Thought I'd better chime in:

Asus P5DW2 Premium with Intel D940
Artic Cooling Freezer Pro CPU cooler
Enermax 600w PSU
2gb Kingston DDR2
Nvidia NVS400 PCI gfx for quad display
4x 250gb SATA2 storage
1x 80gb SATA2 system
Compucase S411 rack case

TC Powercore Firewire
RME HDSP9652 Hammerfall I/O card

System is rock solid and stable at 6ms, lovely!

--------------------
Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

im probably going to get flamed, but i couldn find what i was looking for in the pages of this GREAT thread, but does a dual core AMD 3.8ghz run well with fruityloops?

Anyone running a dual cpu and uses fruties?

Hi,
Can I clarify that many of you are using the Asus A8V (This one) with your dual AMDs.

As far as I an see, this is a PCI Express board (as opposed to the AV8) - hasn't this casued any problems with your PCI cards?

I have an Emu 1212m and a UAD-1. Can I anticipate problems?

Thanks! And by the way, anyone know when the PAQ case will hit the market?

Hm,

I think I got that wrong - seems it is a PCI motherboard, not PCI Express...

I’ve just upgraded my old AMD 3200, 754skt with Abit KV8-MAX3 ViaK8T800 to this…

AMD 3200 x2, Thermalright 120 heatsink/fan, overclocked to 2.4ghz
Asrock Dual SATA, Uil1695 chipset
1gb Corsair TwinX matched x2 512mb sticks
x2 Western Digital 80gb SATA in Raid 0 striped (audio drive)
x1 Maxtor 40gb system/program drive
Matrox G550 32mb dual head 2D grafix card with x2 Ilma 19” CRT
Thermaltake 550w PSU
Asus CDR/DVDrom
Terratec Phase 28, 2in/8out




The journey hasn't been an easy one. I initially made my first 754skt DAW mainly for running softsynths but the integration of external MIDI sequencers meant latency was becoming a big problem when trying to monitor/record against a hard MIDI clock.

I went for the x2 3800 as this is now only £117 and folks out there were saying it's the best one to overclock as it essentially has same core as the higher models in the range. It's rated at 2ghz but I got a Thermalright 120 heat sink 2nd hand off ebay and a together with a new quite120mm fan cost me little more than £20 extra for a 25%ish increase in power.

The original 754 KV8-Max3 was a bad choice for a DAW and to my horror I later found out the onboard Sil SATA controller didn't get on with the drivers on my ole M-Audio 2496 so I upgraded to the Phase 28 which seemed to work better in WDM/KS although I couldn't get anything lower than 14.5ms for stable recording.
Although some folk swear by the AV8 I heard things about a limited PCI bandwidth (or buffers) with Via chipsets (although could be a thing of the past now) and the nForce4 had been problematic with PCIe issues but the Uil1695 underdog was apparently very stable with most audio interfaces according to the Sonar forum and was a good one to go for.
The Uil1695 is reported to be on par with the nForce4 amongst gamers and the Sonar crowd were going crazy for the Gigabyte K8U 939. Unfortunately getting these mobo's in the UK is a little tricky at present so the Asrock Dual SATA was the only viable option which hasn't disappointed me so far and is also a little more future proof with both AGP and PCIe to boot.

The Matrox G550 is a simple 32mb dual head AGP that prides itself by not being a PCI latency hog (which can be a problem if you're RAID controller is on the same PCI buss) and thus is ideal for DAW's. Never had a problem with this card and I don't use my DAW for games.

The matched TwinX Corsair was good in the ole mobo but now I can make more use of the 939's dual channel memory controller.

The RAID 0 (striped) on the two 80gb WD SATA's is set to 64kb buffer, which is the highest it will and the best I've found for audio although the old Sil controller on the KV8 could go to 128kb which gave an improved performance for the old setup.


My Sonar audio settings are…
24bit/44.1hz using ASIO, 128kb buffer (I get now get lower latency than with WMD/KS).
NO read/write cache (I should have unchecked these ages ago and saved me a lot of hassle)
I/O buffer set to 16kb (very low but it gets your RAID working more and lowers the CPU load)


I was initially getting better results with WDM/KS drivers but still wasn't happy with the performance during recording but now after a lot of hair loss I've got a rock steady 2.5ms latency for playback and recording with plenty of CPU and HD overhead even when recording/monitoring incoming audio internally within Sonar together with internal softsynths and external MIDI sequencers all running in sync!
The latency whilst monitoring a recording (internally within Sonar) is there but very slight and not really an issue even against a hard MIDI clock which is a revelation for me as I was adding small delays to the playback channels to attempt to make it sound in sync with the incoming audio.

Well I've never been more confident with the system I'm running now. I can't say I'm pushing it to its max quite yet but messing around last night playing back four 24bit stereo tracks whilst recording a stereo outboard sequencer module (in sync) and hitting as many keys as I could on a big polyphonic (and CPU hungry) Arturia Modular patch only had the CPU meter just spilling over 20%!!!!! All the audio recorded and played back without so much as a tiny pop or crack. I tried recording a tight hi hat twice and although the very slight latency was just noticeable during recording, playback was rock solid to the point of the two hi hat tracks where phasing with themselves without so much as a slip.

