Music Orientated Pc's?

[MadManMike]

Ey-oop!

I'm selling my Acer laptop (See For Sale section...) and buying something a bit more music friendly. I'm asking for £275, £200 of which will put towards my new PC. Realistically I'm looking at £500 tops.

It doesn't need to be a super computer, just one with an alright soundcard, and a bit of grunt. I'm not sure what my Acer doesn't like about music software because it runs fast - the programs load quickly and everything, it just seems like my soundcard doesn't like it.

So, what can I get for £500?

Small monitor is fine, crap gfx card is fine, smallish HD is fine. Ideally, 3gb ram & a processor around 2ghx dual / quad?

In an ideal world it would have XP too as I thoroughly dislike Vista. I gave it a chance, I've used 3 PC's with it on and I just hate it. Bulky, annoying pile of crap - no matter how much tweaking you do it's still a heavy system.

[Dr. Nick Riviera]

Buy a second hand powermac or build a computer, you'll get a decent system for 500.

also, 3gb of ram is a silly amount, you want 2 or 4, you have to patch xp for it to run 4gb, and i'm not sure how efficient it is.

[MadManMike]

Buy a second hand powermac or build a computer, you'll get a decent system for 500.

Yeah, I'd like to and I know how to, I'm just too lazy haha

i know ideally I'd need to spend £800+ to get a real power house, but £500 is my max really.

[Krisboats]

also, 3gb of ram is a silly amount, you want 2 or 4, you have to patch xp for it to run 4gb, and i'm not sure how efficient it is.

If its 32 bit XP the patch only allows windows to see that theres 4gb, it doesn't actually use it. A windows based 32 bit OS can't allocate prcesses to more than 3.something gigs of RAM. 64bit is limited to somewhere in the region of 128GB.

If its a music pc get a half decent processor, dual core or something, 4gb of ram, a large hard drive (RAID 2x500gb or 1x1TB) and an average graphics card. Then to top it off, something like this

[Haz]

I'm guessing you'll want a screen and such to go with? Or do you have those anyway?

[Spikenipple]

If it's just the soundcard you're having problems with, get an external audio interface such as This or This.

Don't bother with a 'fancy' sound card you can find on PC component websites such as OcUK or Ebuyer etc. The majority of them are actually just fads. It's the quality of the A/D-D/A converters that you're paying for, and for the price the two i've mentioned above are pretty much the best you'll find.

[Muel]

Check out overclockers.co.uk Mike, they'll build you a completely custom system for a decent price.

Or you could just choose one of theirs and upgrade the soundcard.

Like this one, leaving you £70 for a soundcard, which is enough for a pretty good one.

[Boswell]

Check out overclockers.co.uk Mike, they'll build you a completely custom system for a decent price.

Or you could just choose one of theirs and upgrade the soundcard.

Like this one, leaving you £70 for a soundcard, which is enough for a pretty good one.

That price is without an operating system.

[Muel]

Hmm, didn't think of that. Lets you get XP Pro on it anyway Mike.

[MadManMike]

I'm guessing you'll want a screen and such to go with? Or do you have those anyway?

Yup, I'll need the whole lot - I have no components at the mo.

If it's just the soundcard you're having problems with, get an external audio interface such as This or This.

Don't bother with a 'fancy' sound card you can find on PC component websites such as OcUK or Ebuyer etc. The majority of them are actually just fads. It's the quality of the A/D-D/A converters that you're paying for, and for the price the two i've mentioned above are pretty much the best you'll find.

I bought a Creative Soundblaster Live 24bit USB sound card last week, it's worse than the built in one - I guess the laptop can't power it because it's a good soundcard. Sucks really.

Check out overclockers.co.uk Mike, they'll build you a completely custom system for a decent price.

Or you could just choose one of theirs and upgrade the soundcard.

Like this one, leaving you £70 for a soundcard, which is enough for a pretty good one.

That's a good plan, I'll have a wee look

Cheers guys

[Max Quinn]

Check out overclockers.co.uk Mike, they'll build you a completely custom system for a decent price.

From recent experiences, stay away from Overclockers. Spent alot of money on a PC from them and it had been put together reeaaallllyy poorly meaning the graphics card had ripped itself out of the motherboard f**king both up. Nothing was tight etc.

So then they picked it up and said a new one would be here next day and nothing arrived for a week so we phoned and they hadn't 'got round to' replacing the components on the old one yet when they said they were sending a new one.

Still nothing weeks later after speaking to the manager who promised it would be here etc so eventually asked for a refund which took a while.

I'm sure others have been fine with them but as far as i'm concerned you can only judge a company once something goes wrong.

[Rebelistic]

Building a PC is much easier than you might thing (well I made one).

I built a music PC a few years ago (my knowlage is a bi rusty/out of date) but it was just a pentium 3 ASUS motherboard with basic hard drives graphics card etc.

I got an M-Audio Delta(?) 1010 sound card. It's pretty good because it has 8 analogue ins/outs (then 2 digital hence 1010).

