New Computer?

I'm considering getting a music-only computer, and just a little research tonight shows me how much I don't know about computers.
I've just about got my Best Buy card paid off, but I won't be getting it there.
At the Guitar Center web site, I see a lot of PCs by PC Audio Labs. Some are available with XP Pro, or Win 7, but don't really say whether they are 32 or 64-bit. Most have in excess of 3 MB RAM which suggests that they are 64-bit, but PCAL's web site shows that they are 32-bit. I'm so confused!
Anyway, have any of you used these gizmos?
Or should I go ahead and get an off-the-shelf PC and use that for my everything device and relegate this box to music? It's a pretty good computer, but at 3+ years old, it's getting a little long in the tooth.
What would you get with $1,000 credit? Preferably at BB of GC, which made the mistake of giving me credit cards. I'd like to stay with XP and 32-bit, if possible, which may have already answered my question.

Hi Greg,

My suggestion is going to put you in the $1600 range (not what you are looking for) but I just wanted to make a case for going to 64 bit and going with a machine built for music.

I bought a Studio Cat with an i7 and Windows 7 – 64 … and upgraded to 8.5 PE (from 5.0) at the same time for my home studio in the spring.  I struggled with the decision to go 64 bit but now in hindsight I can say it was the best thing I could have done.  All of the issues associated with the number of plug-ins I was using on a project (i.e., drop-outs and freezing tracks) just went away.  And I haven’t had any problems wrapping my favorite 32 bit plug-ins.

I did a fair amount of price shopping and had it narrowed down to the Studio Cat and a Dell.  I very seriously considered Dell because my last two music only computers were both Dells (1999 and 2005) and they both gave my many years of rock solid performance.  But, in both cases I put a lot of time into making them music only.  Had a gone with a Dell this time, it probably would have been a cost savings of a few hundred dollars up front but in the long run I think the Studio Cat is going to turn out to be the better investment and so far I am very happy with it (for support all you have to do is call and Jim returns your phone call … very nice).

Dave

Greg, I'm guessing you don't want to build your own?  Would your brother build you one.  My new one cost under $700.  My son ordered the parts and built it for me.  I wouldn't have upgraded, but I kept getting blue screens several times a day and other pesky little problems.  I wouldn't be afraid of Win7 or 64-bit.  If no one wants to build one, I imagine you can still upgrade for quite a bit less than $1000. 

BUT, if you're not having problems with your present computer, I'd just wait, TBH.  All they can do is come down in price.  (well, and continue to upgrade, making us have to buy new stuff every year.)  lol

Still looking, and thinking about what to get.
I could build one, but I probably would have to get the parts one at a time. I work at Walmart*, you know. That would take some time.
I don't have a major credit card, just GC and BB.
I see that BB has Rain computers, for audio production. Anyone used them, or heard anything about them?
More research ahead!
 

Greg....

I just built a new computer from parts.... I bought them at Tiger direct....and I'm sure the parts are still available since I just completed this box and the original order was 8-8-10.

It has the i5-750 chip, 4 gb memory, an ASUS P7P55D mother board. 2 SATA drives, a DVD burner, cooling fans, a case, and 750w power supply.  I also bought XP since I did not own a copy.... I had an upgrade but it won't install fresh.  Total cost about $800.

This thing is fast and powerful. Running the biggest projects with Kontakt, EWQL strings, and several instances of Ozone, plus a bunch of the cake plug FX running ...all in the same project.... the CPU is barely hitting 15%.... on my lappy, that project would never run with all those plugs in at the same time, in real time.

Melodyne works so freaking sweetly on this box.  Exports are quicker, sample libraries load smoothly and quickly, and Biab loads and runs so much better.

I reused the monitor from an older PC.  Boot up under 30 seconds. So far NO BSOD, no glitches, just sweet studio time.

You live close enough to me, why not give a call and come up and take a look at it?

