Thanks a lot, Martin!

I'll probably go for an Asus P5B Deluxe. Then we'll see. In the worst case I would buy a new soundcard. But I would miss my Marc X very much... I'll inform you about the results.

Best regards,

Norbert

Upgrading from a Dell Inspiron (Hooray!)

My choice:

Intel e6420 Core 2 Duo
Asus P5B E
Artic Cooling Freezer Pro 7
Corsair 2gb 6400 DDR2 (twin xms2) Cas 4
Gigabyte 7300 GS gfx card
Samsung P120 250gb SATA
WD Caviar 320gb Se16 SATA
Seasonic SE12
Antec P150 case
Samsung SH-S183L SATA Optical drive

Soundcards:
Edirol UA25
Firepod

So far really stable with Live, though I need to test this setup thoroughly....

--------------------
"We deal in junk, you know; What we've got is what other people put in the rubbish bin." - Joe Strummer.

Here's my working system:-

ASUS P5W DH Deluxe
Intel E6600
8 GB Dual Channel DDR2 667 (Crucial CT2KIT25664AA667
1 x 250 GB OS HD (Western Digital)
2 x SATA 150 500GB HD (Western Digital)
Asus EN7600 GS Silent graphics
2 x 19" TFT
Tascam US428,
UAD 1,
XP X64

The system is superb..... However...
I've had no joy with my Delta 66 soundcard under X64
The US428 is running under X64 but it's not the greatest of units or low latency.
Could use some advice on a good PCI card (preferably with MIDI) that has proved X64 drivers.
The MIDEX 8 is history now too!
The UAD1 card has X64 drivers but will not operate on systems with more than 2GB, so my 8GB will not run a UAD1 as of yet.

Other than these problems, the system is excellent!

Any advice on the soundcard situation gratefully received.

K

I just finished a budget build.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400
MSI K9AGM-FID microatx mobo
2 gigs of Mushkin DDR2 800 ram
1 Western Digital Sata II 160 GB HD
1 Western Digital Sata II 400 GB HD
Lite-On DVD burner
Seasonic S-12 430 power supply
Apevia/Aspire X-Qpack aluminum case
I'm running with the integrated graphics for now, but I might be tempted to get a graphics cards at some point.

System is rock solid, ran Prime 95 and Memtest without any problems. System runs at 35 C at idle and 45 C at load. Projects that were at 35% CPU in Cubase, on a 2.66 Ghz Pentium IV run at 10% now. Very pleased with it. I would have liked a Core 2 Duo, but was hampered by budget concerns. System set me back
about $800, or 400 British Pounds...

--------------------

I have found the following to be v. quiet (thanks to case and passive video card) and performs without a glitch running Cubase 4.

Always difficult talking about performance in terms of numbers but I am able to run several instances each of Stylus RMX, DFH Custom & Vintage, Atmosphere, Trilogy, Miroslav Philharmonik etc. Plus a whole bunch of audio tracks with Amplitube 2, Roomworks, etc with 4 to 6 ms latency (not sure how many samples that equates to) without any problems.

Some of the performance gains are down to the data disks being on a separate PCI express card in a RAID 0 stripe, sustained sequential read and write of about 120MB per second compared to the 70-80 you might expect from onboard SATA.

CASE: Antec P180B
PSU: Antec NEO HE500 500W
MB: Intel DP965LTCK
CPU: Intel E6600 CORE 2 DUO 2x2.40 1066MHZ
MEM: 2 x 1Gb DDR2 800
System HDD: WD Caviar RE WD3200YS SATA Raid 16Mb (on-board SATA)
Data HDD: 2 x WD Caviar RE WD3200YS SATA Raid 16Mb (RAID 0)
HDD Card for Data drives: Adaptec 1220SA SATA 2 Raid Card
DVD: Nec AD7170 GEN DVDRW Black 1
VGA: MSI NX7300LE TD256E Nvidia PCI-Express 1
AUDIO: E-MU 1820m

Obviously you pay a premium for the Raid edition drives, the Intel MB/Processor and decent memory but you do get what you pay for. Having been working with PC hardware since the days of the 8086 processor I was happy to spec and build this myself but you should find that a decent PC shop would put it together for you for £30-£40 it you buy the bits from them.

Cheers,
Adrian

Hi Martin - excellent article. I plan to follow it word-for-word!

No luck trying to find that graphics card though.

Could u recommend a similarly suitable spec or card?

