Are these good parts for a new DAW?

[mwynwood]

Hi everyone,
It's time to upgrade my old PC.
I though I'd run this setup past the DAW guru's here before I make a purchase.
My interface is an FP10.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X38-DS4
RAM: 4Gb of Corsair Micro TWIN2X4096-6400C5
Video: ASUS EAH2400PROMG-HTP-256 (fanless, dual head)
HDD: Samsung HD501LJ 500Gb

For about AU$1000

Thanks for your help

[jcschild]

looks good
i would try to get the newer Q9300
and a segate drive over samsung (better warranty)

Scott
ADK

[GregoryJ]

Go with the P35 chipset version of that mobo and, yes, Seagate is a much better choice for hard drive. I have 4 seagate drives running raid 0 on a Promise raid controller and you cant hear a thing. You should consider at least 2 drives in your system. The 500GB is a great size for a 2nd drive. Your system drive does not have to be that big. Anything from a 120GB to 250GB would work very well. And go with at least 7200 rpm SATA drives. Western Digital is good too. I have had 2 drives replaced under warranty without any questions at all. I shorted out the drives by accident and they didnt say anything to me about it.

[mwynwood]

Thanks for the tips guys, very helpful

Go with the P35 chipset version of that mobo

What is the difference between the one I listed and the P35 version?

[GregoryJ]

The X38 chipset is geared toward the gaming and performance market were as the P35 chipset was intended for multimedia applications such as media servers or Home Entertainment PCs were the flow of data is different than that of a gaming PC.

Here is my personal example. I have a gaming system that consists of an EVGA NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI mobo with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3GHz dual core cpu with a 1333MHz FSB. I have 4GB of OCZ SLI ready DDR2 800 ram. For grafix I have 2 PNY XLR8 8800GTX cards with 768MB of ram each, running in SLI. It took more than a week to get this system up and running properly. The reason I had so much trouble was from the ram. Regular PC mobos (like the ones in DAWs) use ram that uses the industry standard 1.8v for power (for Stability and reliability). The ram commonly used in Gaming and Performance PCs run at much higher rates (usually so that they can be run at clock speeds above spec). In this case 2.1v. Now I didnt take this into consideration when I was putting the system together (Too many new things at once so I was like a kid at Christmas). My point here is that Gaming PCs and parts are generally much more complicated and much more time consuming than ones used to build multimedia machines.

Basicly gaming boards are designed to maximize the communication between the Graffix, CPU and memory and nearly disregard anything else attached to the system's other ports. This is fine for gaming but software like Cubase4 (or any other) is not designed to use the graffix cards for processing data. This means that a very large amount of processing power is therefore wasted. A chipset like the P35 however IS designed to communicate efficiently with the extra PCI and PCIe cards as well as the I/O of multiple HDDs. This is what your DAW needs to run at ITS peak performance.

I personally blame marketing departments for the general view point that Blistering speed is ALWAYS better than long term stability and reliablity. Intel is the best example of this since up until the last 2years they used to name all of their CPUs by the clock speed.

Im sorry for the length of my explaination (its late i tend to get preachy some times) but I learned the hard and expensive way that gaming pcs need to be avoided like the plague.

Good luck on the build!

[jcschild]

i have to disagree
your portrail of the X38 as nothing but a gaming board is at best inacurate.

1) the flow of data? where did you get this crazy notion? the flow of data is no different

2)communication with PCI an PCIe is differnet on X38? LOL

3) different voltage requirements for P35 vs X38 concerning ram?

all wrong!

benefits to X38

1) better power phasing and tighter voltage control
good for mulitple PCI/PCIe cards EG: UADS

2) better support for 1600 FSB

3) PCIe 2.0 support: while THIS PART may seem its intended for SLI and it is, it also adds more total PCIe bandwidth and support from the north bridge, this is idea for a problematic PCIe with a full boat of cards installed.

you can install a 1x card in the 2nd PCIe off the northbridge and it will have no effect on those on the south bridge.
this is a different buss than those on the south bridge.

lastly for those who do video editing and Audio on the same system this allows for a raid card like Areca to be added without effecting the other southbridge bandwidth.

now i will add that for a light to medium user a P35 is more than good enough.

Scott
ADK

[GregoryJ]

Hey jschild there is no need to be rude about it. This is how it was explained to me and im simply passing it on. If im wrong then fine. This was my own personal experience. I suppose that in all actuallity you can use any computer you want. I was just saying that, from my experience, gaming boards or those that are designed with gaming in mind tend to have extra features that may not be useful or could cause issues with stablility or simply take more time to set up. If someone does not have the experience building a system then one would think that they would want to avoid the extra hassle of adjusting BIOS setting that they may not be comfortable adjusting. If they are comfortable with making those adjustments and want to be able to have that kind of control then by all means get what ever board has the feature set that you are looking for. Again this was just my OPINION.