Its quite shocking for me to go from an hair pulling glitchy DAW I’ve spent too much time trying to fix rather than making music to a powerful workstation which is almost more than I would ever need to make a 24bit quality album.

It feels kinda like the end of Wrath of Khan when Spock fixes the Warp core just in time but with out him popping his clogs at the end (unless I melt my CPU).

WARP SPEED NOW MR SULU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"The RAID 0 (striped) on the two 80gb WD SATA's is set to 64kb buffer, which is the highest it will and the best I've found for audio although the old Sil controller on the KV8 could go to 128kb which gave an improved performance for the old setup. "

I meant stripe size not buffer, sorry!

Hi,

Recently my computer (Asus A8N-E, AMD Athlon 4400 X2, 2Gb RAM) started acting strangely and after a complete OS re-install it was still acting up – i.e. hard drives disappearing in Windows, the computer hanging for a very long time (as if it had crashed) before unfreezing itself. After the reinstall, I tried to install the motherboard drivers as normal but each time the driver installer crashed the PC. To fix the problem I have resolved to replace the motherboard, and to this end I have managed to get hold of an Asus A8V (most places no longer stocking this particular board since AGP is no longer the ‘cutting edge’). I have chosen this board purely on the recommendations of other users on forums such as this.

To my point: The new motherboard is an AGP-graphics type, my old one a PCI-e. Although my PCI-e machine was fast, I was never really over-impressed with the buffer settings I was able to set in Cubase considering the speed of the processor, the board and the amount of RAM. At best I was getting down to a buffer size of 512 samples (I think about 12-13ms or thereabouts), which I often had to increase to 1024 when working on larger arrangements. (When using just one track with one plugin I was able to reduce the buffer size significantly, however). I mostly use VSTs with a limited number of audio tracks.

I will be interested to see what (if any) difference swapping the motherboard has. I am hoping that I will be able to reduce the latency, but that will remain to be seen. If I am able to do so it will certainly be a direct result of the motherboard/chipset (and graphics card I guess) since all my other hardware and software remain the same. I will try to report back when I have been able to make a comparison.

Tim

1st pc pentium 1 166mhz
2nd pc pentium II 350 mhz
3rd pc athlon xp 1800
4th pc pentium IV northwood 2ghz
5th pc pentium IV 3.6 ghz prescott

current setup

Motherboard/chipset Asus p5p800 se
Processor pentium D 940 3.2 ghz
Zalman 9500 socket 775 cooler
Tagan 480W silent PSU
Graphics card Gainward 6800gs golden sample AGP( modded drivers makes gfx fan silent )
Audio interface m-audio audiophile 192
Any DSP cards - none
Yamaha MSP5A acive speakers
Acousticase black
Samsung spinpoint 250Gig SATA


took advantage of recent pentium d price drops and upgraded from a 660 3.6ghz prescott that just got too damn hot under load

by far the fastest pc i've ever had,
cubase flies!stuck with AGP for a while as the mature technology has really made this platform reliable under XP.

Would love a Conroe but think I'll wait till Vista and Pci-e soundcards prove stable.

only upgrade in the forseeable future is a 20/24 inch widescreen monitor.My 19inch is fine for now but those prices keep on tumbling.Wont be long before I cant resist

Edited by akira9000 (11/08/06 10:48 PM)

Bit the bullet and ordered today...It's more of a migration than an outright new build but the guts i've gone for are the following..

Chip......Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4

Cooling...Akasa AK-961 Intel LGA 775, P4 3.8Ghz 3 Heat Pipe

Memory....GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) (MY-058-GL)

Mobo......Gigabyte GA 965P-DS4, Intel P965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, ATX

I have a Western digital raptor 34 gig drive for system and progs added another Western digital 160 gig SATA drive with the 16 meg cache


Case is the 3D Aurora from Gigabyte.. PSU a 430 watt Tagan


Looking forward to receiving it all and building it..will report back on how it runs etc, as and when...

--------------------
nibbled to death by an Okapi http://www.soundclick.com/tubilahdog

I noticed a few questions popping up on this thread about Firewire audio interfaces. I'm going to be getting a dual core system set up in the near future. Maybe I do not yet fully understand the problems with PCI-e so I'm hoping somebody can answer my question.

I have a firepod and an M-Audio Keystation Pro88 (I use this with a few different VST instruments to replace a real piano, orchestra, so on and so forth). I primarily record audio tracks and the functionality of my firepod is of the utmost importance to me. Ok, so on to my question...

Since the Firepod transfers data through Firewire is it possible to completely avoid all the issues with PCI-e if the PCI-e motherboard you are connecting it to has onboard Firewire?

I'm assuming that if I were to get a PCI-e motherboard and connect my Firepod to it through a PCI Firewire interface I would be knee deep in the problem. (I realize the problems appear to be alleviated when running a dual core system but I'm still paranoid about it)

Also, has anybody taken a look at the ULI chipsets? I'm thinking about getting an 'ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 Socket 939 ULi M1695 ATX AMD Motherboard'. The M1695 appears to give the motherboard a sweet upgrade path. However, as I gain more knowledge about the PCI-e issue, I may change my choice of motherboard.

Thoughts anyone?

-Kevin

Quote yamatersu:

---

I noticed a few questions popping up on this thread about Firewire audio interfaces. I'm going to be getting a dual core system set up in the near future. Maybe I do not yet fully understand the problems with PCI-e so I'm hoping somebody can answer my question.