I don't know enough about them to figure out what it is about this one that I should look for.

Thanks alot,
B

--------------------
MBP 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, OS X 10.6.6, Saffire Pro 40, Sound Devices 552

Asus P5B-E
Core Duo E6600
Asus 7300EN passive video card
Scythe Nija RevB
Antec Take 4 Rackmount case
Corsair HX520 PSU
Corsair 2G 6400 TMX 800 MHz RAM
RME Multiface II PCI

Everything is working fine except I cannot the my Multiface to work at 48 or 96 KHZ. I have the latest firmware update and RME drivers installed. I am at a loss to know what to do to rectify the problem.

Gordon Sauvé
Montreal

Please help the none techi stuggle sometimes

GA-K8NF-9 NFORCE 4-4X
AMD 64 Single
ATI Radeon 300 SE
M Audio 44
1x80gb Seagate ATA drive (programs)
1x160gb Seagate ATA drive (data)
running cubase sx3

I bought the motherboard because it was upgradable to dual core.

I recently found that when working on a remix with more audio tracks (40 and a few waves plug ins) than I am used to, The CPU hits jumps from 50% to 100% and locks for 30 seconds when trying to move over drum parts IE intricate detail , the CPU Cubase meter stays at 50% after lots of head ache I came to the conclusion rightly or wrongly that it was a graphics/sound conflict. Having done lots of forum browsing I have seen much talk about my board not all good and frankly am more confused now than I was before I started concerning the nforce4 pci issues.
Bottom line is should I upgrade to dual core on this board or ditch it altogether I appreciate it is not exactly coherent with the thread but I am at my wits end and any help would be greatly appreciated.

I just want do make music!

Quote here come the drums:

---

Bottom line is should I upgrade to dual core on this board or ditch it altogether

---

Welcome to the SOS Forums 'here come the drums'!

The NForce 4 chipset is well known for causing audio glitches on some systems. Here's a quote from my September 2005 PC Notes column:

"However, tests on various PCs featuring this chip set have shown processor overhead that was larger than expected when the PC was running lots of plug-ins, as well as audio glitches unless the interface buffer size (and hence latency) is increased. Some users have reported having to increase buffer size as high as 2048 samples with an NF4 chip set, compared with 128 or 256 samples on a roughly equivalent PC featuring Nvidia's previous NF3 chipset. Although the vast majority of the problems reported by musicians relate to PCI soundcards plugged into the legacy PCI slots on PCI Express-equipped motherboards, RME have reported similar issues with their Fireface 800 interface, so other Firewire interfaces may be affected as well."

You can read the whole column here: www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep05/articles/pcnotes.htm

In March 2006 I wrote a PC Musician feature on 'Making the change to a Dual-Core PC', which included this section concerning the switch from single to dual-core AMD X2 processors:

"This leaves the Nforce 4 chip set, which has proved very popular with gamers but extremely troublesome for musicians installing single-core Athlon 64 processors. However, as I write this in early 2006, the latest news is that if you instead install a dual-core Athlon X2 model the problems are significantly reduced — so much so that some DAW builders are reportedly starting to use Nforce 4 Ultra motherboards such as MSI's K8N Neo 4 Platinum model (with four PCI slots, two x1 PCI Express slots and one x16 PCI Express slot). Even Digidesign (normally extremely cautious to recommend the latest PC technology) are recommending the Asus A8NE motherboard, again with Nforce 4 Ultra, for use with their MBox and Pro Tools LE 7.0 for Windows XP."

The whole article is here: www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar06/articles/pcmusician.htm

So the simple answer is YES, upgrading to a dual-core processor should greatly reduce your current problems.

Fingers crossed anyway!


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

Thanking you very much Martin

Think I may have to purchase one like yesterday then I will be back with a report on progress and performance for you to have a butchers at is there any particular processor I would should go for?

Thanks again it is much appreciating and in English. I can almost feel my head ache subsiding as I type, until the install that is. lol

Thanks again

HCTD

Quote here come the drums:

---

is there any particular processor I would should go for?

