Need a New PC... Recommendations?

[bobbybooey]

Looks like I might need a new PC, anyone have a particular make/model they're absolutely thrilled with from a stability/reliability/budget standpoint? Usage will be 60% audio production, 39% v-o recording/editing, 1% video. Also, I keep my prod box in my v-o recording area so I'm looking for something realllyyy quiet. Trying to stay below the $750 range if possible (I just need the tower, no monitor or any peripherals). And yes, it must be a PC as I run Sony software and it's all PC-only.

Any suggestions?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

About 9 months ago my machine "crashed and burned". This is in my home studio so I go looking for "the best value" (cheap?) at a time like that. If I were buying for a company installation I might look a little higher up on the food chain. I ended up buying something I am prejudiced AGAINST, but so far I am happy, happy, happy.

Acer, e-Machines and Gateway all come from the same design and marketing. The machine that blew up after 4 years or so was an e-machines. It had a noisy fan. I had built a "muffler" out of styrofoam boards to get it out of the table-saw category of noise output from the fan. Whether that added to the heat load that caused the melt-down, I don't know. (I don't think so. The muffler was roomy and not very restrictive.)

The replacement is a Gateway, 8GB Memory, Intel i3 550 processor at 3.20 Ghz and 1 TB hard drive. To make this an even more risky venture, I chose this one from the REFURB stock.

I love the machine. it is quiet, quiet, quiet. NO MUFFLER NEEDED. No more using Audition to take out the 350 hz fan buzz.

And it has an HDMI video out as well as regular VGA. I got it for about the $600 range as I recall.

It may go down in flames within the next year for all I know, but as long as it works like it does now, I am HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY.

I came into this current era "Old School" all the way. Never met a DOS PROMPT that I didn't like. Had been using WIN XP for maybe 5 or 6 years. With this machine I jumped all the way to WINDOWS 7 in one giant step! It took me several months to quit grumbling about 7. I have begun to worry about my mental health..... I am getting comfortable with Windows 7.

Let me add another whole topic on the subject of computer noise in a studio space.

My office/studio/man-cave is upstairs in a room above the garage. With the previous computer I had considered carving out a second dog-house sized room so the computer could make all the noise it wanted. But all the candidate spaces were in the attic.... EXTREME HEAT! And I worried about extended cables for k/m/v. That was something new. Scared me.

We have an illness in the family and I needed to be able to be downstairs more. I gritted my teeth, pulled out the wallet, and bought a 100' VGA cable, a 100' Cat-6, and USB to CAT-6 converter, a keyboard and a small monitor. Put them down stairs. WORKS LIKE A CHARM! (I also ran shielded pair for audio.) When I do things where I need to be there and put CDs in the drive or hand-feed paper or CD labels into the printer, work upstairs. When I do things like participate in Radio-Info, do it downstairs.

If you need to put your computer in a room next to your studio to get rid of the noise, don't be bashful!

The one thing I am watching for is some kind of adapter and/or cable that would allow me to run the HDMI 100 feet or so. PhotoShop on HDMI is to die for!

 

[robnokshus06]

I went the refurbished route as well when I replaced my old XP/e-machines pc with a quad-core, AMD powered Gateway tower from Tiger Direct. Paid a little over $500 and it works great and is VERY quiet! It started to get a little noisy a couple of months ago, so I opened it up and cleaned all of the dust out of the interior and off of the fan blades and now I have to double check to make sure it is running, it is that quiet! I intend to follow that procedure every 6-months from now on.

I run Sony software as well and it all funs flawlessly. Around the same time I also picked up a Lenovo laptop from Fry's for around $350. Doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, but it does everything I need it to do as far as remote recording/production goes.

Bottom line is, you needn't break the bank on computers. Refurbs are a good value and offer the benefit of having been gone through and tested and whatever glitches found, repaired.

 

[Darth_vader]

A *100-foot VGA cable*? (raises eyebrow) You sure that figure's correct?

I'd hate to have to sit in front of that monitor for any considerable period of time. Experience has taught me that anything longer than about six feet results in crosstalk enough to make a picture with more ghosting than an out-of-phase signal off a distant NTSC translator!

