Happy to Finally Catch Up to the New Age

  Okay, so I've been running on a single-core P4 3.2GHz WinXP SP2 machine since 2002. I was running Sonar 8.5 Pro (32-bit), although I have purchased X1 and X2. My machine died. So I finally decided to step up to the new age and went to ADK Pro Audio to build my new system (since that's what a lot of you guys rant and rave about) . Christmas is on it's way! Before Christmas, I should now have a new machine that runs Sonar X1 and X2. Here's what I got. I'm so excited to be able to finally talk current technology and break bread with your guys/gals without wearing anymore outdated sandals and robes like Moses did!! :-)

Case: ADK - ADK Tower:
Power Supply: Coolermaster - 700W Silent Pro M Pro 16DB (quiet) 5 yr warranty.
Motherboard: ADK - Core i7 SB-E, 4 PCIex16, 2 PCIe, up to 64Gig ram no firewire.
Processor: Intel - Core i7 3930K 3.2GHz 6 core 12meg cache
CPU Cooling: Noctua - NH-U9B SE2 Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler 8-13DB
Quieting/Xtra Cooling ADK - Acoustical Sound Treatment with 8db case fans. Noise inhibiting acoustical
Memory: 32 Gig (4x 8Gig) DDR3 LV 1600 11-11-28
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 7 Pro 64 bit OEM
Recovery Software Paragon Backup & Recovery 11 Suite with ADK recovery DVD.
OS Programs Drive: SEAGATE - 500G 16Meg Sata 600 1 yr warranty ST500DM002
Audio Drive: SEAGATE - 2TB 7200rpm 64Meg Cache Sata 600 ST2000DM001 Hard Drive 1 yr warranty
Audio/Samples: SEAGATE - 2TB 7200rpm 64Meg Cache Sata 600 ST2000DM001 Hard Drive 1 yr warranty
FW or Raid Controller: SIIG - Firewire 2-port PCIe card. Firewire 1394a Dual
Head Video: AMD - ATI Radeon 5450 1GB fanless 1DVI, 1VGA, 1 HDMI
DVD-RW/BDR:PLEXTOR - PX-890SA 24X DVDRW SATA Retail: Plextor 24XDVDRW with PlexUtilities, SATA,

Sweet. That must have put a dent in your wallet. Well worth it I'm sure though. I hope I can afford one their systems by the time I need to upgrade which hopefully won't be for another 4 years or so (just built my system with the future in mind). I'd actually like one of their laptops though. Cheers.

  Yeah, it did dent the wallet a bit, but I too was thinking about future growth. It's not like I'm going to be scoring movies or kicking out soundtracks in the immediate future, but it's good to know that I have the option to skim the surface and explore. Just imagining what it feels like to lay down tracks and not have to bounce every take to keep from tanking my system.

lol... yup.

Actually it sounds like you got the system I modeled mine after except with a bunch of the extra flair. I built mine for about $1500 in parts. Their system was a few hundred bucks more than that but after taxes, shipping and getting cornholed by Canadian customs it probably would have ended up being closer to $2400. Man I hate customs.

I don't trust those SSDs quite yet. The drives they use at ADK, although still mechanical, are super fast. I got a couple Caviar Blacks and they lag a tiny bit but not worth the cost and worry of an SSD IMO. I think they are something like 3 times the cost per GB. Yowsers!

I'm kind of curious why they can't make them with larger capacity. Too lazy to google it though.

SSDs work great for streaming sample libraries.

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview

God I love computers and everything to do with them. 

Nice system! I'm curious about the motherboard. What brand/model is it? You can use a program called CPUz to get the mainboard information. 

While SSDs are being discussed, what about SSD accelerator drives??

I am in no rush to buy a new DAW but I have started browsing and UK DAW manufacture Inta-Audio are offering this option. The drives are Corsair Accelerator Series SSD 40 or 60 GB . There is a claim "to boost system performance up to 5x"  Not Inta's words, they come straight from the Corsair web-site

. Are they worth the cost or is it snake oil?

[From Silicon Audio]
The only thing I would change with that rig is swap the Seagate drives with Western Digital drives. I work in IT and have seen a truck-load of 1 to 3 TB Seagate drives die in the last 18 months.

Yeah, the guys at ADK told me that the Seagates run a little quieter. In my former (MOBO just died) 32-bit system, I was running all WD drives (3 of them were VelociRaptors). Never had a drive fail on me. I'm not going to worry about he life span of the drives. I will just clone all of them ASAP. Then I will try to at least clone my sample/audio drives monthly, if alot of changes have been made. And I will probably do my O/S more than that. I use a tool called beyondCompare to compare disks and files. Most of the time I will only see a few new files added or removed. So after I clone, just adding or removing onesy or twosy files on the clone disc is a breeze -- So I don't have to literally re-clone the whole drive again repeatedly.

BTW, I haven't been on the forums in a long time. What happened to the forum software? The reply-to stuff is not working the same where you can reply right to the person that you want to, and include there quote. I had to manually copy/paste the quote above. The .. html tag is no longer working