Help on building a GigaStudio dedicated computer

[MDesigner]

It\'s about time for me to consider moving my Giga stuff to a separate PC. I\'m using one PC for everything (email, surfing, web design, gaming, music).. and it\'s just not working out too well images/icons/smile.gif Most of my drivers/apps hate the Delta Audiophile drivers as well as the GigaStudio DLLs.

So I\'m gonna start shopping around and pricing hardware. I\'m pretty experienced with building towers, but I\'ve zilch experience with rackmounts. Should I even build a rackmount machine when I don\'t have a rack? I just want to take up the least space possible.

How are custom-built rack machines structured? What form-factor are they? (ATX, miniATX?) Can I put standard PCI cards in them, if so, how many?

Any information will be helpful. I don\'t have a rack, so if I should just build a mid-tower or tower, let me know.

Thanks, guys!

[csduke]

I have had some experience with these guys - though not with rack cases. http://store.yahoo.com/directron/cases---case-fans.html (\"http://store.yahoo.com/directron/cases---case-fans.html\")

If you look at their specs, rack mount cases are no different than any standard case - as far as their features go.

If you really don\'t need one, I would think twice. They, on average, hold fewer drives, don\'t have as good cooling characteristics or flexibility, have fewer ports, are more expensive, ... But, if you need one, you need one (they are cool).

[MDesigner]

I probably don\'t need to get a rack machine then.

So, any advice on a good AMD setup that Giga will be OK with? Are VIA motherboards ok yet? What about the new nVidia chipset motherboards? Don\'t try to talk me into Pentium images/icons/smile.gif I\'m dead set on Athlon.. they\'re excellent and very affordable.

I think the motherboard is the big issue. Then I\'ll probably slap Win2000 on that machine, and that\'ll be my new Giga workstation. Is SCSI a necessity? I run GigaStudio right now with IDE and it works just fine. One hard drive only, too.

Thanks!

[Sovereign]

Personally I absolutely HATE the amount of space those big towers take up. Even a midi tower is huge, IMO.

Have you considered building a mini-atx system? You can put one together real cheap.

SCSI is not necessary, and any recent via chip should be fine although I went with nforce1 for my giga pc.

[pcou]

Rack cases are really great if you have a well-vented rack to put them in and if you have the money to spend on them... they\'re much more expensive than tower or desktop cases in general.

As far as the innards are concerned, I also recently moved GS to its own computer. I was having timing problems juggling GS, Cakewalk ProAudio, and Sound Forge 5 all running at the same time on the same computer. So, I left my main music machine the way it is, and set up GS in its own environment. It\'s working out beautifully. But, I\'m probably not using GS the way most people do - I use it just like any other sound module, nothing fancy. I got an AMD Athlon 700MHz Slot1 with Shuttle AI61 motherboard together for $59.00 from TigerDirect. The Shuttle has an AMD-751/756 chipset and Award V4.51PG BIOS. I added 512Mb RAM, external TASCAM 624 SCSI CD-R, internal IDE CD-ROM, an 8.4Gb HDD as my C: drive and a WD 80GB 7200 ATA100 as my D: drive for gigs, and a SB Live card - will upgrade the soundcard very soon since it\'s the weakest link in the system. The computer connects to my main music machine via MAudio Portman MIDI interface, with the soundcard\'s audio ins/outs going directly to mixer. I dedicated port 4 on the main machine\'s 4-port MIDI interface to be the output to the GS machine\'s MIDI port input. Basically, I trigger the sounds on the GS machine via MIDI from Cakewalk running on the main machine, just like triggering my other synth sound modules. Works beautifully. And I don\'t have to worry about timing issues or hard drive space. Hope this helps with your situation.

[MDesigner]

I have no problem putting all my audio stuff (SoundForge, Sonar, GigaStudio) on one machine. It\'s just that mixing those apps (esp. GigaStudio) with stuff like Norton AntiVirus, games, etc., seems to really foul things up. I want to move them to their own machine and use a KVM to switch over to that computer to do audio work.