[mwynwood]

ohh.....I dunno if I did the right thing, but this is what I ended up buying:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300/ 2.50GHz/ 6MB Cache/ 1333FSB/ LGA775
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 500Gb 7200RPM 32Mb SATA 2
Pioneer DVR-115D DVD Re-Writer
Corsair DDR2 4GB PC-8500/1066 (2xXMS2 2GB) RAM
Intech HBC-863 Case (550W)
Gigabyte NX86T512H GF8600GT, 512MB

AU$1241.85

[GregoryJ]

I like it. I think those are great choices. Good price too. Good luck on the build. Let us know how its working.

[Nanashi]

Hey jschild there is no need to be rude about it. This is how it was explained to me and im simply passing it on. If im wrong then fine. This was my own personal experience. I suppose that in all actuallity you can use any computer you want. I was just saying that, from my experience, gaming boards or those that are designed with gaming in mind tend to have extra features that may not be useful or could cause issues with stablility or simply take more time to set up. If someone does not have the experience building a system then one would think that they would want to avoid the extra hassle of adjusting BIOS setting that they may not be comfortable adjusting. If they are comfortable with making those adjustments and want to be able to have that kind of control then by all means get what ever board has the feature set that you are looking for. Again this was just my OPINION.

He's not being rude. He's just blunt.Theres little reason to start an argument over it. If you post something, and someone corrects its not personal.

He's a system vendor, that sells both gaming pc's,video editing, and a very well known DAW vendor, so his advice related towards the applications are a bit more than random opinion and musings. It wouldn't take any longer to setup a P35 board than an X38, and I think any experienced builder knows that. Their feature set is almost identical. Sure there are more Stripped down P35 boards but not ones that are suitable for DAW use. A decked out P35 board has almost as much stuff as the X38 board. I do agree with him your description of X38 v.s P35 board makes the X38 seem overly different from the P35 and that notion is inaccurate. They are more or less identical chipsets with the difference that the X38 has a better memory controller for particularly DDR3. (Being most of the boards discuessed here are DDR-2 not DDR-3 its more or less irrelevant.), and PCI-E 2.0 support and Crossfire X. They both use the ICH9/9R Southbridge chipset which handles the secondary function. The X48 is essentially the 38 with 1600FSB support. So that should hope fully clarify the discrepancies for the intel chipsets.


I don't think going with the P35 is a wrong notion though. If anything its a better value for DAW purposes. Performance wise the X38 isn't really that much ahead of the P35 to really merit its price. I recommend the GA-EX38-DS4 on reliability stability grounds. and 175 v.s 205 to me doesn't seem like a big cost savings (Verse the EP-35-DS4) however if one is going with a GA-EP35-DS3P for example thats 50$ back in the pocket.

If you do go with P35 boards, makes sure to get one with a Ti Chipset, and make sure the Ti Chipset board you choose is not the ABit IP35 Pro.

~nanashi

[GregoryJ]

System vendor or not, the response was not what could be considered constructive critisism. These kind of responses are the reason that inexperienced people do not ask questions on these boards. No one likes to be laughed at when they give a response or ask a question. It's fine with me, I deal with people like this all the time. I'll just find somewhere else to get information as im sure that others will too.

[jcschild]

the response was EXACTLY what was needed!
the amount of incorrect info posted in forums is absurdly high.

all too often people get wrong info then wonder why they spent $1000+ and still dont have a working system.

Rude no, blunt and to the point yes.

i could be like many system builders and sit back and laugh at all the messed up system purchases and upset people.
and take the stance "thats what you get for not buying a professionally built sytem"

i on the other hand dont mind helping people. well except for those with sound blasters
or those who think they have all the answers

Scott
ADK

[PolyTetraFluoroEthylene]

holly daw, why do you guys insisting on a pissing feast instead of helping each other out? I would hate to see this forum turn into the usual "I know more, so it's a gospel" thing.

-polytet

[weetabix]

Well said, Poly.......... whatever. Well said.

[mwynwood]

Thanks for all your advice everyone, I have my new DAW and it runs perfectly

[Nanashi]

What did you get in the end

[mwynwood]

I got:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300/ 2.50GHz/ 6MB Cache/ 1333FSB/ LGA775
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 500Gb 7200RPM 32Mb SATA 2
Pioneer DVR-115D DVD Re-Writer
Corsair DDR2 4GB PC-8500/1066 (2xXMS2 2GB) RAM
Intech HBC-863 Case (550W)
Gigabyte NX86T512H GF8600GT, 512MB

AU$1241.85