I have a firepod and an M-Audio Keystation Pro88 (I use this with a few different VST instruments to replace a real piano, orchestra, so on and so forth). I primarily record audio tracks and the functionality of my firepod is of the utmost importance to me. Ok, so on to my question...

Since the Firepod transfers data through Firewire is it possible to completely avoid all the issues with PCI-e if the PCI-e motherboard you are connecting it to has onboard Firewire?

I'm assuming that if I were to get a PCI-e motherboard and connect my Firepod to it through a PCI Firewire interface I would be knee deep in the problem. (I realize the problems appear to be alleviated when running a dual core system but I'm still paranoid about it)

Also, has anybody taken a look at the ULI chipsets? I'm thinking about getting an 'ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 Socket 939 ULi M1695 ATX AMD Motherboard'. The M1695 appears to give the motherboard a sweet upgrade path. However, as I gain more knowledge about the PCI-e issue, I may change my choice of motherboard.

Thoughts anyone?

-Kevin

---

Apparently I’ve read somewhere that nForce have just bought out Uil which says a lot in my mind.
In my limited experience of chipsets it appears the Uil1695 seems to integrate in one big controller rather than separate chips of each job like my old KV8 which may explain its stability/compatibility with most audio interfaces.
As I’ve mentioned before Sonar users have had very good results using this chipset and my Asrock Dual SATA has been rock solid so far using AGP.

Quote Stevedog:

---

Bit the bullet and ordered today...It's more of a migration than an outright new build but the guts i've gone for are the following..

Chip......Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4

Cooling...Akasa AK-961 Intel LGA 775, P4 3.8Ghz 3 Heat Pipe

Memory....GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) (MY-058-GL)

Mobo......Gigabyte GA 965P-DS4, Intel P965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, ATX

I have a Western digital raptor 34 gig drive for system and progs added another Western digital 160 gig SATA drive with the 16 meg cache


Case is the 3D Aurora from Gigabyte.. PSU a 430 watt Tagan


Looking forward to receiving it all and building it..will report back on how it runs etc, as and when...

---

You'll have to let us know about this one. I was initially was going to go the AMD route, but it seems Intel have caught up some what so i'm holding back on my purchase just to see which way i should go!!

Good luck!!

Works better than fine... very pleased with the system have to say...

--------------------
nibbled to death by an Okapi http://www.soundclick.com/tubilahdog

Case: iStar 10000BL ATX Tower Case (2x Scythe 120mm Case Fans)
PSU: OCZ GameXStream 600W
Motherboard: Asus P5B Deluxe
CPU: Intel Pentium D 945 (3.4GHz)w/ Zalman CNPS9500 AT Cooler
Memory: Corsair XMS 1GB (2x512MB) PC6400
Graphics: XFX GeForce 7300GT (PCI-E)
HDD: 2x Seagate 250GB/16MB Cache SATAII
Sound: RME HDSP9632 (Ver.3 Beta12 Driver)
MIDI: MOTU MIDI Express 128 (USB)
OS: Win XP SP2
DSP Cards: none
Software: Nuendo 3.2, Kontakt 2, Reaktor 5, Vanguard, + various other Softsynths and Plugs.

I built this machine about 3 weeks ago. I am very pleased with the performance I have over my old system. The old system was: 3GHz P4, Abit IC7 Mobo, 2GB PC3200, BFG GeForce 6800GT OC, EMU 1820M Sound Card. The old system was "ok". I always had MIDI timing problems with it, latency issues with the sound card, and the performance just wasn't there. So I was hoping that a new system would solve my problems... and it did. The performance is great. I have not had any issues with MIDI timing, or it going out of sync. Currently the most I have pushed it so far: Sound card latency = 6ms, 16 tracks of audio (Stereo, 48Khz/24-bit) All with compression, EQ and various other FX. Plus multiple copies of Vanguard and Kontakt running. The CPU Meter barely got to 40%, as opposed to my old system where it would have just laughed at me.

This system with the selection of components runs cool and quiet. I would definately recommend these components to anyone interested in building a new system

In the near future I will be adding another 1GB of memory to it and possibly an Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo CPU.

I will post back after I get the rest of my software installed and see what it takes to max this thing out.


-Patrick

Help me!

Is this hot?



ABIT AN8-32X,nForce4 SLI X16,Socket-939, ATX, 4xSATAII, GbLAN, Firewire, PCI-Ex16



Western Digital Raptor 74GB SATA 16MB 10000RPM
Varenr.: 320144


Corsair TWINX2048-3500LLPRO DDR 2048MB Kit w/two matched, CL 2-3-2-6-1T, 437Mhz


AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.2GHz Socket 939 2MB, BOXED m/vifte



Cooler Master Cavalier 3, Sort Kabinett, Aluminium Front


NorthQ 4775-500BULK, ATX 500W, 120mm Vifte, 12-17dBA, 4xSATA, SLI, 20/24pin


XFX GeForce 6500 TurboCache, PCI-Express, supports 256MB, Tv-Out/DVI



NEC DVD-brenner ND-3550 IDE Black OEM DVD+R/+RW/DVD-R/-RW (Dual layer)