I have no problem getting an ATX or mini-ATX. My main problem is, what types of chipsets to avoid? I hate VIA, and the soonest chance I get, I\'m changing my main work/fun computer to an nVidia chipset instead. But for the audio machine... no clue what to get. All I require is an Athlon for the CPU.. so no Intel chipsets. What are my options?

Thanks, guys!

[johnhutch]

Hey MDesigner,

This may be of little or no help because I do not actually have giga on the computer I am running. However, I do have Cubase, Soundforge, Reason, among other music application so...

I have an AMD processor that used to have a VIA chipset, what a disaster with audio. I have since aquired an ASUSA7S333 motherboard with the sis chipset. It has made a rather large difference (no more pops and clicks).

Hope this may help some. But hey what do I know.

John

p.s. I gave some of the music on your site a listen. Very impressive work especially for having it all on one machine.

[MDesigner]

john,

Thanks for the tip! That\'s all I needed to hear. I\'ll check into the SiS chipset, and others. And thanks for the compliment!

I found this deal.. would this be a good system to build on (mostly it needs more RAM and more HD space):

Dell PowerEdge600SC P4-2.4Ghz/533Bus 128MB DDR/40GB 7200 IDE HD, 48x CD, Embedded Gigabit Ethernet, No OS 1yr on-site warranty $499 - $110 instant discount - 5% off coupon - $100 rebate = $269.55 shipped free.

[Sovereign]

Originally posted by MDesigner:
john,
Dell PowerEdge600SC P4-2.4Ghz/533Bus 128MB DDR/40GB 7200 IDE HD, 48x CD, Embedded Gigabit Ethernet, No OS 1yr on-site warranty $499 - $110 instant discount - 5% off coupon - $100 rebate = $269.55 shipped free. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Seems pretty cheap to me, but I thought you wanted AMD? images/icons/wink.gif

[dnortana]

Hi Sam,

Check this one out. I\'m seriously considering going this route myself for my next machine. I find the small size and liquid cooling attractive. Add a small LCD display and it could even be a gig rig.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?sku=s451-3032 (\"http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?sku=s451-3032\")

There are other variations on this box, some much more powerful, if you need more cpu horsepower. See the Shuttle site for more ...

Regards,
Trond

[Sovereign]

Originally posted by dnortana:
Hi Sam,
Check this one out. I\'m seriously considering going this route myself for my next machine. I find the small size and liquid cooling attractive. Add a small LCD display and it could even be a gig rig.
<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">The Shuttles are very nice but too expensive IMO. I\'ve considered it as well, but went with a very small mini-atx case (\"http://www.yeongyang.com/products/yya101.htm\") and a very cheap Asus Nforce 1 mobo instead which shaves off at more than 50% of the cost compared to a shuttle box.

[csduke]

Originally posted by MDesigner:
Dell PowerEdge600SC P4-2.4Ghz ... $269.55. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">What a price. Could you send a link to this MDsgr? I don\'t see a 600SC on the Dell site. The trick here, for a DAWs machine, is to reformat the HD and to get rid of the mountains of junk application Dell load on them, then reinstall the OS - or at least uninstall most all of the apps.

I see a DimensionTM 2350, 1.8 GHz P4 for $499 but this is after a $50 rebate.

[MDesigner]

csduke,

I will post a link publically. Just go to www.techbargains.com (\"http://www.techbargains.com\") and find that deal there.. should still be on the front page. They should have all the details you need to get that price. I can\'t afford it now, but more deals like that show up all the time, so I\'ll be waiting.

I see you\'re a fellow Chicagoan images/icons/smile.gif Where are you located? I\'m in the west suburbs.

[mike harper]

on the vsl forums i recently posted aabot a dozen or so of links of some barebone provideres and other resources for building a PC.

[mitchb2]

Originally posted by MDesigner:
I see you\'re a fellow Chicagoan images/icons/smile.gif Where are you located? I\'m in the west suburbs. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Sam...How far west?
I\'m in Sterling, and go to school in Dekalb!!!