I take it you must either have a really small, low-bandwidth monitor (i.e. 640*480*56 or 60) or a super-duper-expensive cable with each conductor independently shielded. (Or have your VGA and DVI confused [I think DVI can work at least semi-reliably at such lengths.]) Such long, direct cable runs with ordinary cables are practically useless for VGA signals with any higher bandwidth, unless it's several shorter cables with repeaters spliced into it periodically. Otherwise, I can't imagine the capacitance of the wires not royally wreaking havoc with the video signals.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

A *100-foot VGA cable*? (raises eyebrow) You sure that figure's correct?

I'd hate to have to sit in front of that monitor for any considerable period of time. Experience has taught me that anything longer than about six feet results in crosstalk enough to make a picture with more ghosting than an out-of-phase signal off a distant NTSC translator!

I take it you must either have a really small, low-bandwidth monitor (i.e. 640*480*56 or 60) or a super-duper-expensive cable with each conductor independently shielded. (Or have your VGA and DVI confused [I think DVI can work at least semi-reliably at such lengths.]) Such long, direct cable runs with ordinary cables are practically useless for VGA signals with any higher bandwidth, unless it's several shorter cables with repeaters spliced into it periodically. Otherwise, I can't imagine the capacitance of the wires not royally wreaking havoc with the video signals.

I participate in a forum where people who do "church sound" are the target audience. As you may be aware, a lot of churches today have abandoned hymn books and now use giant video screens to display the words of the congregational hymns. Many of the people in that other forum are in charge of the audio AND VIDEO equipment for Mega-churches where they can seat 2,500 people. They run computer output from the mixing booth down on the floor... under the floor, up through the wall, across the top of the ceiling and down the mounting bracket to the video projector. They assured me I could plan on running 250 feet or more with success. 100 feet has turned out to be "a piece of cake". I'm running 1366 x 768 because that is the maximum the flat-screen I bought for downstairs will run. There are no artifacts or cross talk. (Just for grins, when I get back from a doctor's appointment this morning I will carry the better monitor down there and see what it does when I try running 1920 x 1080 on the VGA cable.)

[quote Author = me later in the day]

Apparently my DNS server sends me to one of the Radio-Info servers that is struggling to stay synchronized. I couldn't post earlier. I am back now. I have carried the "Big Cajuna" monitor downstairs just to see what would happen. At the end of the 100 foot VGA cable I am now running 1920 x 1080. I opened up PhotoShop and looked at photo I have been editing. Two weeks ago I photographed the monument to "the highest altitude location in the state of Arkansas. I am trying make a print that I would frame and hang. There are no artifacts, no ghosts, no "noise".

[/quote]

Isn't DVI the same digital video signal as HDMI... but HDMI includes sound. I was assured by the "smart people" (the folks that have those high-in-the-rafters projectors) that I cannot run HDMI or DVI that distance..... without the repeaters or other hocus-pocus.

Based on my experience with this Rube Goldberg arrangement at my house, I still recommend that people with home recording studios consider moving the overly noisy machine in a room down the hall and get a 20 foot VGA or whatever is needed to keep your keyboard and monitor within reach of the microphone location.

 

[Darth_vader]

I guess you must have gotten a really, really good cable, then. Personally, I've found cables longer than about 12' to be problematic at the higher resolutions and bandwidths, hence the old saying "individual results may vary". I think my choice of secondhand $10 no-name cables from the Habitat for Humanity store "may" have something to do with my problem (yet the little freebie 6-footers that come packed in with monitors seem to work fine by themselves with my fancy secondhand $10 Viewsonic G90FB2.....go figure.)

Glad it's working out, though! What brand of cable did you get, for the record?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

What brand of cable did you get, for the record?

I don't remember it having a known brand name. It was on the shelf at FRY'S and they were not offering a good, better and best. You want a long cable? This is it!

