Upgrading my DAW, do you see any issues with this setup?

Hello! I've never posted here before, but I figured I'd call upon the experts to give me a little final advice, if it's needed.

So, I've decided I need to upgrade my ancient P4-based DAW. I already have a Pulsar II and SCOPE 4.5, which works great, so I don't see any need to upgrade that. After a lot of research, it looks like this is what I'm going with. My grand total after rebates (but before tax) is $831. If I needed a $150 case, $100 PSU, $30 CPU fan, mouse, keyboard, etc, that would come to less than $1200, for a badass DAW that will easily be viable for 5 years, and would only really need a good audio interface and a pair of decent LCD monitors (and maybe a CPU upgrade in 3 years).

This setup should be very stable, fast and quiet, while not drawing unnecessary power. The 3 internal 1TB hard drives will be configured as follows: Each drive will have 500GB usable space with the remainder of the space serving as an automated nightly backup location for the next drive's data. This way, should any one drive fail, no data should be lost. Drive C: will be for the OS, swap space, and applications. Drive D: will be for samples and sampler data, and drive E: will be for recorded audio, which should allow for plenty of recording and playback bandwidth.

And 500GB is a lot of space, but the larger drives have a significantly higher data density and cache size, which amounts to higher speeds. Besides, there are some really cool sample sets out there, and some of the big ones can easily take up a few GB each.

Also, I've been a long-time Acid user, but after reading about everything Sonar 7 can do, I'm definitely going to give it a shot. It looks like it can do everything Acid Pro 6 can do, plus about a billion other very useful things. And it's being continuously developed, which is more than I can say for Acid, which hasn't seen an update since 2006.

And I'm going to stick with XP Pro 32-bit for now, because my audio card has no Vista 64-bit drivers. When my audio card gets new drivers, and enough of my apps are updated to 64-bit, I'll look into upgrading to Vista 64-bit. This probably won't happen for a year or two, and at that point, I might be in an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mood.

Hardware:

MOBO (the P35 chipset, and specifically this board are supposedly very stable with the Pulsar card and other DAW setups)
$100: Intel BOXDP35DPM LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121314

CPU (even in Sonar, price-to-performance seems to favor the Core 2 Duo over the quad)
$190: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115036

RAM (XP might only see ~3GB, but it'll all get used.. and 4GB is more future-proof)
$71 = $101 - $30 Rebate: Crucial Ballistix 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148212

GFX (passively cooled, this will drive dual LCD monitors easily and inexpensively)
$23 = $33 - $10 Rebate: ASUS EN8400GS SILENT/HTP/256M GeForce 8400 GS 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121240

CASE (keeping the soundproofed Antec Sonata II I already have, which is similar to Quiet PC USA's $150 AcoustiCase 360)

PSU (keeping my 450W Antec for now, it works well and is on the quiet side.. The extreme.outervision.com PSU calculator estimated 264W required, so let's round that up to 450 just in case)

CPU FAN (keeping the $30 ZALMAN CNPS7000B-ALCU I already have)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118112

CPU FAN CLIP
$4 - ZALMAN ZM-CS1 Clip Support for installation of CNPS7000 series onto Socket 775
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118219

DVD-R/CD-RW
$23 - LITE-ON Black 16X DVD-ROM 52X CD-R 32X CD-RW 52X CD-ROM SATA Combo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106100

HARD DRIVES
$420 = 3x $140 (1TB) - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152102

- Cowboy

bapu, I read the thread you linked, but since you didn't explain anything, I don't understand what you're getting at.

Sure, a Quad CPU will perform great in Sonar 7. There's no doubt about that. But it's also a lot more expensive. To me, it doesn't seem like the additional cost of the Quad justifies purchasing one over a Duo.

The author of the post you linked wrote:

dual core 3.0Ghz 1333 FSB DDR2 800
512 buffer clean

Quad Core 3.0GHz 1600 FSB DDR2 800
512 buffer clean

So, does that mean that I have to spend $500 on a Quad Q9650 to equal the performance of a $190 Duo E8500? I don't see how it's worth it.

- Cowboy

I already have a Pulsar II and SCOPE 4.5

Are these units 5v or 3.3v PCI cards? Can't remember...
If they're the later, they won't work in newer motherboards.

Jim actually wrote (I think it was Jim) a nice post once about the differences between the Quad and Duo core CPUs. I will try to find it an reference it here, unless he finds it first. But my answer was simply based upon the fact that, as time goes by, the Quad core will likely allow you to do more things then the Duo care--and I highly doubt that you'll ever put in a Quad core CPU for any cheaper than the $100 or so difference it'd cost you right now.


TB

@Jim: I know other people are using the Pulsar II with the same motherboard, so it's compatible.

Cool...
Some PCI cards are universal (will work with 5v or 3.3v PCI slots).
Standard 5v PCI cards won't work with the newer motherboards that have 3.3v PCI slots.

Jim, how would I run the Q9450 at a high clock speed? Would I have to overclock it? And if so, will that even work on the Intel DP35DP mobo? I've read that since this is an Intel mobo, it doesn't support most common overclocking techniques.. *shrug*

The last time I overclocked a CPU was maybe 10 years ago, so I don't know how one would approach that now.

Either way, I really appreciate the advice.. thanks!

- Cowboy

Jim, how would I run the Q9450 at a high clock speed? Would I have to overclock it? And if so, will that even work on the Intel DP35DP mobo? I've read that since this is an Intel mobo, it doesn't support most common overclocking techniques.. *shrug*

The DP35DPM motherboard works great... but offers no overclocking features.

ORIGINAL: Jim Roseberry

By default, the BIOS very slightly "overclocks" the CPU. You can set the FSB clock speed manually to avoid this... but it's not a problem. That processor can go much faster than 2.72GHz.

Glad to hear it, as we had discussed on the phone. I have been studying the "art" of OC'ing, and will likely attempt to increase the FSB frequency to get the CPU speed up to around 3GHz for starters. I know where you run yours, but I am just a beginner!

Thanks.

TB

I actually gave it some more thought, and broke this specific question out into its own thread so that I could reformulate it.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1482179

Thanks, guys!

- Cowboy