Oh yeah...the Focusrite Saffire works flawlessly with it... it must have the TI chipset in it because it ran perfectly from the first time.  That was my biggest fear.... no one could tell me about the chipset.... that ended up as a crapshoot that worked. If it didn't, my plan was to buy a nice USB interface and sell the Saffire. It worked so plan B wasn't needed.

I went and looked at the available DAW vendors..... chose one that I would have like to have...( priced at $1600+), copied down the basic specs and started my research from that point.

I got a machine that if I had bought it, would have cost twice as much. I wanted a build so I could control what was on the hard drive. It's an OFF LINE computer, used only for recording. I plan to keep it that way.

Seriously, call me,  and come up and let me show it to you. I'll be glad to do that, we can go eat, hang for a bit, play some music, and I'll get you a list of the parts. Since I successfully built this, I'll be glad to help with advice to the best of my abilities as well if you decide to go this route.

Where can you buy a prebuilt for less than parts?

tiger direct does have some good deals on barebones systems.  if you already have your OS and monitor you can easily get a good system for very little money.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6327550&CatId=4910

here's an i5 system for less than $500.  it doesn't have an OS, hard drive or monitor.

i7 barebones are about $780 from the same company, I think.  search them there and you'll find it.

I bought a ready to roll HP/Compaq with W7 for about $500 and CompUSA (Tiger) for my biz.... it is pretty good,


If you look on their website they have a number of barebones systems priced low.

I was looking for certain specs and options. And as I called and spoke to the sales rep, the first option was to examine the bare bones (BB) machines, already built, but upon a deeper questioning, the BB boxes were lacking the things I was looking for. One simple thing was the number of USB ports and the number of FIREWIRE ports on the machine. Some came with no FW port.... and adding FW with a PCI card wasn't something I wanted to do if I could avoid it.

Second big stopping point for me was the number of PCI and PCI express slots available on the MB. Some of the BB boxes were seriously limited in PCI expansion. You never know what you might want to add to the machine in the future and PCI is a good way to add it.

So with some basic requirements like that, most of the BB boxes were out of the running. I think ONE BB box met the requirements, but then the chip it ran was not what I wanted.... 

So in the end the final solution for me was build it from parts to get what I wanted. 

It has a number of USB ports and  the FW port is on the front with 2 USB's and more USBs are around the back side.

How much do you want to spend on a DAW PC? Right now I want to spend +$3000 for what I want. I'd never go back to an off the shelf for music production. Off the shelf units are what drove me to pay for a dedicated PC and OS. Even then there were some adjustments to be made. My next DAW will be a professionally built unit. I'd build it myself but the amount of hassle in working out the hardware-software kinks is generally understated. 

amateur - jbridge will resolve your 32bit vst problems.  google it.

Congrats!  That's great!!

What kind of connector-thingy did you get?  I got a KVM switch, but I've been less than thrilled with it. 

I bought a new, but superceded model HP Pavilion quadcore from a local PC dealer. I also lucked out on the firewire interface but was prepared to buy and install a card if needed. The base unit was cheap, only £350 (say, $425) I then installed two additional 500Gb drives and put in an Nvidia 8400GS graphics card. So far I have had it for 2 years and it takes everything I can throw at it. In December I went 64-Bit, upgraded Windows and put 8Gb memory in. Buying OTS can be hit and miss but I was prepared to build if I had to, but felt this route was worth taking a chance. I am glad I did as I now feel I have had more than my money worth and will continue to do so. Just my personal experience to add to the pot.

What are you self builders doing to address noise?

Specifically, hard drive vibration noise?

I used to build my own pc's for years, but the more I became involved in IT professionally, the less I ended up knowing about hardware and writing code!  I could upgrade HDDs, graphics cards and memory ok but don't know much about the various motherboards anymore - too many letters and numbers.

Last year I bought a new Quad Dell (not i7 though) that came with 4Gb and Vista, so I upgraded to W7 64.  Great machine, and cheap too.  Given the choice I'd still like to roll my own for the pleasure of it, but it's much easier to head to PC World on the basis of 'I want one, and I want it NOW' mentaility :)