Building a PC for Sonar?

I use Sonar on my laptop at times. It can work. I usually have to disable the battery and stuff like that, but I make it work. I always use a laptop when recording in bars or at friends houses.
 
I do have a desktop. It has computer parts in it ;-)
 
I don't have a sound card. I use an interface that is external to the PC.
 
I have 16 GB of RAM. I don't believe I need that much, but the 4 I have in my laptop is insufficient.
 
My video card is fanless. Fans make noise. If the computer is going to be in the same room as the source you are recording, it helps if the computer makes as little noise as possible.
 
There are some things that can get in the way of smooth recording, but it helps to know what those things are for you. No point ordering a tweaked PC if you are going to promptly untweak it. :-)
 
Personally, I'm interested in one of those slates... maybe something like this...
http://www.dell.com/us/p/dell-venue-11-pro/pd?refid=dell-venue-11-pro&baynote_bnrank=0&baynote_irrank=0&~ck=baynoteSearch&isredir=true
That I could put on a music stand at the show and mix the band from the stage.

My PC will be 4 years old in august and part of the  reason I dont put my system spec in a footer is that I'll get depressed when comparing it with everyone elses !, that and the fact I dont think it really matters what you get.
 
I bet that's got a few people bristling ! ..... 
 
I have a quad core Intel I5 with 4MB of ram and can honestly say that I've never maxed out my CPU when I used to use Cubase.... got to about 60% with some projects once all FX inserted, admittedly once all the midi was converted to audio I would 'Freeze' any Soft Synths samplers to free up CPU.
 
Sonar seems to compare well although I expect its not been taxed too much as my biggest project so far is a 30 audio track, 5 Buses, 30 inserted FX, & 2 softsyths piece that has all 4 cores showing under 25% .
 
I'm sure the experts will give you what's technically the best spec, and there will be multiple opinions on what to prioritise the funds on, however at the end of the day your machine will be able to record far more tracks than the beatles had in abbey road !!!
 
On a personal note I allways figure that upgrading every 5 years or so means your new machine has much more CPU power than its predecessor so even If I have a bad choice Im still going to be in a better position the before

I've already got a 1TB external hard disc, can I use that for anything?

Is it a USB 2, or USB 3, SATA II, or SATA III?
 
Also, what is the spin rate (7,200 rpm?)
 
For sure it could function as a backup drive, but it might instead be able to be used to hold samples or projects, if it can transfer data quickly enough.
 
I use a USB 3.0 external drive (2 TB), for backups, and I also happen to have a hot-bay in the computer's case, that allows me to simply plug a regular SATA III disk straight into the external bay, giving me a super-fast extra data drive, essentially giving me endless storage capacity, as long as I have additional drives to plug in to that bay and swap out when they get full.  It's pretty sweet, and transfers just as fast as my internal SATA III drives.  (I also use this drive bay when I scrub other folks's hard drives for malware and viruses).
 
Bob Bone
 

rsinger
If your friend isn't familiar with building DAWs and you use an intel chip have them disable C1e in the BIOS.

What does that do?

C1e is an enhanced C1 state. C1 is an idle state - if the cpu isn't doing anything it will go idle, which is fine, but when it's enhanced the voltage is also lowered and when the chip wakes up it takes some time for the voltage to rise. If you have an audio driver monitoring an incoming signal or you're recording a signal that may not keep the cpu from going idle and if C1e is enabled you'll get pops, crackles, etc if you try to run quicker than the idle state voltage. I have an i7 3.5 gHz cpu in my DAW and the default setup has C1e enabled, watching the behavior of the chip with ASUS utilities even while I was monitoring an audio signal the cpu would throttle down to 1.4 gHz or something. This was with the microsoft power management stuff set with the min and max values to something like 80% & 100%.
 
I disabled the C1e state and kept the MS power managment stuff set - that way it can throttle back to cool off, but not nearly as much as it was. Just setting the microsoft PM range without disabling C1e did not work on my ASUS mobo.
 
The microsoft performance tools don't give you an accurate reading of the cpu, if you don't have utilities from your mobo manufacturer you need something like the intel power gadget. Start Sonar, enable an audio track so you're monitoring it and then watch the cpu and see how far it throttles back.
 

rsinger
I'm pretty sure I just disabled C1e in the BIOS and kept speedstep enabled - I think with the AUS mobo I have when speedstep is enable you can control the range (min max) with the microsoft power management feature.

 
That sounds useful and I'll give it a try.  I can't say I like the idea of running my CPU full blast all the time, when I'm idling more often than not.  Going in and out of the bios is a bit of a pain.
 

I am pretty much on board with BBone except I see no reason to use an SSD, and since  7200 rpm hard drives are fast enough for audio, there is no need for SATA 3. You are unlikely to find a contemporary board that does not have SATA 3 in any case, but you will not see any improvement with that connection unless you are running a fast SSD. USB 3 is handy if you are running an external drive (eSATA is functionally equivalent) for anything but backup, but you are better off putting the drive inside the case anyway unless you are using it for backup. The money you save by not using an SSD will give you enough to buy three good sized hard drives, which may possibly give you a meaningful performance advantage that you will not see from an SSD. 

I only suggest an SSD for a primary drive, since many folks place only the OS and applications on that drive, so the cost of a 240 GB SSD is about the same as a 2 TB regular drive, and if that's all that will live on the drive the SSD drive is still plenty big enough.
 
It's really not a big deal, either way - stay clear of green and split things across at least 2 drives and all should be well.
 
Bob Bone