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+
Asustek A8N-SLI PREMIUM S939 nForce4 SLI ATX
2x OCZ Value 1GB DDR400 PC3200
Samsung SpinPoint P120 Series 250GB SATA II
NEC ND-3550A DVD/RW Silver
NVIDIA Fanless 7600GS 256MB PCI-E
Seasonic S12 500W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply

E-MU 1820m
2 x UAD1 PCIe
1 x TC Powercore Firewire

[Antec P180 Case
Scythe Ninja-PLUS Heatpipe Cooler, with 120mm fan
Scythe Quiet Drive Internal HDD Silencer
Zalman FANMATE 2 Variable Fan Speed Controller x1
Scythe S-FLEX 120mm Fan (1200 RPM, SFF21E) x2]


No problems at all....also, idle monitors are louder than the PC. Can't complain

ASUS p5 motherboard,
Intel core2duo 2.4GHZ,
3 gigs of Kingston value DDR2 RAM,
seagate baracuda 120 GB Program drive,
400 GB Seagate SATA audio/sample drive,
PowerColor X1600XT Bravo overclocked edition 256mb PCI-E DDR3 128bit Dual DVI VIVO,
Hiper 580W Type-R Modular PSU - Blue,

MOTU 24 I/O with PCI 424,
Windows XP SP2,
SONAR 3,
Reason 3,
East west colossus,

noisy as hell ,lucky its in another room

All working fine MAJOR step up from my last machine

I took a Carillon AC1 in part ex for a laptop and decided to take it home for my own use, strip it out and build an Intel dual core system using the rackmount AC1 case.

Installed an Asus P5 mainboard and an Intel Core2Duo 1.83 which I overclocked 10% to 2.14ghz, fitted dual channel 2 x 512mb DDR2 Kingston memory (re-timed) and ATI x300 PCIx graphics, Seagate Barracuda and Maxtor HDDS, Pioneer 111D, T.I Firewire hooked to Tascam FW1082.

While I do like the Carillon rack mount, I was disappointed with the build quality of the inside of the case, no better than most PC cases, no rubber isolation mounts, poor HDD mount bay and to confirm a concern I had, the Carillon power supply is obviously underpowered as it lasted a couple of days and blew !! I have since replaced this with a 450watt ATX12 silent PSU and fitted an Arctic Freezer 7 to the CPU which has made the system noise free. (The carillon PSU wasn't even all that quiet!)

I have been using the system in my studio now for three weeks and it is stupendously fast and without doubt 100% faster than the Intel P4 3.2 system which it has replaced.

The CPU runs really cool, even slightly overclocked and the Tascam seems to love the system even at very low latency.

Overall, highly recommended and not too costly.

Just a note; but isnt the Pioneer 111 a tackily cheap feeling piece of kit? Not in the same league as my old LG unit asre the draw mechanism and the paint finsih on my silver one looks awful... Not really that important , i know, but have to say, most disappointed in the units looks..

--------------------
nibbled to death by an Okapi http://www.soundclick.com/tubilahdog

I agree, Pioneer drives were always very good in the past, but now they are built down in order to sell them cheaper, (mine was only £21.00 brand new).
I don't write a lot of discs on this PC so it does the job fine for me.
I think most drives now are pretty poor in terms of build quality and I certainly replace more of them than other PC components at the shop.

I asm spec'ing out a new system based on the Core Duo as well. Any comments on this setup?

-Asus P5B Deluxe Mobo
-Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775
-CORSAIR ValueSelect 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)
-Matrox Parhelia APVe (triple head, PCIe 16)


I already have a Magma Chassis with 3 UAD-1 cards and a Poco, so I need the PCI slot, plus my soundcard is the Lynx AES-16 card, which is also PCI.

I am running Cubase SX 3.1 (soon to be Cubase 4???) as my main DAW.

I have always been an Intel fan, so I tend to stay away from the AMD stuff.

Any comments here?

Thanks!

--------------------
James
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" ~Napoleon Bonaparte~

I just built a dual core AMD Athlon. It’s the most stable machine I have ever used… including a bunch of Macs running Pro-Tools. (And I loved those machines!) Forgive me if it’s just more of the same for anyone reading this whole thread… but I really love this DAW. Highlights include:

1. AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ EE w/ 2x512K Cache (Socket AM2)
2. Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe w/ DualDDR2 800, 7.1 Audio, Dual GB Lan, 1394, Dual PCI-E x16 SLI
3. Kingston HyperX 1GB PC2-6400 Low Latency Dual Channel DDR2 Kit (2 x 512MB, NVIDIA SLI-Ready)
4. Antec Sonata II w/ 450W SmartPower 2.0
5. 3x Seagate 250GB Barracuda 7200.10 SATA II w/ NCQ, 8MB Cache
6. LG Super Multi DVD Writer 16x16x10 DVD +/-RW Dual-Layer
7. ATI Radeon X1300 256MB PCI-E

I have a PCI UAD-1 Card, a Yamaha PCI SW1000XG and a Yamaha PCI DSP2416. The old Yamahas might go soon… I don’t seem to use them much anymore.
I use an MOTU Traveler on the built-in Firewire 400.
Software is Cubase SX3. Windows XPP SP2, all patched. No other software except for mission critical stuff. For example, no anti virus and no surfing the internet.