At the time I decided it was best to have two hard drives, one for programs and op system, one for data (music files) rather than one with a partition - I don't know whether this is still advisable.

I'd advise trying to leave the finnished system as clean as possible ie. don't install loads of games, surf the net etc.

[MadManMike]

Building a PC is much easier than you might thing (well I made one).

I built a music PC a few years ago (my knowlage is a bi rusty/out of date) but it was just a pentium 3 ASUS motherboard with basic hard drives graphics card etc.

I got an M-Audio Delta(?) 1010 sound card. It's pretty good because it has 8 analogue ins/outs (then 2 digital hence 1010).

At the time I decided it was best to have two hard drives, one for programs and op system, one for data (music files) rather than one with a partition - I don't know whether this is still advisable.

I'd advise trying to leave the finnished system as clean as possible ie. don't install loads of games, surf the net etc.

Yeah I can build my own PC's, I'm just lazy and want to get it out of the box and use it. The whole leaving as clean as possible thing, I want it for multi purpose so I will play games and browse the net etc...

Like I say I'm not after a superfast beast, just something that is happy to record (My ten year old laptop was fine for this, but my new one isn't - logic?!). The laptop is great in every other way, just not recording (Which is a bummer, because that's why I got it!)

From recent experiences, stay away from Overclockers. Spent alot of money on a PC from them and it had been put together reeaaallllyy poorly meaning the graphics card had ripped itself out of the motherboard f**king both up. Nothing was tight etc.

So then they picked it up and said a new one would be here next day and nothing arrived for a week so we phoned and they hadn't 'got round to' replacing the components on the old one yet when they said they were sending a new one.

Still nothing weeks later after speaking to the manager who promised it would be here etc so eventually asked for a refund which took a while.

I'm sure others have been fine with them but as far as i'm concerned you can only judge a company once something goes wrong.

To be honest I emailed them earlier and if I don't get a good reply I won't bother with them.

At the moment I'm looking at a £499 system from PC World (Shudders...) OR building from scratch from Dabs / ebuyer - I'd much rather get a pre-built system for convenience though. I can't be bothered with the inevitable task of sorting out conflicts / annoying errors either.

[Krisboats]

From recent experiences, stay away from Overclockers. Spent alot of money on a PC from them and it had been put together reeaaallllyy poorly meaning the graphics card had ripped itself out of the motherboard f**king both up. Nothing was tight etc.

So then they picked it up and said a new one would be here next day and nothing arrived for a week so we phoned and they hadn't 'got round to' replacing the components on the old one yet when they said they were sending a new one.

Still nothing weeks later after speaking to the manager who promised it would be here etc so eventually asked for a refund which took a while.

I'm sure others have been fine with them but as far as i'm concerned you can only judge a company once something goes wrong.

In a completely opposite scenario my friend bought a graphics card not so long ago that 2 weeks later was reduced in price. He emailed them and they refunded the difference for him. I've no idea how he got away with being so cheeky but they were fine with it.

I've also had a faulty component from them and i had a brand new replacement sat with me less than a week later (old one had to be checked by them etc first).

[MadManMike]

To be honest I emailed them earlier and if I don't get a good reply I won't bother with them.

And it's goodbye Overclockers.

My email had a few specific questions - their reply just pointed me to their systems section. I said in my email I'd already looked, and asked more specific things...

Bye bye OC

[Fish-Finger-er]

Yeah I can build my own PC's, I'm just lazy and want to get it out of the box and use it. The whole leaving as clean as possible thing, I want it for multi purpose so I will play games and browse the net etc...

Like I say I'm not after a superfast beast, just something that is happy to record (My ten year old laptop was fine for this, but my new one isn't - logic?!). The laptop is great in every other way, just not recording (Which is a bummer, because that's why I got it!)

To be honest I emailed them earlier and if I don't get a good reply I won't bother with them.

At the moment I'm looking at a £499 system from PC World (Shudders...) OR building from scratch from Dabs / ebuyer - I'd much rather get a pre-built system for convenience though. I can't be bothered with the inevitable task of sorting out conflicts / annoying errors either.

whats the spec of your pc world system, as march(ish) this year, i bought a full system specs are as follows

amd phenom 9500 quad core.

4gb of ram

500 gb hard drive

512mb 8500 gt graphics card

20" tft screen

keyboard, mouse, speakers.

for £420, arrived ready to go, about 15 days later(could of had it in 3 for an extra £8). leaving you £80 for a decent soundcard(obviously this has got onboard sound with mic inputs etc, but its probably not to your standards.)

[MadManMike]

Where was that from?

The PC World one isn't as good as that, and is £80 more

It's not far off it, but not quite as good.

[Fish-Finger-er]

Where was that from?

The PC World one isn't as good as that, and is £80 more

It's not far off it, but not quite as good.

erm, some ebay seller, wasnt the cheapest on there at the time, (but my mate had like no problems buying off them, so i chose to use them)

also bare in mind, that was 7 months ago, so the prices will of come down drastically by now.

[Joel]

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

Have you tried this website yet?