New computer/old soundcards

I have been somewhat out of the loop DAW wise for the last couple of years, so I confess I'm still running Sonar 6 on an XP DAW that I built almost 5 years ago. I'm looking to upgrade to Win 7 and Sonar X1 and put together a DAW ( on a limited budget) and will be able to accommodate my old Frontier Design Dakota cards or my ancient Creamware Pulsar 1/Luna 2 cards for audio and a UAD 1. I believe each has Win 7 drivers that work. I was looking at hardware on the Newegg site and saw this bundle and wondered if this would be a good starting point. 1.ASUS P8Z68-V LE LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS (Model:P8Z68-V LE) 2. Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I72600K (Model:BX80623I72600K) 3.CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 15000) Desktop Memory Model CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9B (Model:CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9B) 4.SAPPHIRE 100289VGAL Radeon HD 5670 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card 5.Corsair Nova Series 2 CSSD-V60GB2 2.5" 60GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (Model:CSSD-V60GB2 6.Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (Model:ST31000524AS) 7.Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W Continuous @40°C,80 PLUS Certified, Single 12V Rail, Active PFC "Compatible with Core i7,i5" Power Supply (Model:RG630-S12) Rosewill FUTURE Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case,come with Four Fans-2x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan,1x Top 120mm Fan,1x Rear 120mm Fan,Support up to 7 Fans (Model:FUTURE) Any thoughts, advice, or recommendations would be greatly appreciated Thanks Bill

"timidi"
BTW, the ASUS install CD will install by default, Norton. That alone really Pissed me off.

No tim, it doesn't. You got caught with the way they present their utilities installation dialog box. I almost got caught with it also, but didn't cause I took a closer look. Be careful the next time around and you'll see what I mean. Norton is evil, but Asus is no better when attempting to mislead you into installing it.

Thanks, I forgot about the cpu cooler. Sorry about the unreadableness of the original post. I've tried editing it twice, adding a new line for each item, but for some reason it will not post that way. Let me try it again. I have been somewhat out of the loop DAW wise for the last couple of years, so I confess I'm still running Sonar 6 on an XP DAW that I built almost 5 years ago. I'm looking to upgrade to Win 7 and Sonar X1 and put together a DAW ( on a limited budget) and will be able to accommodate my old Frontier Design Dakota cards or my ancient Creamware Pulsar 1/Luna 2 cards for audio and a UAD 1. I believe each has Win 7 drivers that work. I was looking at hardware on the Newegg site and saw this bundle and wondered if this would be a good starting point. 1.ASUS P8Z68-V LE LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS (Model:P8Z68-V LE) 2. Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I72600K (Model:BX80623I72600K) 3.CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 15000) Desktop Memory Model CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9B (Model:CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9B) 4.SAPPHIRE 100289VGAL Radeon HD 5670 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card 5.Corsair Nova Series 2 CSSD-V60GB2 2.5" 60GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (Model:CSSD-V60GB2 6.Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (Model:ST31000524AS) 7.Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W Continuous @40°C,80 PLUS Certified, Single 12V Rail, Active PFC "Compatible with Core i7,i5" Power Supply (Model:RG630-S12) Rosewill FUTURE Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case,come with Four Fans-2x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan,1x Top 120mm Fan,1x Rear 120mm Fan,Support up to 7 Fans (Model:FUTURE) Any thoughts, advice, or recommendations would be greatly appreciated Thanks Bill

"timidi"
I took a closer look. And, pondered. And, didn't come to the conclusion you did.

When you launch the Asus support DVD, the first screen to popup is the screen of the 6th menu item "Specials" located on the menu bar, far right. Just don't click on the big "Install Now" button. Instead, click on the first menu item 'Drivers" located on the left.

"timidi"  
should I forgo the CD and do direct from downloads?

Yes, if you're comfortable doing it this way, you are making sure you have the latest drivers. Have you sorted out your Mac issues?

Note: Can't help you with the Mac stuff.

"timidi"
Can you tell me what is necassary (as far as drivers) for the MB stuff.