Notes:
I am an IT professional by day and I am familiar with most PC hardware. In my DAW PC, stability and reliability are far and away the number 1 priority. For me it’s about making music, not beta testing the latest gaming hardware. (As fun as that can be!) The number 2 priority is a good performance / cost compromise.
I chose the mainboard by looking at the specs from some of the commercial audio PC builders. I know if they can make a stable supportable commercial product with certain parts… so can I. The mainboard is the most critical choice, followed by the video card. Asus is a proven reliable mainboard builder… they are an easy pick.
I believe ATI video cards are a little more stable and predictable than nVidia. The main thing I want from a video card is to not even notice it’s there; I also like to run two monitors.
I like Seagate hard drives these days… again… they seem the most reliable. I bought 3 identical drives. I use one of the drives as the operating system drive… it’s data is somewhat disposable. I get it stable and then make an image. I striped the other two drives RAID 1 – mirrored. I have seen a lot of hard drives fail catastrophically lately. Simply put, they are so cheap now that the manufacturers have to be saving money somewhere… and they are so cheap now it is a crime not to use at a minimum RAID 1. This way the precious music is 100% better protected for very little additional effort or cost. It also occurred to me that a person could just archive one of the disks every once in a while. It’s so incredibly cheap! I used to budget thousands for 2” tape… this is nothing.
I have been using AMD processors exclusively for about 5 years now, probably related to price more than anything. In addition, AMD methodically got better or comparable to Intel. I like that and I like this “EE” processor because it only uses 65W of power. The heat thing is a big issue for me. Most studios I have worked in have suffered from heat problems. I like my sauna after work, not during!
I chose better RAM over more RAM. RAM always gets cheaper.
The Sonata II case is simply awesome. It’s QUIET. It’s well built. Unless you have a machine room this seems the only choice to me.
I love this PC. It is so stable and very powerful. It just works and that is what I want from it. I want to make music and this is a great, reliable, powerful tool for doing that.
One last note about building it yourself… I had a hell of a time getting it to boot the first time. After much suffering and gnashing of teeth, I can recommend attaching the CPU, a floppy disk, video card, keyboard and power supply and THEN the first boot. Get the BIOS upgraded and stable… then pile on the goodies. These modern motherboards are amazing… but there are so many little bits that can go a bit weird on you the first time you hit the power. I always forget something!

My 2 cents! :-) Cheers!

--------------------
David

I finally built a new system.

Asus P5B Deluxe (Wifi AP)
Core 2 Duo E6600
Zalman CPNS 9500
2x1024MB G.Skill DDR2-800 CL4 (4-4-4-12)
MSI 7900GT (passive)
2x300GB Samsung SataII
Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 430W
Lian Li P7 Miditower

Migrated my RME Hammerfall RPM & UAD-1 from my currently retired AMD machine. The system is rockstable, fast as lightning and really, really silent. The CPU is currently clocked at 3ghz with default voltage running smoothly around 40 degrees, yummy.

Best system i bought in years!

Self built:
Intel Core2 Duo E6400 @ 2.13GHz
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4 Motherboard
MSI NX7600 GT (NVIDIA GeForce7600 GT)
Samsung Spinpoint 160Gb Disk
2Gb 667MHz DDR2
Antec P180B Case
QTechnology 460W PSU

Notes:
Motherboard has silent pipe cooling
Video card has copper heat pipe cooling (ie. no fan)
PSU has 120mm fan
Case has 3x120mm fans (and separate compartment for PSU) and all panels are acoustically damped, 3-layer type things

Verdict:
Fast? Oh yes.
Quiet? Very.
Stable? So far - but not really been stressed too much yet.
Flashy ? Hardly know it's there.

Summary:
Heat pipe cooling and Antec P180B case = top combination for quiet computing.

Once I get my new audio bits I'll give Cubase a good workout and see how it handles that but I'm quietly expecting to be impressed.

Quote Vader77:

---

I’ve just upgraded my old AMD 3200, 754skt with Abit KV8-MAX3 ViaK8T800 to this…

AMD 3200 x2, Thermalright 120 heatsink/fan, overclocked to 2.4ghz
Asrock Dual SATA, Uil1695 chipset
1gb Corsair TwinX matched x2 512mb sticks
x2 Western Digital 80gb SATA in Raid 0 striped (audio drive)
x1 Maxtor 40gb system/program drive
Matrox G550 32mb dual head 2D grafix card with x2 Ilma 19” CRT
Thermaltake 550w PSU
Asus CDR/DVDrom
Terratec Phase 28, 2in/8out




The journey hasn't been an easy one. I initially made my first 754skt DAW mainly for running softsynths but the integration of external MIDI sequencers meant latency was becoming a big problem when trying to monitor/record against a hard MIDI clock.

I went for the x2 3800 as this is now only £117 and folks out there were saying it's the best one to overclock as it essentially has same core as the higher models in the range. It's rated at 2ghz but I got a Thermalright 120 heat sink 2nd hand off ebay and a together with a new quite120mm fan cost me little more than £20 extra for a 25%ish increase in power.

