won't need right away that will be even more obsolete/cheaper by the time you do need it. CPU's have actually been "fast enough" for games for a while now, so even a year or two down the line you could probably turn your machine into a good gaming computer just by buying a powerful graphics card.

[fraggle]

Motherboards without onboard video, sound and networking basically do not exist any more.

[John Smith]

Yay this is always fun. Prices listed below are from newegg.com, feel free to look for cheaper.

Processor
Take your pick between the Core 2 Duo E6550 (2.33 GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB Shared L2 Cache, $175.99) or a Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB Shared L2 Cache, $194.99) or a Core 2 Duo E6850 (3.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB Shared L2 Cache, $279.99). The difference in this case is that more money gets you more clock speed.

Motherboard
I reccomend an Intel DG33BUC ($106.99). Fully supports your processor, up to 8GB RAM, 6 USB ports, 1 x16 PCI-E slot 1 x1 PCI-E slot and 2 PCI slots. Has everything you need but without a big premium.

Hard Disk
You've already got that worked out so k.

CD/DVD Drive
This LITE-ON ($37.99) is everything you could ever want. Writes +/-R, Single and Dual layer, has Lightscribe, hell its even SATA, which is nice.

Video Card
A nVidia GeForce 7300GT is a pretty good starting point. Inexpensive, durable, and gets the job done. Pick a brand you prefer. Anywhere between $60-100

Sound Card
Again I see you are working that out so k.

Memory
I recommend getting 2GB. 1x2GB (around $120) would take greater advantage of the motherboard above, but 2x1GB ($60-80) is about half the price. DDR2 800 is what the motherboard above supports. Again, pick a brand you like.

[Bucket]

I'd like to add that Intel chips are much more friendly toward generic-brand RAM than AMD are. If you get an Athlon but your RAM is lacking in quality, expect to deal with sudden freezes/reboots when performing seemingly random tasks. (For example, my last machine would freeze if I attempted to drag application windows. Resizing handles worked fine. Weird.)

The solution is to find a popular brand, or get RAM designed for overclocking... and don't overclock them.

[Bloodshedder]

fraggle said:

Motherboards without onboard video, sound and networking basically do not exist any more.

Fixed

david_a said:

If you're really just going to play 2D games and (what sounds like) really old 3D titles, something like Intel's GMA950 will be perfectly fine. Think about it this way: if the games you want to run would be happy on a GeForce2, they'll be happy on a GMA950.

Yes, but notice he mentioned he might want to play Doom 3 - even today's integrated graphics have trouble handling that.

[Aleaver]

If you want to make and/or edit music on your computer I would recommend SoundBlaster X-FI Xtreme Music. It has a mode spacificly for music creation. Plus gaming and entertainment modes.
Also anything you record with this sound card is recored as a mp3.

[SYS]

You can buy a TB HD now. Although dual 500gbs will suffice. AMD dual core will do ya just fine. If you get a Dual processor board you can run a single AMD dual core and buy another later on and make a quasi quad core. Or get two Quads and make a quasi octo core.

But you're looking for best bang for buck so best to get an Intel already mentioned in this thread. With the price of video cards you can grab a PCI express 256mb GFX card nowadays for $100.

I also suggest the 2gb of RAM. I started out with 1gb and glad I got another gb. You can build a decent budget rig nowadays for cheap.

[John Smith]

Bloodshedder said:

Yes, but notice he mentioned he might want to play Doom 3 - even today's integrated graphics have trouble handling that.

Does Doom 3 for PC use direct3d? because I know on my macbook I can play Doom 3 (as long as its updated to a universal binary) spectacularly. And it has a GMA950.

[Stealthy Ivan]

Lüt, what do you think of Alienware? They still make a decent pc (just rather expensive).

[Aleaver]

Stealthy Ivan said:

Lüt, what do you think of Alienware? They still make a decent pc (just rather expensive).

Thats an understatement :P

[Sharessa]

Just for the record, I find the onboard video of my machine to be adequate. Granted, it won't play modern FPSs, but I don't play those anymore anyway.

[david_a]

I didn't see the part about "the new Doom." A GMA950 might be pushing it if you don't want to run at a really low resolution.

If you're going to be mainly using this machine for music, I'd say spend some extra cash on a pro solution from the likes of Terratec, M-Audio, EMU, etc. An external solution (ie USB/Firewire) might cut down on interference (it'll work just fine for games too - I use a USB DAC on my machine). Onboard audio ranges from horrible to OK, but in my experience it's way too noisy.

[Bucket]

Well, it doesn't sound like he's rearing to get the full Ultra Quality experience-- so even if he did want a dedicated card, a GeForce 6600GT would suffice. You can get them on eBay for $10.