---

Do a search here on the forums - prices are always dropping, and the AMD X2 model that currently provides the best price/performance combination will no doubt have changed since the last time I looked


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

I've just build myself A new(partly)Dual-Core PC. X2 4600, Asrock Alivesata2 Glan(MB), Asus Extreme AX300SE(Graphics), 2GB 667Mh Kingston Value RAM, 300Gb Maxtor HD. +-400 euros.
I used my old box, DVD-RW, and one 80Gb HD. EMU 1820M soundcard with Behringer ADA8000. Everything has been working smoothly for more than two days now. Very fast. A project using 40-45% of the CPU on my Athlon 2100(2400 overclocked) 1Gb, is being reduced to 10-15%.

--------------------
http://www.jesperbuhl.com

Core 2 Duo 2.6GHZ
Asus P5b deluxe
4GB RAM
Windows Vista 64bit ultimate
Asus GT 6700 graphics
RME Fireface 800
UAD1
Cubase 4
Various VST (all working in Vista 64)

I'm extremely pleased with this setup - works beautifully!

Hi
I am having the same problem as alex c Has anyone built a duel core system using the Gina 24 with any success
My system
Intel 956 motherboard
E6600 proceessor
Corsair ram
BFG graphics card
thanks

Hi Martin
read your article about old sound cards in new motherboards.
I'm planning to build a new pc E6600 and asus board I want to use my old but very nice Terratec DMX 6Fire card.
I contacted terratec to see if they could suggest any compatible boards and their response..... this is an old card and it might work !!!
well if i'm going to upgrade i need a bit more than that. Guys at my local computer fair all said it 'would work' - but not sure they are the best people to talk to re DAWs.
I have spent a great deal of time surfing for any info and had very little luck.
has ANYBODY successfully used a DMX 6 fire in a new build
E6600/ASUS ??
thanks

Hi Paddy - welcome to the SOS Forums!

Glad you noticed that column - it probably saved you some frustration in advance

As I said there, it's a little difficult to tell whether or not particular soundcard will run successfully in a new motherboard, but your DMX 6Fire is at least five years old (I reviewed it way back in SOS April 2002), so it's starting to look a little unlikely. Why not tell us what Asus motherboard you're considering, and then someone may post who already has that combination and can tell you one way or the other?

However, it was only £180 when first released, and you can get similarly performing soundcards now £100 or so. Why not build your new machine and then try it - if it works then great, but if not investigate a new audio interface?


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

I agree with Martin, but I would like to add that you should give serious consirderation to what interface you would get if the Terratec were not in the equation. You may find that you would build a very different machine. Many newer interfaces are either Firewire, PCI-E, ou USB. If you build your system with the intent of using your old sound card (e.g. buying a particular motherboard because it supports PCI 2.1) you could overlook a system that has better support for one of the newer technologies.

You can see in my post a little higher up in the thread, I did everything humanly possible to keep my old sound card. It was like an old friend and I knew what to expect from it, and there were some features that I hated to loose. Now that I have moved to a new interface (RME Fireface 400 - reviewed in this months SOS) I think it is the best thing I have done for my recording chain in a long time. I dont know if it is the converters or what but it sounds like I wiped off a dull film from my recordings and am hearing things in a completely different way.

I'm not saying the RME is right the interface for you but, as Martin mentioned, the newer interfaces are probably just as good, if not better, than your older card and they will work with the newer computer equipment.

Edited by ErichS (30/06/07 03:13 PM)

Any reason why abit boards havent been mentioned ?

Ive been specd a pc which is virtually identical, with an abit mboard, seen asus mainly. But ive heard that asus boards dont get on with the old gina24, which ive got. Might as well try a different type.

I might have to get a new soundcard too.

Cheers all.

--------------------
http://www.paradigmx.com

Hmmm... here at Hi Fi Towers, I'm looking at going down the Q6600 route - Cubase 4 is barfing badly with a mere 18 tracks of audio and a few plugins via my MOTU 2408 / 24I/O 424 interface setup on the current machine.

So, anyone got any info? Boards to steer clear of?

--------------------
[url=http://www.facebook.com/pages/hifi-studios/117322741632389[/url]

You could try the Intel DP975XBX2 (aka the 'Bad Axe 2') - one of the first Intel motherboards to offer overclocking capabilities. I'm still happy with my Intel DB965LT, and both of these support the Q6600.


