What I learned while building a Core 2 Quad DAW

Friends,

I posted specs about a week ago on the new DAW build. I had been running a P4 3.2 GHz machine (a machine I also assembled), but it was time to take that saved up cash and go for a new machine.

I researched (as best I could) all of the components for a long time beforehand, but the technology has been changing rapidly. I feel like we are in a sweet spot now with processors so I went ahead and bought the following:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 2.5GHz
Intel DP35DP Mobo
4 GB 2X2GB Crucial DDR2 800 (switched out for Super Talent DDR 800)
1 Seagate 7200.10 320 GB SATA II 16MB cache for system drive
3 Seagate 7200.11 500 GB SATA II 32MB cache for Data/samples/backup
Gigabyte GeForce 8600GT Dual DVI sound card
Lite On DVD burner (sounds like its going to blow up!!)
Thermaltake Toughpower 700 W power supply
Zalman CNPS8700 2 Ball CPU cooler
Antec P180 case
Arctic silver thermal grease
Windows XP Pro SP3 OEM

Interface: RME Fireface 800
MIDI: Midisport 4X4 USB
Transport: Frontier Tranzport USB

During the build I quickly discovered that the Super Talent memory I had originally bought were DOA. I was getting 3 beeps and no post - pulled everything out but one stick of RAM and found one stick was bad. SO this delayed my build by two days while I waited for memory. I had some overnighted from Crucial. Although realizing that the memory was slower, I've never had bad luck with Crucial (after my fifth build). I received an RMA for the memory received from Newegg, and I will use that RAM (when received) for something else.

While I was waiting for the memory to show up, I went ahead and formatted all of the hard drives. I did the long format process (no quick format). This seems to work for me.

What else? Well, the DP35DP motherboard is about as generic as your grandmas drawers. Again, I'm no expert at DAW building, and decided to stick with what I knew -> Intel processors and Intel Mobos. Whenever I ventured off this path, I always found trouble. This board has no overclocking capabilites in the bios (not that that is a major concern); however, the processor probably can be pushed a bit. I just will never know in this installation.

Next time I will certainly take advantage of the consulting provided by one of the resident DAW gurus. The fee is worth the peace of mind knowing that I got the most out of my build, before buying parts.

I tranferred my TI chipset FW800 PCI card from my old DAW. I didn't want to fool with the onboard FW, although I think it's TI (but at 400).

As the DAW gurus have said this Antec P180 case has a cheap door, and I found it getting in the way more than anything. The case is nicely laid out, and all of my stock cabling was long enough. I did not add any extra fans to the case. It came with 3 - 120 mm fans with variable speed. I haven't had any issues yet, and It's been continuously running for a day now.

So, how is it? Well, this machine while built for stability, absolutely smokes. I loaded up some fairly aggressively processed projects and then ran BFD at 2.9 ms. I was able to open and run projects at 128 samples (using Fireface ASIO drivers) the 4 cores were barely working. I may not have the fastest machine, but it should work well within my workflow.

Since I'm going to upgrade to Sonar 8 soon, I'm not going to fool with the 3 GB switch (to allow Sonar 6.2.1 to access more than 2 GB). It's working fine now. I understand that Sonar 7 does access the memory over 2 GB, so no switch is needed. I'm showing about 3.5 GB of memory under Windows XP in the Bios.

This machine will never see the Internets. I personally feel that has helped with stability, and if you have the luxury, take your DAW completely offline. I transfer all file updates with a USB memory stick, and keep this nearby. I'm almost sad to see the 3.2 P4 GHz go, as it was stable. But I'm excited about the power of the Quad!

On noise? Yes, there's noise. The machine was not build for low noise as a priority. But this was not a concern for me, as I keep the machine out of the tracking/mixing room. I have long VGA cables, a 13' FW 800 and a long USB cable. This worked before, and I just transferred all of this to the new machine.

In the end, I don't think I saved any money (and time is money) building it myself! I did buy 5 new hard drives (1 for an external backup), but I think that If I were to do it over, I'd certainly buy a new DAW, or consult early on in the process. I do know now that nothing will hold me back from a DAW standpoint; now I can focus on those preamps I've been wanting.

Regards,

Don

Great story Don--did the same thing here, only I had a PC-builder friend assemble the motherboard & CPU. He then shipped me the rig and I finished the installation. I used a Q9450, but didn't overclock it; I also used an Abit motherboard. I had picked out all the components, but then changed some things after consulting with Jim Roseberry. Jim OC's his rigs with the Q9450, but quite frankly I am just learning how to build PCs, and really don't think I'll be pushing SONAR to it's limits anytime soon. So I went with the stock configuration, but even so--it's still operating at 2.72GHz, according to the BIOS. The baseline CPU temp is 32 degrees C. One thing Jim advised and that I really like is an Arctic Cooler fan--it's great, and very quiet. In fact, I used a Cool Master 1000 case after reading a whole bunch about them, and they are ULTRA quiet.

So I am very happy with the rig thus far, but I haven't pushed it at all yet--other than with some Sony Vegas Pro work I have been doing on some volleyball footage of my daughter's. But this thing absolutely flies when processing video...it's amazing. I can't wait to hook it up to my Mackie board and start tracking some drums in a couple months (recovering from surgery here).

Fun stuff, this PC building. But you're right though--I don't think I saved a whole lot by building it myself. But it's fun to learn, and the next machine I build I will do entirely by myself.

TB

Epilogue to my part of the story...

I actually did a little bit of overclocking last night. I did some research on found a couple of references on OC'ing, and just did it. Here's one of the references I used:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/oc-guide.html

I found this one pretty useful, but it still left some questions unanswered. But I downloaded the RightMark CPU Clock Utility so I could watch the CPU's cores individually, and check after each adjustment I made. One thing about that article though--I couldn't do everything it recommended before OC'ing; the OC'ing utility in my BIOS was much simpler than that. So I just increases the FSB speed a little at a time until I reached 3.00GHz for the CPU speed, and voila...it was done. I know that others push these Quad cores farther than that, but I stopped there to run it for awhile and verify that all the applications work and that everything remains stable.

So in the end I went from 2.72GHz to 3.00GHz and everything seems to be operating normally. The hottest core on my machine runs at 39.6 degrees C with normal activity. I might try to push it tonight by processing some video, but I would like to verify that there's nothing I left out of the OC'ing process before I really push the CPU.

TB