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Recommend me a PC for producing music


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So, I have this 8 and a halve years old PC. Surprisingly, it can handle alot of VSTI's like: z3ta, Vanguard, PRO-53 etc. BUT it cannot handle them too well. Put two z3tas, one pad, the other one a hard arp - and you'll get 80% CPU usage (with the ASIO drivers).It has 512mb of SDRAM, Intel Celeron 1.8ghz CPU :S.

OK, so I'd like you to recommend me a good pc which I can use it mostly in FL Studio, and that can handle the song that is in the demo from Zircon - Just hold on :D (or minor to that). So, I am on a budget, 400 euros, or somewhere like 430-450$. For these money, I found out that I can buy:

Phenom II X4 965 Quad-Core

2GB DDR3 1333mhz ram

Motherboard with 7.1channel sound High-Definition + a good radeon hd4200 integrated card, which is hybrid-crossfire enabled.

500GB hdd

The other components (like the DVD drive, lcd screen etc.) are from my older PC, because they are new maybe 2 months or so.

So please tell me, is this a good choice? BTW I am NOT a pro, maybe somewhere in the middle :), but still far away from a pro.

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  • 2 weeks later...
So, I have this 8 and a halve years old PC. Surprisingly, it can handle alot of VSTI's like: z3ta, Vanguard, PRO-53 etc. BUT it cannot handle them too well. Put two z3tas, one pad, the other one a hard arp - and you'll get 80% CPU usage (with the ASIO drivers).It has 512mb of SDRAM, Intel Celeron 1.8ghz CPU :S.

OK, so I'd like you to recommend me a good pc which I can use it mostly in FL Studio, and that can handle the song that is in the demo from Zircon - Just hold on :D (or minor to that). So, I am on a budget, 400 euros, or somewhere like 430-450$. For these money, I found out that I can buy:

Phenom II X4 965 Quad-Core

2GB DDR3 1333mhz ram

Motherboard with 7.1channel sound High-Definition + a good radeon hd4200 integrated card, which is hybrid-crossfire enabled.

500GB hdd

The other components (like the DVD drive, lcd screen etc.) are from my older PC, because they are new maybe 2 months or so.

So please tell me, is this a good choice? BTW I am NOT a pro, maybe somewhere in the middle :), but still far away from a pro.

That configuration sounds good to me, though I'd make some slight modifications to it:

- Rather than an AM3 mobo, I'd buy an AM2+ mobo instead, so you can replace those DDR3 sticks by cheaper DDR2 sticks. Believe me, there's no noticeable performance gaining by using DDR3 memories, by now they're only better in synthetic benchmarks.

- I'd buy 3 GB of memory (or more if you're using a 64 bits OS) instead of 2, since samples and all that stuff get loaded into it, and, believe me, 2 GB can run out very soon when working with music!

- If you're not going to play modern games, the HD 4200 should do fine. Try to get a motherboard with sideport (integrated graphics memory) though, so the video card doesn't borrow system memory.

- The integrated audio should do fine by the moment, but I highly recommend you to buy a dedicated sound card in the future; if you're only going to use VSTs and such and you're not going to record anything external (i.e. a musical instrument), it won't make any difference in your productions, but isn't it good to listen at your stuff with good sound quality? ;-)

Oh, also, I wouldn't see that Hybrid CrossFireX thing as an option, as it only supports low-end video cards, such like HD 24xx and HD 34xx series cards. If you're gonna get serious about gaming, just buy a mid/high-end video card and forget about it.

BTW, there's something important missing: what about the PSU? Well, if you're not putting a dedicated video card it shouldn't be a problem to stay with your current PSU, unless it's an old 300 W generic PSU haha.

core 2 or i7 core, any asio supported sound card, 3gb mem, atleast 250 GB HDD internal and your good, but i also recoment external HDD for vsts, vstis, vstfx ,dxi etc.... for samples with weight like 40gb kontrol by NI

Come on, the cheapest i7 is about the half of the OP's budget. Put to that a decent LGA 1366 or LGA 1156 mobo (depending on whether he chooses a Bloomfield or Lynnfield based Core i7), and his budget is almost gone. An LGA 775 platform could be a good choice, but he'll do fine with a cheaper AMD platform.

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That configuration sounds good to me, though I'd make some slight modifications to it:

- Rather than an AM3 mobo, I'd buy an AM2+ mobo instead, so you can replace those DDR3 sticks by cheaper DDR2 sticks. Believe me, there's no noticeable performance gaining by using DDR3 memories, by now they're only better in synthetic benchmarks.

- I'd buy 3 GB of memory (or more if you're using a 64 bits OS) instead of 2, since samples and all that stuff get loaded into it, and, believe me, 2 GB can run out very soon when working with music!

- If you're not going to play modern games, the HD 4200 should do fine. Try to get a motherboard with sideport (integrated graphics memory) though, so the video card doesn't borrow system memory.

- The integrated audio should do fine by the moment, but I highly recommend you to buy a dedicated sound card in the future; if you're only going to use VSTs and such and you're not going to record anything external (i.e. a musical instrument), it won't make any difference in your productions, but isn't it good to listen at your stuff with good sound quality? ;-)

Oh, also, I wouldn't see that Hybrid CrossFireX thing as an option, as it only supports low-end video cards, such like HD 24xx and HD 34xx series cards. If you're gonna get serious about gaming, just buy a mid/high-end video card and forget about it.

BTW, there's something important missing: what about the PSU? Well, if you're not putting a dedicated video card it shouldn't be a problem to stay with your current PSU, unless it's an old 300 W generic PSU haha.

Come on, the cheapest i7 is about the half of the OP's budget. Put to that a decent LGA 1366 or LGA 1156 mobo (depending on whether he chooses a Bloomfield or Lynnfield based Core i7), and his budget is almost gone. An LGA 775 platform could be a good choice, but he'll do fine with a cheaper AMD platform.

but there mother board are cheaper : P

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No matter what, try to get 4GB or more of ram. If you can't get 8GB right now, make sure your computer can upgrade in the future. It's all about the ram.
core 2 or i7 core, any asio supported sound card, 3gb mem, atleast 250 GB HDD internal and your good, but i also recoment external HDD for vsts, vstis, vstfx ,dxi etc.... for samples with weight like 40gb kontrol by NI

Chill out guys, he's got 400 euros...

His processor's a quad core 3.4 Ghz, which even if FL Studio doesn't handle multi core well it's still some good power as is. Add the 2 GB RAM and he can run Zircon's demo song just fine.

Though he could afford a Core 2 Duo, I don't think there's much of a reason to go for a dual core over his current quad core processor choice. A Core 2 Quad of similar GHz is significantly more expensive with the kind of budget the OP has. Of course, I have no business comparing AMD and Intel, so I'd like The Prophet to clarify if he's hangin around.

Regardless of what brand of processor is a better deal, he should be fine for Zirc's demo song anyway, which is what he's going for. I was speaking to zirc himself and he said that a PC setup I was possibly upgrading to (2.5 Ghz dual core and 2 GB RAM) should've been enough to handle the FLP.

And it's NOT all about the RAM. I've read FL Studio can get up to maybe 4 GB on a 64 Bit OS, but is he can handle Zirc's demo song already there's no reason he even needs 4 GB unless he has a better budget. However, I second the notion of making sure the OP can upgrade RAM in the future.

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