And I don't remember the price right now. Maybe in the $75.00 range? I was timid about this whole project so I brought the cable home and did not take the ties off of it. I ran it from the computer to the monitor sitting a foot away. That worked fine. After a couple days of that and reading some more, I took the packaging ties off the cable and spread it out across the floor of my computer room and studio. That still worked well. I procrastinated for a few days (It was SUMMERTIME!) Finally I crawled into the attic with my electric drill in hand, drilled through the plate to get access to the hollow space in the wall downstairs and fed the end of the cable down through the wall. (I think it took about two days to recover from the heat stroke. ;D )

It has been working well since last August or so. This was a gamble on a project that exceeded the "I stole the money from my lunch money" type of project. VGA cable in the $70 range, CAT-6 Cable in the $40 range, the little "dongled to convert USB to CAT-6 and back for $25 or $30 and a monitor for about $120. I probably spent $80 for a box of Belden shielded audio wire and I fished two of those through the wall at the same time as the VGA and CAT-6. One is in use to bring sound down from the sound card. The other has not been hooked up yet but I want to go into my computer and find the terminals for the reset button so I can hit that from down stairs. I have the wires coming out of the wall behind a piece of furniture but I want to dress it up with a nice wall plate. And I don't have a switch upstairs. I am plugging and unplugging individual cables. I want an A/B switch but since one video circuit is HDMI and the other is VGA, that complicates the switch choice.

 

[bobbybooey]

Thanks for the responses! Looks like my current PC is somehow back from the dead, but I'll keep these suggestions in mind for when I do upgrade. Thanks!

 

[jefflaurence]

Bobby..you can save some real coin, and get exactly what you want without all the annoying damn "bonus" software you end up with shelf units. I went to my local mom and pop computer store..told them exactly what I needed the machine for...and all I needed. 64 bit Win 7...and no crap..cheap!

Bought 4 of em.

 

[ChiefOperator]

Bobby..you can save some real coin, and get exactly what you want without all the annoying damn "bonus" software you end up with shelf units. I went to my local mom and pop computer store..told them exactly what I needed the machine for...and all I needed. 64 bit Win 7...and no crap..cheap!

Bought 4 of em.

Bingo! Build a custom box and get exactly what you want without all the garbage. An appliance computer, one configured exactly for your needs.

That said, I've had good luck with refurbished gear.

www.warehousepoint.com

As for the 100' cable. Yes, this is true. I've used many to interconnect the monitor, mouse, and keyboard to rackmount machines placed in rack rooms. They do cost a little bit of money however.

http://www.networktechinc.com/cable-pc.html

Good Luck

 

[SirRoxalot]

First, a word on "refurbs". I buy them whenever possible, as long as they have the original manufacturer's warranty. Look at it this way - a refurb is a system that came back under warranty, was serviced by a real technician, and put back out for sale. They can't sell it as new, but it's likely in better shape than a box that just came out of a shipping container from the Far East and hasn't seen the light of day since it was packed in Cheaplaboristan.

You have two choices on computers. You can buy something disposable that WILL fail in about 3 years, leaving you to move all your data & programs to a new system. Or, you can get a custom build, with GOOD parts (I'm partial to the better Intel processors and motherboards) that should last 5 years or more. If you're a bleeding-edge technology type who's constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest, go cheap. You'll be reinstalling the O/S and software within 3 years anyway. If you're somebody who gets it "just the way you want it", and beats it until it dies, go custom.

In any event, BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP. And get a UPS with line conditioning. And REPLACE loud fans. Modern processors generate serious heat. IF the motherboard thermal protection works, they'll shut down in a few seconds if the cooling fails. Poor cooling leads to slow processing, intermittent shutdowns, and a host of annoying intermittent problems.

 

[ProducerGuy]

HDMI is a lossless format. Cable quality is irrelevant. It either works or doesn't. They're also the biggest markup item in electronics stores. Get your HDMI cables from an online place at a small fraction of the Best Buy price.

As far as computers, if you're comfortable building your own, go for it. That's the best way to get the most for your money. If you're not comfortable with that, any brand is as good as the next for 99.99% of the population.

 

[Kent T]

Build you a system. Spec it out with redundant cooling, a really solid power supply, and really good audio card. In your line of work, reliable, stable, workhorse is what you need. Get a good UPS while you are at it. What works for broadcast automation is ideal for your needs or musicians who record on PC DAW stations. Gearslutz.com has a great section on music PC builds and care and feeding.