[MDesigner]

mitchb: Not too far.. Naperville

Mike: That\'s great! I\'ll search for your post.

[csduke]

Originally posted by MDesigner:
csduke, I see you\'re a fellow Chicagoan images/icons/smile.gif Where are you located? I\'m in the west suburbs. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">MDesigner, I was living in the city when I joined this forum but now live in Barrington Hills (NW sub). I miss the concrete but love the green.

[mitchb2]

Originally posted by csduke:
I miss the concrete but love the green. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Of course now, in this endless winter, brown brown brown. images/icons/smile.gif

[Scott Cairns]

Hi Sam, I just wanted to add that I have a VIA chipset and have no problems at all.

They were a problem in the early days (on the first ever chipset I believe) but are now fine. I have been running Cubase SX with Gigastudio 160 plus Kontakt and every other VST you can think of, rock-solid for around 8 months now.

I run XP Pro with 1Gb Ram
Sound card is a Delta 44

It is networked with MOL to a PIII/500mHz that has an Audiophile card.


Cheers, Scott.

[Vertigo50]

I highly, HIGHLY recommend the ECS K7s5a motherboard for many reasons. First of all, it\'s cheap (about $50 or less on pricewatch.com). Second, it only has one chip, not two (northbridge and southbridge) like VIA boards, which allows the PCI slots to run at their full bandwidth instead of being limited (the problem with VIA). Third, I get full 160 polyphony without breaking a sweat, alongside Reason and Sonar with multiple audio tracks.

PM me if you have any specific questions about it, or if you want a recommendation as to where to buy it from on pricewatch.com (hint: check out www.resellerratings.com (\"http://www.resellerratings.com\") to see which resellers are honorable, some are scam artists)

[Sovereign]

I\'m certainly not buying VIA crap anymore. My main machine started popping and crackling today out of the blue and I haven\'t found the cause yet! images/icons/mad.gif

[donimon]

I agree, I\'ve got a VIA chipset MB with an Athlon 2100 and nothing but clicks and pops. Today, I switched out the audio card (Gina24 to Audiophile 2496), the Midi (Midisport 4x4 USB to the Audiophile midi port), added 2nd hard drive for samples (7200 rpm), did all Giga optimizations, loaded a single patch and - STILL get clicks and pops. It seems to me it has to be a motherboard issue - I\'ve swapped everything else. I would suggest buying a board that a bunch of people have recommended as working fine, or else you will go nuts trying to troubleshoot. Man, then I loaded the same Gig file into EXS on my mac, and it played fine in about 1 minute. Makes you wonder.....

[donimon]

In reference to that Dell someone mentioned a few posts back - today in the LA times there was a dell ad for a Optiplex P4 2.4gb system for $349 with free shipping. It takes up to 4gb ram. Looks like a solid rig at a killer price...

It\'s on the Dell site as well for $399 until tomorrow.

[csduke]

Originally posted by donimon:
In reference to that Dell someone mentioned a few posts back - today in the LA times there was a dell ad for a Optiplex P4 2.4gb system for $349 with free shipping. It takes up to 4gb ram. Looks like a solid rig at a killer price...

It\'s on the Dell site as well for $399 until tomorrow. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">I don\'t see it on their site. There is a $399 ($449-50) 2350 Dell series with a 1.8 Celeron, 128 GB DDR, ... Do you have a link or navigation Donimon?

[Sovereign]

Just put together my mini-atx system with nforce chipset. Bye bye audio problems!! Working absolutely great.

No more VIA for me, that\'s for sure!

[csduke]

Well, I was planning on building my own DAWs but I couldn\'t pass up this deal (see Jeff Cardoni above). Dell PowerEdge 600SC, 2.4 GHz P4 533MHz FSB, 128 DDR (expands to 4 GB), 40 GB 7200 HD, 48x CD ROM, Gigabit Ethernet, no OS, no monitor, no KB or no mouse, 3 fans, 3 IDE channels, 1 yr part/labor onsite, free shipping. Sale ends today - only: $399