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

1. Q6600Processor Intel® Core™2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core processor with VT Each core operates at 2.40 GHz
2 × 4 MB L2 cache
1066 MHz front bus

2. Chipset Intel 975X
3. Memory Installed: 2048 MB DDR2, 667 MHz, (PC2-5300) dual channel memory (two 1024 MB DIMMs)
Expandable to: 4 GB (4 DDR2 DIMM slots)

4. Hard Drive 500 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA II hard drive
5. ATI Radeon X1950 CrossFire video card with 512 MB graphics memory Included CrossFire cable enables dual card configurations Ports: Dual DVI-I ports with HDCP via cable (VGA via adapter)
6. Cubase 2.2 (probably not ideal but I just bit the bullet on this system) which I need to upgrade to fully get the multiprocessor experience. I have had NO problems to date though and am actively using it.
7. fw 1884

I built this in the first week of August, 2007. It is extremely snappy. I am running 13ms of latency on asio drivers right now, and it seems ok, but I have done very little recording with small projects, so the final usable latency may end up being greater.

I was proud and relieved that it worked properly from the first power-on forward, but I have built enough of these that I know how to be careful. And some luck in not having any defective parts.

Not sure if the mobo supports firewire. It has a number of headers inside for extra USB ports, and maybe there is a firewire one. It describes one in the manual, but the manuals are often for an entire product line so I can't rely on that.

This PC includes a more expensive power supply that is much quieter than normal, and a large and quieter CPU fan with heatpipes and a heatpipe fan add-on for the video card as its fan was the noisiest part of the system at first. I suppose these premium parts added about $130 to the cost of the system. Thing is, my pc is lots quieter than a store-bought, unless its from a quiet-pc specialist, and those looked awfully pricey to me as well.

Let me do a run-down in case anyone's interested:

Core 2 duo e6750 $190
2gig ddr2-800 ram $120
Fancy cpu cooler $35
Termaltech 430 watt Power supply $50
MSI P35 mobo $135
Zalman vga cooler $50
Pioneer cd/dvd reader/burner $60
evga gforce 7600gt video $90

Total $730
Tax @ $47
Total $777. 563 euro, 380 british pounds.

I already had a emu 0404 sound card, and since I use outboard ADC and DAC, all I need is something with a good asio driver and spdif in and out.

I felt with the CPu, I found a price-performance sweet spot where the next most powerful cpu was $100 or 50% more expensive. I did have my heart set on a core2 duo.

I am putting together a system with reference to all the above kind help:

E6600 Dual Core
Intel DP965LT Mobo
2GB Crucial 800MHz DDR2 (1.8v)
WD 500GB SATA 16MB cache HDD
Asus EN6200LE 64MB PCI-E Graphics
Samsung SH-S203 S-ATA 20x20 Dual Layer DVD-Rewritable
Antec Solo Quiet Mini Tower Case
Seasonic S12 Series 430W PSU
Thermalright XP-90 cooler

This will hopefully work with my Echo Layla24
however I have a dumb question to which I have not been able to find a straight answer immediately from the web:

I have ordered Windows XP Home SP2B x32bit to "upgrade" from my previous Win2000pro and I am not certain that it will take advantage of the "dual core" nature of my new processor. Can someone reassure me?

Also are there any other reasons that I should have gone for XPpro ?

(I wanted XP for easy networking compatibility with other PCs in my household)

I will of course post a result if the system works as I hope it should !! ;-)

Thanks

Built my new PC 6 days ago and can now confirm that all is stable.

CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (G0)
MB - ASUS P5K Premium WIFI AP (intel P35)
RAM - 2Gb Mushkin XP2 DDR2-1066
VGA - BFG Geforce 7950GT OC 256Mb
1394 - ADS Tech Pyro 64 PCI
HDD - WD5000AAKS, WD2000JB, WD740GD, WD360GD, Seagate 320G 7200.10
Opt - Pioneer 212 DVD-RW
PSU - Corsair HX520
HSF - Noctua NH-U12F

OS - Windows XP Pro SP2
AI - Digidesign Digi003R / Pro Tools LE 7.3.1cs4

--------------------
Funk It

Quote lpjc:

---

I have ordered Windows XP Home SP2B x32bit to "upgrade" from my previous Win2000pro and I am not certain that it will take advantage of the "dual core" nature of my new processor. Can someone reassure me?

---

It does. It wouldn't support dual processors, but dual core or hyper threading is fine.

Just a quick question. If I chose a mobo like the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe, and I was looking a CPU for it, is there any advantage to go with a quad Q6600 cpu instead of a dual e6600 CPU? These are £149 and £115 respectively at Micro Direct currently.

What would be the performance difference between them?