The original 754 KV8-Max3 was a bad choice for a DAW and to my horror I later found out the onboard Sil SATA controller didn't get on with the drivers on my ole M-Audio 2496 so I upgraded to the Phase 28 which seemed to work better in WDM/KS although I couldn't get anything lower than 14.5ms for stable recording.
Although some folk swear by the AV8 I heard things about a limited PCI bandwidth (or buffers) with Via chipsets (although could be a thing of the past now) and the nForce4 had been problematic with PCIe issues but the Uil1695 underdog was apparently very stable with most audio interfaces according to the Sonar forum and was a good one to go for.
The Uil1695 is reported to be on par with the nForce4 amongst gamers and the Sonar crowd were going crazy for the Gigabyte K8U 939. Unfortunately getting these mobo's in the UK is a little tricky at present so the Asrock Dual SATA was the only viable option which hasn't disappointed me so far and is also a little more future proof with both AGP and PCIe to boot.

The Matrox G550 is a simple 32mb dual head AGP that prides itself by not being a PCI latency hog (which can be a problem if you're RAID controller is on the same PCI buss) and thus is ideal for DAW's. Never had a problem with this card and I don't use my DAW for games.

The matched TwinX Corsair was good in the ole mobo but now I can make more use of the 939's dual channel memory controller.

The RAID 0 (striped) on the two 80gb WD SATA's is set to 64kb buffer, which is the highest it will and the best I've found for audio although the old Sil controller on the KV8 could go to 128kb which gave an improved performance for the old setup.


My Sonar audio settings are…
24bit/44.1hz using ASIO, 128kb buffer (I get now get lower latency than with WMD/KS).
NO read/write cache (I should have unchecked these ages ago and saved me a lot of hassle)
I/O buffer set to 16kb (very low but it gets your RAID working more and lowers the CPU load)


I was initially getting better results with WDM/KS drivers but still wasn't happy with the performance during recording but now after a lot of hair loss I've got a rock steady 2.5ms latency for playback and recording with plenty of CPU and HD overhead even when recording/monitoring incoming audio internally within Sonar together with internal softsynths and external MIDI sequencers all running in sync!
The latency whilst monitoring a recording (internally within Sonar) is there but very slight and not really an issue even against a hard MIDI clock which is a revelation for me as I was adding small delays to the playback channels to attempt to make it sound in sync with the incoming audio.

Well I've never been more confident with the system I'm running now. I can't say I'm pushing it to its max quite yet but messing around last night playing back four 24bit stereo tracks whilst recording a stereo outboard sequencer module (in sync) and hitting as many keys as I could on a big polyphonic (and CPU hungry) Arturia Modular patch only had the CPU meter just spilling over 20%!!!!! All the audio recorded and played back without so much as a tiny pop or crack. I tried recording a tight hi hat twice and although the very slight latency was just noticeable during recording, playback was rock solid to the point of the two hi hat tracks where phasing with themselves without so much as a slip.

Its quite shocking for me to go from an hair pulling glitchy DAW I’ve spent too much time trying to fix rather than making music to a powerful workstation which is almost more than I would ever need to make a 24bit quality album.

It feels kinda like the end of Wrath of Khan when Spock fixes the Warp core just in time but with out him popping his clogs at the end (unless I melt my CPU).

WARP SPEED NOW MR SULU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

---

Update;

It seems like the hard drive latency with the two RAID 0 drives is struggling to keep up with the 2.9ms latency my dual core system can now run at. It worked ok at first but as more data was stored on the RAID drives the more random pop’s and clicks seem to appear although only in playback.With the audio latency set at 7.5ms things seemed to be ok with the RAID (for now) so it was just a question of putting up with the pops n clicks whilst recording and set the latency higher during mixdown. From what I’ve read on Mr Walkers excellent PC music FAQ that there’s also the possibility of the hard drive latency getting worse with RAID 0 as the more info that’s stored the more work the drive heads have to do to search for the info.
For now I’m ditching the RAID and having the SATA audio drives running normally at a respectable 2.9ms using ASIO, which seems to be smooth so far.
Also the Matrox G550 is best used in 16bit colour as it can get very glitchy in 32bit and interfere with the soundcard during recording.

My SW1000XG card started to develop odd "shared IRQ with the video" type noises, at the same time that I was having problems with hard drives. I suspected the motherboard (a 6 year old Gigabyte something-or-other) was on its last legs. So I upgraded using an ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe (the one with the nF4 chipset). And sure enough, all I now get is BSODs, hanging etc. I pull the SW1kXG out....sweet as anything.


Oh dear.....it seems that the other comments re. the sw1kXG and "modern" systems are justified.

Full spec
AMD 64x2 4400+
A8N32-SLI Deluxe
Corsair 2Gb TwinX2048-3200C2PT
Asus EN7600GS Silent (vid card)
Antec P180 Case
Antec Neo HE 500W PSU
Q-Tec IDE Raid133 PCI card
M-Audio 1010LT
XP Pro SP2

NO overclocking (no need). Runs Audition2, ULead MediaStudio Pro8, Wavelab 5 SoundForge 8 perfectly and Oh So Quietly! (That Antec case n PSU are amazing)

Ivor

Edited by West_studio (15/10/06 09:21 AM)

