prophetik music   Judges ⚖️

sounds good. i'll be in my new place by then, so i'll have a worktable and everything - better than using my living room floor =)

best suggestion? college eats laptops alive, not to mention that lappies tend to die constantly. why waste all that money and have all your dreams crushed when you drop it and your hard drive wastes? do what i did - buy a desktop, and get a netbook (under 300$ for an aspire one) for classes. you can pretty much only check your email and write papers and notes on a netbook, so don't worry about focusing in class =) put tinyXP on it and you'll be set. HP makes fantastic netbooks (their mini line is possibly the best out there), and the acer aspire one is 280 for a brand new one, 200 for a refurb. 200 DOLLARS. i can buy power supplies for more than that. as for the desktop, if you don't want someone to build you one and save you a ton of money (i'm willing to bet i could build you one and keep the cost of that AND the netbook under the cost of the laptop you're looking at), acer and HP both make great customizable desktops for super cheap. laptops are poor for music, for several reasons. one, the nature of a laptop is that they generally have lower-than-normal CPU power (limiting what you can do aurally), slow memory and memory interfaces (slowing your streaming samples down and increasing latency), slower hard drives (making streaming samples slow and choppy), and poor onboard audio (as in, terrible). plus, even beyond the delicate nature of them, they attract dust like poop attracts flies, and overheat often. it's rare to have a windows-based laptopn (read: poor quality control and build quality) to last more than two years. unless you're going to technical school, that's not how long it takes to get through college.

hah, this is where i come in! i don't know pricing in the UK, so i'll guess on stuff, and you'll let me know what's what. you've got one big choice, and it's not what you think. since you've got a decent amount of money, you want to avoid AMD processors all together, so you've gotta decide primarily on where you're spending your money - getting the best processor you can buy and a cheapo graphics card, or getting the best combination of graphics and cpu that you can afford. if you're planning on doing any gaming (read: games from the last two years, everything before that can be handled by a cheapo card on varying settings), i'd suggest the latter. everyone rants about CPU power and how it's so necessary for music, but i rarely had issues with a 3ghz dual-core cpu that costs 165$ now =) if you just want to do music and only game on a console, more power to you - go with a cheaper graphics card, like the 3650 (for ATI) or the 8xxx or 8xxx cards (like the 8400 or the 9400, for nVidia). i'll assume you want the ability to game on your computer. i'll price things based on newegg's US pricing and shipping costs...you'll have to be creative overseas. case: cooler master's cases are awesome (the elite is excellent), and the antec three hundred is small, cheap, and very well-built. let's go with the three hundred. remember to look for deals where the case ships for free, that'll knock 20$ or so off your final price. 60$. cpu: if you want the maximum power possible, go with the 1366 socket and the best cpu you can afford. i went with a mix, so i'd say that the 2.8ghz i7-860 (socket 1156, uses hyperthreading so it's basically an 8-core cpu) is excellent. honestly, if you need more than this, you're doing higher-level stuff than me. i've never gotten more than three threads out of eight maxed at any given time. 290$. motherboard: this'll change if you go 1366, obviously. i like evga, but they're a little pricey for what you're looking for. go gigabyte - the GA-P55M-UD2 (not UD2A!) is only 105$. memory: G.SKILL, no question. there's literally no real-world difference between DDR3-1333 and -1600, so just go -1333. their 2x2gb kits (tota of 4gb) is 99$. hdd: WD's drives are the best. the caviar black is the best of their consumer-level drives. a 1tb drive is 90$. video card: if you don't need anything on this front, get something cheap that's under three years old. if you want to game, i'd go with evga's GTX 216 core 216 card. all of the core 216 cards are fantastic, balancing heat and noise with excellent performance and low power consuption compared to the fermi and 57xx ATI cards. 225$. psu: corsair's CMPSI-750TX is a fantastic psu...it comes in a velvet bag, for goodness sakes. their 650w versions should be enough with the big card and all, for at least two years if not way longer. if you want modular, OCZ's ModXStream Pro 750w is around the same price, but is a little dirtier and less efficient. 85$ dvd drive: whatever's highest rated on newegg =) 25$ max. that's 975 including shipping. drop the graphics card and add it in for your birthday, and you're looking at 750 flat. if you've got a few extra bucks, go with the EVGA P55 SLI motherboard - it's another sixty bucks, but it's possibly the nicest motherboard i've ever worked with. i use it =) you can use an LGA 775 or LGA 1156 cooler with it, too - it's got cpu fan mounts for both, which is awesome. questions? the faq in my sig is a little dated, but there's LOTS of good stuff in there. probably really advanced for what you need, but the PSU section and the graphics card sections might help you.

dustin, you've gotta give me a ring. people say they don't have enough money for a computer...they don't know what they're talking about =)

beatz has it. it was supposed to be a decent game, particularly for being a movie tie-in. oh well. thanks guys.

i got a download key for a PC copy of Avatar with a system i built a week or two ago, and i don't want to subject myself to that. it's through steam. it's for free. first one to pm me back gets it.

i was just talking about other games that expanded upon CSS's gameplay.

i must be missing something. isn't this the point of CS:S? uber "realism"? all MW2 did was take that multiplayer formula and combine it with XBL and some crazy killstreak rewards.

how has no one mentioned downtempo.org yet? it's a shoutcast station that's been running continuously since 2000 or so, has a wide mix of incredible music on it. i leave it on most of the time.

DAW is also a term for the workstation where you work with digital audio itself - like, i build DAWs, and i use a DAW on my DAW. confusing? blame sound engineers.

that's nothing. i've seen a kart racing game, a tetris mod, and even an FPS one. pretty crazy.

new accounts only =( and i think they nerfed it, since now it says that buddy accounts don't work with the steam deal (even though it worked earlier today).

eve 1-month full accounts are on sale. if anyone wants to try eve for a month (on a full account) for free, i'll pay for you. i can get a free month out of it (2$ instead of 15$).

at least he posted in the right forum.

i remember the dos one - got me through several music history classes until i figured out how to game the game. lots of fun.

between those three games, you'll be wasted for months. fully exhaust mass effect 1 before moving onto 2, and you'll appreciate 2 that much more. there's 35 for ME1 and 30 for ME2. then dragon age, same deal - anywhere from 40-80 for DA:O, depending on how you play, and from 10-15 for DA:O:A. you're set, dude =) i might pick up witcher enhanced edition. i've got the disc for the original, but the patch that you have to get is 2 gigs and apparently only works about half the time. for the price... edit: coop, you'll love the new KB games. i really enjoyed the first one, and goofed around with the second one a bit. lots of fun, albeit with a terrible plot.

bahahahahaha

firewire drivers in w7 were completely changed around, which is why most people have to revert back to the xp drivers to get stuff to work. that said, presonus (and focusrite, the brand i use) both recently updated their driversets to be w7 compatible. so it works fine.

i'm sending an email now.

close, close!

you mean, besides LAproject?

notice how no one posted in this thread in eight months, until you brought it back from the dead? that might be a sign.

you can replace as much ram as you want, but it won't run in triple channel - it'll just run single-channel, like it used to. you actually don't have to match sticks at all - they can be completely different speeds, and they'll all run at the same speed as the slowest stick in the computer. you might actually see a reduction in speed, since triple-channel makes a big difference in overall performance. i'd suggest waiting and doing it in sets of three, since then you get sets that are guaranteed to match (just in case they discontinue that set after you've got one or two sticks purchased). it'll be cheaper to buy in threes, and there's usually deals you can find that make it even cheaper.

hooray! looking forward to listening to this.

whoops. my bad.