It depends on the software you're using - according to many of my measurement a quad-core PC seems to outperform a similarly-clocked dual-core PC by between 20% and 30% when running typical audio software, although older software may not benefit the extra cores at all.

However, if you get a 30% improvement for just an extra £34 then that sounds like a bargain to me!


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

Thanks for your reply Martin, I use Sonar 6.2PE so I guess Cakewalk have optimised Sonar to work with these new generation CPU's?

For an extra £34 it seems a steal!

In considering my options for storage, what are the pro's and con's of SATA vs Raid? Raid appears to be mightily complex to set up - but probably more complex to read about than to actually implement.

Have a read of this PC Musician feature for my thoughts on RAID:

www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul05/articles/pcmusician.htm

(hint - I don't think it's necessary for the majority of musicians )


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

Many thanks Martin, excellent article - seems like I will be giving RAID arrays a miss.

I can see that I may use up to 60 tracks with possibly up to 15 streaming mono tracks (maybe a couple might be stereo). So I don't think I will get any way towards needing RAID - especially at 24-bit/44.1kHz recording. And 7600rpm spin rate for the HD's seems sufficient for me as well.

hello! a bit OT (or maybe not that much...), but - regarding the increased preformance of a quad versus a dual core - does that come with a much increased power consuption? any help will be much appreciated.


thanks in advance,

miguel

Hi,
first time posting here, so a warm hello to everyone!
Have been reading the dual core thread with a lot of interest and I finally upgraded from a AMD Athlon 4000+ to a 4200+ X2 CPU (board: MSI K8T Neo 2 - socket 939 - KT800 Pro - AGP - no PCIe slots) as this probably time to get a dualcore 939 CPU before the disappear.
Everything seems to work fine. Ínterfaces are Echo MIA PCI and Echo AudioFire 4 via a Dawicontrol (TI chip) FW-PCI card.

Now here's my question:
I just swapped CPUs without a new install. WinXP SP2 did install new hardware, but I'm not sure if I need to turn a few other srews to get the full benefit of the dualcore CPU. What about the hyperthreading business? I think I read on a Steinberg note that I'm supposed to turn of hyperthreading when using a dualcore CPU. If so, how would I do that?

Thanks for helping!
Nanno

Hi Nanno!

And welcome to the SOS Forums!

After changing CPUs without a fresh Windows install I'd perform a clearout of your Registry, which will still contain references to the old processors - have a read of this PC Notes column for details:

www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun04/articles/pcnotes.htm

As for Hyperthreading, that Steinberg caution must be an elderly one, since musicians are now routinely using quad-core and even octo-core processors with relatively few issues. However, you won't have HyperThreading on an AMD-based CPU anyway (AFAIK this is an Intel-only feature).

Hope this helps!


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

I've just built a system based on this:

Mobo: Intel DP35DPM (P35 chip with 1333 FSB)
CPU: Intel Core2Duo E6850 S775 3.0ghz 4mb (dual-core 3.0GHz)
RAM: 2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2
Data HD: Samsung SpinPoint 500GB S300 16MB 7200RPM
PSU: 430w Tagan EasyCon - TG430-U15 - 2Force Silent Modular PSU
Graphics: 512MB Gigabyte 8500GT PCI-E (x16)
DVD-RW: Samsung SH-S203/BEBN 20x DVD±R, 16x
Case: Antec Solo Quiet Mini Tower ATX BLK

Highlights:

- the case is very reasonably priced but has lots of options for making things quiet and easy to access (although I had to butcher it a bit to get a full-length PowerCore card in the bottom slot!).

- Samsung SpinPoint HD is brilliantly fast and silent! Also Samsung SATA DVD is the fastest DVD reader I've ever come across.

- DP35DPM MoBo has 12 onboard USB 2 sockets and 2 FireWire - the FireWire are Texas Instruments chips too, which is what m-audio recommend, so good for external audio interfacing.

Bewares:

- no PS2 connectors for mouse/keyboard, but an adapter can be bought for both into USB for a few quid, but for initial installation you'll need a USB keyboard for the BIOS

- no serial port, so old MIDI or Roland systems that use it will need a USB-serial adapter

- no floppy drive header, so installing RAID/AHCI drivers would be a right pain (slipstreaming) if that's how you want to work

Possibilities for further upgrade include going quad-core (the MoBo supports this) and and extra Gig or more of RAM, depending on OS support.