Asus P5B Deluxe/WiFi mobo LGA775 Socket (Intel 965 chipset)
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4 GHz LGA 775
2 GB CORSAIR XMS2 DDR2 800 (PC22 6400) (2 X 1 GB)
Matrox Parhelia APVe PCIe x 16 256MB Video Card
80 GB Western Digital SATA 3.0 GB 7200 RPM/16 MB Buffer (OS/App Drive)
500 GB Western Digital SATA 3.0 GB 7200 RPM/16 MB Buffer (Data Drive #1)
500 GB Western Digital SATA 3.0 GB 7200 RPM/16 MB Buffer (Data Drive #2)
300 GB Western Digital SATA 3.0 GB 7200 RPM/16 MB Buffer (Samples Drive)
300 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM/8 MB External USB2 (Backup Drive)
3.5" 1.44 MB Sony Floppy Drive
Plextor PX-712SA SATA DVD+R/CDR Drive
Lynx AES-16 card w/ firmware rev 20
3 X UAD-1 Cards (v. 4.20) in a 7-space Magma Chassis (PCI)
PowerCore Element Card
3 X 17" Flat Screen LCD Monitors
Antec P180B case
Antec TruePower Trio 550W Power Supply
Zalman CNPS9500 AT Cooling Fan
3 X 120 mm Antec Smartcool fans
Windows XP Pro SP2B
Cubase SX 3.11
Cubase 4.01
Wavelab 6.01


All IRQs are optimized, and thing appears to be rock-solid so far.

--------------------
James
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" ~Napoleon Bonaparte~

Self-built system :-

Motherboard : Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6, P965, Socket-775, Firewire x2, ATX, GbLAN, DDR2, 2x PCI, 1x PCIEx16, 1x PCIEx4, 6xSATA, 1xIDE, onboard 7.1 24bit sound

Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz Socket LGA775, 4MB, w/fan

Memory : Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ballistix Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864AA804)

Graphics Card : ainward GeForce 7300GS 256MB DDR2, PCI-Express, TV-DVI

DVD : Sony DVD±RW burner, DRU-820A, 16x, Dual

Case : Gigabyte Triton, GZ-XX1CA-SNS Silver Aluminium Front

PSU : Fortron/Source Powersupply ATX 400W 120mm Fan, SATA, 24pin

Floppy : Sony Drive, 3.5" 1.44MB Silver

Hard Drives : 2 x Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM

OS : Microsoft Windows XP Home SP2b

Main software :
Cubase SX2
Wavelab v3
Premiere Elements v3
Photoshop Elements v5

Soundcard : To be decided. (ex SW1000XG/DS2416)

Using the internal sound (24bit!), and playing back some projects (plugin-intensive) that were seriously challenging SX2 and my previous machine (Athlon 1.4, overclocked), this machine is hardly registering any CPU or disk usage. For me, this is an "order of magnitude" upgrade.

This system is capable of serious overclocking even with standard cooling, but frankly there is just no need at the moment.

Basjoe

Thought I'd contribute my tight fisted upgrade to dual core.

Previous system was an Athlon XP2600+ with Gigabtye motherboard

Now got;
Motherboard/Chipset; AsRock Dual 775 - VSTA/ Via PT880 Chipset (AGP + PCIe graphics card slots + 4 PCI slots)
Processor; Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 @ 1866 Mhz
Graphics card; GeForce 6200
Audio Interface; M-Audio Fw1814 + 2496

Kept the case, IDE hard drives, AGP graphics card and the DDR400 memory from my old system, mainly to save money but also after reading that on this motherboard the AGP outperformed the PCIe express slot and there wasn't much performance gain from installing DDR2.

So far so happy, everything installed easy enough, a Cubase song that previously was registering around 77% on the cpu meter now reads around 25%. I was reasonably happy about this but even more so when I dropped the buffer size down to 256 from 1024 and the reading stayed the same.
It's also very quiet, one of my hard drives is now the noisiest part of my system, never even noticed how bad it was with my old system.

I'm sure with a better motherboard, faster memory, faster hard drives performance would improve but I struggled to find another motherboard with AGP and PCIe graphics card slots along with enough PCI slots to put my extra sound card, firewire card etc in with some room to spare.

Was originally going to get a cheaper pentium D but after reading several people's noise and cooling issues on here I went for the core 2 duo. Always been an Athlon person and quite fancied the X2s but couldn't find a motherboard with AGP to fit it.

Bulley

Upgraded from the dead pentium 3 500mhz...

Abit AB9 pro mobo
XFX geforce 6800xt
Core 2 Duo 2.13 (can't remember what number it is)
Standard on-board audio...

Fast and very stable, but the mobo was a bugger . It refused to install xp. In the end it was the bios...

The onboard sound does not work with Cakewalk Guitar tracks pro unless the latency is about 530 ms (any ideas why?). Other than that its a relatively good system and runs nice and cool. It is not very quiet but thats because of the GPU...

Obviously, however, it is a masive improvement over the old Pentium 3...

Hi

My P4 3.2Ghz caught fire last week, yes caught fire, can anyone recommend a good off the shelf dual core unit to buy?
Many thanks

Howard

Try http://3xs.scan.co.uk/ usually good on backup and price...

--------------------
nibbled to death by an Okapi http://www.soundclick.com/tubilahdog

Recently purchased then sold on Fujitsu Amilio PI1505 laptop
Core Duo 1.6, 533MHz FSB, Integrated graphics, SATA, DVDRW.

I decided that to get the best from Intel Core Duo
and to make the jump from single core worthwhile (for me on a laptop)
I really needed about 1.8GHz 667MHz (ideally 800MHZ : next year) and dedicated graphics.
My budget wont stretch to that now.