[YMB]

Stealthy Ivan said:

Lüt, what do you think of Alienware? They still make a decent pc (just rather expensive).

My god, looking at some of Alienware's prices make me convulse. My out-of-the-box Gateway has excellent performance for around $849.

[Stealthy Ivan]

You get what you pay for... Nuff said.

[Bucket]

Exactly. Too much.

[Maes]

Aleaver said:

If you want to make and/or edit music on your computer I would recommend SoundBlaster X-FI Xtreme Music. It has a mode spacificly for music creation. Plus gaming and entertainment modes.
Also anything you record with this sound card is recored as a mp3.

Apart from the fact that Creative doesn't produce that model anymore, all those "features" are pure hype or actually misleading: the "music creation mode" is just a series of DSP presets which changes the internal DSP configuration but this mode can also be implemented on other X-Fi or even non-X-Fi cards, and it doesn't offer any really professional features like multitrack recording.

It's also not true that it records everything to mp3: if I open e.g. Windows Sound Recorder and I record something, it will be made to MP3? No. Does it have an onboard MP3 encoder? No, and it would be superfluous today. The only Soundblaster cards that ever had a hardware real time MP3 encoder were some older "SB Live! MP3", but you could only use it with special Creative Software.

[leileilol]

I'd avoid the newer Sound Blaster cards (Audigy/X-Fi) if I were you. They're abysmal brand-name wanks. You might want to get one of those newer Turtle Beach cards.

Most onboard audio i've heard sound really tinny.

As for video card I now prefer ATI as AMD unstuck the thumb out of their lazy linux support asses.

John Smith said:

Does Doom 3 for PC use direct3d?

You know damn well it uses OpenGL, hobbs

[John Smith]

Well I know now.

[Maes]

leileilol said:
You know damn well it uses OpenGL, hobbs

How can you be so sure he's hobbs? [/sarcasm]

[Aleaver]

Maes said:

It's also not true that it records everything to mp3: if I open e.g. Windows Sound Recorder and I record something, it will be made to MP3? No. Does it have an onboard MP3 encoder? No, and it would be superfluous today. The only Soundblaster cards that ever had a hardware real time MP3 encoder were some older "SB Live! MP3", but you could only use it with special Creative Software.

Well you are right, I should have been more clear and said that anything you record with Creative Smart Recorder is made into a mp3/wma. My bad. I guess that I am more of a listener then a music creator (my guitar skills fail it), So IMO My SB Xtreme Music card makes music sound good..(to me). But it wouldn't do much for someone who makes their own music. So my eariler post is invalidated after futher looking into this sound card. You are correct.

[exp(x)]

I hear m-audio makes some nice sound cards.

[Maes]

exp(x) said:

I hear m-audio makes some nice sound cards.

Heh, a bit out of reach for the ordinary user. These are best described as "audio interfaces" (a fancy term for a soundcard that's more focused on multitrack recording and editing).

Not very surprisingly, those soundcards are not very good for the casual user: they are very specialized for studio use, and thus e.g. hardware acceleration for DirectSound/OpenAL effects is usually not implemented.

To my best recollection, the only soundcards on the market having actual hardware acceleration for anything, are the X-Fi and the previous Audigy /Live! lines from Creative (notwithstanding, there are a few "black sheep" models without acceleration, like the "X-Fi" Xtreme Audio, and the SB Live! 24-bit).

In the past there were some other interesting proposals like the Yamaha Waveforce and the Gravis Ultrasound, but today you can only get an overhyped Creative, or some form of "codec": almost any other card on the market is based on a software codec which does all of the advanced processing in software. Not that it matters, since integrated audio is now better than ever, and the DACs are typically better than what you can find even on low-end Live!/Audigy cards.

[exp(x)]

Maes said:

Heh, a bit out of reach for the ordinary user. These are best described as "audio interfaces" (a fancy term for a soundcard that's more focused on multitrack recording and editing).

Not very surprisingly, those soundcards are not very good for the casual user: they are very specialized for studio use, and thus e.g. hardware acceleration for DirectSound/OpenAL effects is usually not implemented.

Did you not see the Revolution models? They're not THAT expensive and support Sensaura, EAX, DirectSound and A3D. I'd get one of those over a Sound Blaster any day.

[pritch]

Stealthy Ivan said:

You get what you pay for... Nuff said.

Alienware shove a load of generic crap into a fancy box and then charge you a million dollars for the privelege, or possibly $2m if you want a usb stick with that...

My best friend had one of their "gaming laptops" that lasted about a year before it wouldn't POST.

Alienware are now owned by Dell anyway, why not just get an XPS?

Besides, it is almost always better to build yourself. Not always, but almost.