But overall the system is many times faster and smoother than my old P4 3GHz system, totally stable (so far) and I'm very pleased! My CPU meter reads around 1/4 to 1/3 what it used to in Cub4.

All sourced from the usual, Dabs, Scan.

Bill

This is going to seem like a blot on this thread, but here goes anyway. My single core system died recently so I embarked on a budget orientated refurb. As it was a s939 Athlon system there are currently some excellent deals about for discontinued parts. Here goes...

I gave my refurbed machine a run last night and it managed 3ms in / 5ms out with no clicks or pops on an existing project. That's enough for my needs, and not a bad upgrade for £150 worth of parts. This was with my Saffire Pro running on Bus Power.

For what's it's worth this is what I used. Your needs may be greater than mine.

ASRock 939NF6G-VSTA Motherboard - Onboard video running my 20" widescreen monitor as the PCIe graphics card I bought was DOA. It has 1x PCIe and 2x PCI expansion slots. The Mini ATX size was useful as my Antec Sonata II Case isn't the best for cable management.

2GB Crucial DDR RAM - I had 2x 512MB so bought another two. You need to activate 400 speed in the BIOS for some strange reason as it defaults to 333. I assumed at first that my new sticks were incompatible with the original ones, but this turned out not to be the case.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - I picked up a new one on eBay for £30. Works fine with my existing Zalman cooler.

Seagate SATA 80GB Boot Drive - The manual states that Windows will install without needing a floppy for drivers, and this was indeed the case.

Belkin FW400 PCIe card - Works fine with my Saffire Pro.

Netgear Wifi - This is disabled in my music partition, but doesn't seem to cause me any problems either. This was left over from my dead system.

There are various other SATA drives I have in there for Audio and Scratch. The only real pain was having to put two IDE drives into USB caddies. That's no big deal.

For the paltry amount it cost me to refurb this I'm very pleased. I had pretty much written it off as a music PC (I record with my laptop anyway), but it works fine. It's not as powerful as a decent Core 2 Duo, but was vastly cheaper than building a new PC. It's more than usable, and has a much lower load in Sonar as well.

My lesson learned is to stick to Intel in the future I think. AMD chipsets and sockets are a total mess at the moment. I could find only one Motherboard that worked with my Processor and RAM, wheras refurbing a dead Intel P4 machine a couple of years ago (which uses PC-133 RAM) was a piece of cake.

Ive just built a new system

Amd Athlon 64 6000+ x2 cpu
2Gb ddr2 ram
Nvidia 7200gs Pci-e Graphics card (2 monitors, one 19" and one 17")
Asus M2N -E Sli motherboard, with Nvidia nforce 500 chipset
Hiper power 580w psu
Many and varied hard and optical drives!
M-audio 1010lt sound card

Im running 64 studio and i produce dance music, using some sound modules (E-mu orbit v2, E-mu planet phat and my trusty old Roland u220) as well as several soft synths.

It easily handles having ardour, rosegarden, jamin and many soft synths running at once, with a latency of 2.9ms.

I do not notice any problems when recording from all my sound modules and soft synths at once, also all the hardware was correctly set up, with no need to recompile my kernel.

This was allways going to be my linux daw, so it was designed with that in mind, only problem was Nvidia sata raid, but that was easy to fix.

--------------------
There are 10 kinds of people who understand binary; those who do and those who don't

Quote Martin Walker:

---

..my suggested list of components..

---

Forgive my ignorance but i'm new to SOS (great form btw) so could anyone hint me on where to find that list ?

Thanks in advance !

Frank

Frank - The on-line version of my PC Musician feature on 'Specifying & Building A Dual-core Desktop PC' can be found here:

www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb07/articles/pcmusician_0207.htm

I'll be publishing some updates to the list shortly though, since nine months is an extremely long time in the world of PC components


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

Mine is a quad work flawlessly since a month

Board is a p5k-se
cpu is a q6660 2.4
4 gb of kingston ram ( 667 mhz)
2 x 500 gb seagate barracuda hd

Using it with powercore firewire, tried a couple of soundcard with ( rme fireface, motu traveller, m audio audiophile firewire)Never crashed.


For uad pci users that need many pci slots, I did build a system like mine but with a Asus commando as mobo, rock solid too, work without a trouble with the 4 uad card.

Note that the ram is at 667 mhz cause it looks like the beos is downclocking the ram to 533 by default to get the 1066/533 ( 2/1) ratio with the fsb.

regards

-B