So ... am waiting ..... (thats what life about isnt it : queues & waiting)

My system:
- AMD X2 4200+
- DFI CRX3200 m/b
- 2 GB RAM (Transcend DDR 400)
- 2x WD Raptor 74 GB + 1x Seagate 7200.9 250 GB + 1x LaCie Big Disk 500 GB
- Nvidia 7900GT (Asus)
- 2 x LCD display (17" & 18")
- M-Audio AP192 sound card
- Windows XP Pro

This is an excellent DAW - nothing to complain about. It's dead silent (thanks to Zalman's excellent CPU, hard disk and graphics card coolers), powerful and reliable.

There were initial problems with the DFI motherboard, though, until I stopped using the board's main S-ATA disk controller (ULI) and plugged my drives to board's Silicon Image disk controller instead. End of problems, but a disappointing experience from DFI qualitywise...

I'm using mainly Cubase SX3, using 6 ms audio latency. The system can handle lower latencies without problems, too, but I like to play it safe.

No plans to upgrade until, perhaps, AMD's forthcoming quad-cores...

Having managed with an Athlon 2100 for several years I finally hit a processing brick wall in Cubase SX: too many tracks, too many effects and my goodness it all gets nasty when the CPU meter hits 100%!

Also needing a machine that would cope with Elder Scrolls Oblivion I took the plunge...

Now have:

Intel Core2 6600
ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe
2GB Corsair RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT
2 x SAMSUNG SP2504C (250GB)
Creative SB X-Fi
M-Audio Audiophile USB

The same song that maxed out the old CPU now barely hits 10% of the Cubase meter at a latency of just under 8ms.

I am having problems with my old M-Audio Audiophile USB interface though. So far I have been unable to get audio into Cubase with it. Very pesky. Same settings as on my old PC and so far as I can tell everything else in the signal chain is working OK. So for the time being I am going to use the Creative card - I understand their ASIO drivers have got a lot better recently - but for the long term I'm off top look for a dedicated Firewire interface.

Question - I'm looking at buying an Asus P5B board and Corsair ram. But the Corsair ram that people are using (XMS 6400) does not appear on the Asus QVL. Not necessarily a problem, but would others confirm that it's a stable combination?

SH

--------------------
This message was sent from my I and I-phone, an' t'ing.

Bulley! Great minds think alike, mate. I went a similar route.

Had an Athlon XP 3000+ system that, whilst incredibly stable and reliable, was showing its age. Thanks to Ableton Live 6's racks feature, I was regularly pushing things too far.

I've now upgraded to the following:

Motherboard: AsRock 775Dual-VSTA (VIA PT880 Chipset)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Graphics Card: AGP - Inno 3D Geforce FX 5500
Audio Interface: Terratec Phase 22 PCI
OS: Windows 2000 SP4

Old components used included two Western Digital JB Caviar HDDs, an old Plextor CD writer, a Plextor PX-760A DVD writer, and a 400W Akasa Paxpower PSU. The best part is, the Asrock motherboard lets you use DDR RAM, so I could ALSO use the 2x512MB PC3200 Corsair TwinX modules from the Athlon system. It all works very well, projects that took around 80% CPU time on my old PC now take about 20-25%.

This all went in a Gigabyte 3D Aurora case. Keeps things quite cool, and is very quiet. And, again as with Bulley, it turns out that the older WD HDD I use as a boot drive is whining a lot and is rather louder than the case fans!

Some issues: the Adaptec Fireconnect PCI firewire card I'm using (Agere chipset) either doesn't like this motherboard, or the drivers are dodgy. Whenever I tried to use my Hercules 16/12FW, I would get regular clicking at any latency setting. After a while, the system would throw up a stop error. I need to try the drivers Adaptec supply on the CD, rather than MS's own. (Since removing the card, I've had no stop errors)

On my Phase 22 card, playback is stable at a latency of 512 samples, but I cannot get Ableton to play back reliably at anything smaller than that. I'm using DoubleDawg to up the PCI latency for the Phase 22 (128), and lower the graphics card latency (128). If anyone can offer any other suggestions, I would appreciate it.

--------------------
= Casimir's Blake =

Hi Ivor,
What's the best cpu cooler to use on an ASUS A8N32SLI DELUXE MOTHERBOARD ?

Greetings!

Long time, no post - I think it's been at least a year or two. Looks like the new forums aren't so 'new' anymore.

Has anyone here built a machine with the nVidia 680i SLI chipset yet? It's relatively new, although there are several mobos out there that use it.

I've heard some good things about it and am about to pull the trigger and buy one. Anyone have any thoughts on one of these?

Cheers -
D.SCOTT

--------------------
On the web at: www.ultrachronic.com

Hi there,

For the purposes of your survey I have just purchased a Core2duo system based on a Gigabyte GA965 motherboard with 2gb of Corsair XMS Ram.

Performance wise it is wonderful, it runs cool, is silent (with the Zalman cooler) and extremely powerful. However, I had one major oversight: My beloved WamiRack 24 audio interface does (like most soundcards) have issues with IRQ sharing which are easily solved by running the PC in standard PC model (instead of the ACPI HAL). However, in order to get a dual-core system to run correctly it seems that it must be ACPI enabled. Therefore, although I have a really nice quiet system I get clicks and pops. I have moved the card and managed to get it so that it doesn't share an IRQ but I still get clicks and pops that ruin recordings. Ho hum