New Grubb-puter.

Grubb · Post by **Grubb** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 12:48 am

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm into computers... but haven't been able to afford a new one for over 7 years now.

Either way, I maxed this system's capabilities out long ago... and frankly, 700 MHz doesn't cut it anymore... and neither does 256 Ram...

I ordered a few new parts from TigerDirect.com, getting the best I can for as cheap as possible, with room to grow.

Parts include...

Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz Processor w/ Hyperthreading
Intel 775 socket CPU cooling Fan
Intel D995XBLKLKR 775 Socket ATX motherboard
XTX Nvidia GeForce 6600LE Video Card
1024 MB of Ram
Some $20 tower

All together, I got it for about $550...

I know it's not all the best stuff, but the beauty of it is that there is PLENTY of room to expand once I get some more money. The motherboard has 2 PCI Express video cards, and the GeForce card I'm getting has SLi on it, so if I wanted to, I could run two of those video cards together without making my brain hurt, and it'd only cost me another 80 bucks.

Also, the motherboard is a 775 socket. So, if it ever comes down in price, I could easily slap in one of those infamous Intel Extreme Processors for a nice 3.6 GHz that is both Hyperthreaded AND Duel Core.

Also, Also, the motherboard takes DDR2 Ram at a delicious 667 MHz, and can handle up to 8 Gigs of ram!

Anyway, I've got lots of yummy upgrade options ahead of me...

BWAHAHAHA!!!!

I know nobody else cares...
I'm just happy I'm finally getting out of the stone age.

Potter · Post by **Potter** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 1:38 am

Really nice choices, but def. bad move on the intel if you plan any gaming or anything of the sort. too expensive. should have gone with amd 64 bit. this stuf is amazing. Realyl nice system though.

Grubb · Post by **Grubb** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 2:44 am

Potter wrote:Really nice choices, but def. bad move on the intel if you plan any gaming or anything of the sort. too expensive. should have gone with amd 64 bit. this stuf is amazing. Realyl nice system though.

Yeah, I'll use it for gaming. I know Intel isn't the best for it, but it still gets the job done.

Besides gaming, I'm also going to be using this computer for my music editing and crap like that, which Intel does well. Especially since the motherboard comes with a exceptional built-in sound card. It's supports High Def 8-channel stereo sound... which is more than enough till I can get myself Professional sound board... course that'll cost like... 2,500 dollars... and I don't know anybody whose serious about music editing/recording... besides myself right now... But all of that is another thread...

Post by **MonMotha** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 2:51 am

If you'd like a professional quality audio card at a reasonable price, look at M-Audio's Delta line. The Delta 1010 gives you 10 input and 10 output channels (8 analog each way, 1 SPDIF each way, 1 MIDI each way), which is probably good enough for anything you're likely to need. $600 gets you a rackmount interface, or $300 gets you the bare PCI card with dongles. Specs are pretty good, and the price is a lot better than $2500. As a bonus, they're well supported by ALSA in Linux.

sam · Post by **sam** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 12:57 pm

and what of yellow tab support?! haterz.

hascoolnickname · Post by **hascoolnickname** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 4:53 pm

sam wrote:and what of yellow tab support?! haterz.

why can't you put be on there?

Grubb · Post by **Grubb** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 12:50 pm

MonMotha wrote:If you'd like a professional quality audio card at a reasonable price, look at M-Audio's Delta line. The Delta 1010 gives you 10 input and 10 output channels (8 analog each way, 1 SPDIF each way, 1 MIDI each way), which is probably good enough for anything you're likely to need. $600 gets you a rackmount interface, or $300 gets you the bare PCI card with dongles. Specs are pretty good, and the price is a lot better than $2500. As a bonus, they're well supported by ALSA in Linux.

I know those are really sweet soundcards. But I probably should have been a little more detaled.

I'm looking for a soundcard, possibly multiple soundcards, that I can handle being hooked up to a professional soundboard and record multiple musical instruments being recorded at the same time. Essentially making my own small recording studio in my garage or something.

Hopefully, I'll beable to get that all set up over the next 2 or 3 years. And it wouldn't be anything super fancy. Just enough to handel like... maybe like 3 instruments and a vocalist. I figured it would cost me somewhere around $2500, though I don't know exactly how much it would cost.

Also, that doesn't include the cost of redoing my Garage. But must of that would just be getting the crap out of there and putting up the soundproofing. Shouldn't be cost more than $500 dollars to do that at the most.

Hopefully, by then, I'll be out of college and have a "Real" job, where I can acutally afford crap like that. But of course, I probably won't be living at my parent's house then either.

A lot of it is still all up in the air and I don't plan on doing anything anytime soon, besides saving my money as usual.

Riot · Post by **Riot** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 2:24 pm

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829102162

Post by **MonMotha** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 3:28 pm

Well, the Delta 1010 gives you 8 independant analog input channels. I can't think of very many garage band type setups that would need more than that. If your board has separate outputs for each channel, just patch them in. If your board digitizes, it probably has a multi-channel SPDIF out, which this card also handles, though if you have external hardware handling that, something much cheaper would suffice.

Otherwise, why not use the computer as your mixing board? There are plenty of USB interfaced "mixers" that are nothing but sliders and such to control software. You can do pretty much anything that used to be done on old-style mixing boards in software these days, as well as apply effects, etc (though, presumably, you'd do that in postprocess). All that you need then is something to set your mic gain. I believe the external box that gives XLR balanced mic inputs has a mic preamp with configurable gain.

The Delta series ain't no Audigy. You're thinking of their Revolution series, which is basically just a less expensive Audigy. There's a reason it costs more than $100. Creative Labs' Audigy line is a steaming pile of crap compared to this stuff (that and it isn't meant for multi-channel capture anyway).

I'm sure you can buy $2500 capture cards. I'm sure you get more than the M-Audio Delta's line worth of features out of them. The question is, do you need those extra features?