What's the role of your new machine? Dedicated Daw? Will you need internet access? Wired or Wi-Fiiiiii? Are you going to  "raid" your high capacity mechanical drives? Onboard sound (alongside your pro soundcard)? As a rule of thumb,  only install the drivers for the components you will use/need.

From the "Drivers" menu, I can recommend for example not to install:

1] Norton Internet Security 2011 
2] Marvell SATA 6G Driver (but you knew that already) 
3] Realtek Audio Driver (onboard audio)
4] Intel Graphics Accelerator driver (for the 2600k iGPU)


From the "Utilities" menu, the following can also be skipped:

1] Asus AI Suite (Asus windows bloatware, anything offered here can be accomplished in your UEFI bios)
2] Adobe Reader 9 (old version)
3] Disk Unlocker (for drives > 2TBs)

Hope this will send you in the right direction... let me know.

My guess is you are using firefox - the new version of FF does not work with this forum software :(

It's a shame but IE and Chrome work fine.

My apologies to BillyBoy also (the newer version of Firefox can't give you line breaks, which makes it very hard to read).

timidi"
Where do I look on the computer in system to find "chipset" so I can see the date of the driver?

Excellent question. Here's a primer I think you'll find interesting:

Intel® Chipsets :: How to identify your Intel® Chipset
And if you're not in the mood to get your hands dirty so to speak, you could try out this Intel utility:

Intel Driver Update Utility

There's also "CPU-z" (free and x64), a windows utility which is a light-weight program listing detailed specs. about your system, available here:

CPU-z

And to complete your utilities "toolbox" for maintaining and optimizing your Windows environment, I strongly suggest the following from SysInternals (also free and indispensable IMHO) which was purchased by Microsoft a few years ago:

Sysinternals System Information Utilities

1] Autoruns
2] Process Explorer
3] Process Monitor

Sysinternals Networking Utilities

1] TCPView

Sysinternals File and Disk Utilities

1] DiskMon
2] PageDefrag

These SysInternal utilities (even though dated) are lightweight and very efficient at what they do. We can talk about when and how to use them... when you're ready to tackle that part of the process.

jc

"timidi"
So, I'm just getting done with the MS updates after another clean install of Windows. I didn't use the CD this time. What a pain.

At least with Windows 7, there ain't too many updates to deal with. I just finished rebuilding my brother-in-law's laptop with Vista. I kid you not, 2 service packs and over 350 individual updates. No fun at all, especially when MS's servers are slow. Without using the CD? You mean Asus'sss driver and utilities DVD?

"timidi"
I had to get another video card cause the other one was covering up the PCIe slots to much for the audio card to fit.

It never ends. And that kind of case "real estate" problem is not easy to work around sometimes. The new one should be ok as long as it's rated for a 1 slot occupancy. I just took a look, and on a frontal view, the heat-sink does not exceed the width of the bracket. Looking good.

"timidi"
One thing I noticed is, there appears to not be a USB controller download except one for USB 3. Do I need to install a separate USB controller driver?

Yes, and that's normal as USB 3.0 is not natively supported by the OS, so you will have to install that driver if you want to use it. Previous USB versions are, so there's no third party drivers to install.

Most computers will run X1 without problems. Especially the i7's. 

I built a DAW (dedicated and off line) using XP as the OS with an i5 chip. I brought my old Saffire firewire along for the ride and it worked perfectly. 

I'd thing that if the drivers are available, give the old sound stuff a chance. I would consider an upgrade to the newer USB external interfaces if you have any problems. A good one will make the recording process smooth and transparent.

Jonbouy

Jim Roseberry

I took a closer look. And, pondered. And, didn't come to the conclusion you did. I was nervous there would be no escaping Norton once I clicked. I installed each item one by one.

FWIW, I wouldn't install drivers from the motherboard's CD.
Those drivers are old...

Download/install the latest drivers from the Asus site.

You'd think that would be the case Jim, and with any other company you'd likely be right.

Every driver that came with my Asus H67 board on the Driver CD was newer than what is available to download from the ASUS site.

Make sure you double check the version numbers before installing.

Well, that's interesting Jon. 
Could you tell me where I find the version numbers of particular drivers on the cd?
Did you install evrything under the 'drivers' tab on the cd?
Thanks

ooh,isn't it???