What's your poison...

Hey, Geeky Peeps who are into such things. I just bought a new PC. it will be the most powerful PC I have ever bought and serious bang for $. Budgeting is hugely important to me. Here is an idea of how to have a great machine for a good price, if like me, you are not very good with building your own.

I have resorted to buying old corporate PCs. I have put my Dell that I bought that way through the paces and has been the most reliable machine I have ever owned, even though ex-corporate equipment. I am typing to you from this spec machine: Dell Optiplex 780 Core 2 Duo, 2.93Ghz, 16 GB Ram, TB hard drive. The machine is a strong as it was the day I bought it almost two years ago. However, my music programs demand more serious power and I am terrible for multitasking. Even when I am making music I am writing here or there, running installations, etc. It is CPU and Ram that are the important components for music making. I seem to have managed with HDDs fine speed wise. USB 2 is fine for my sound. There is only one USB 3 Audio Interface that I know of personally made by UAD in California. I require more inputs and outputs though and don't use mixing desks any longer; I use the virtual ones. My RME Fireface UC manages great and I see little need to do anything about that until moth and rust determine its fate. I use USB sound rather than firewire because I have better results (the outboard units run less hot and no errors). I used firwire before, but I like the separate units for a multitude of other reasons, too.

The New Beast that is coming in the post is a 2nd user ex corporate HP Z800 Work Station:

www.ebay.co.uk... 2831efb032:g:Is0AAOSwq1JZLXI8

"HP-Z800-Workstation-PC-DUAL-Xeon-CPU-8-Core-48GB-RAM-SSD-HDD-Windows-10-Pro-WiFi".

It has a small SSD that I can experiment with, but that is too small to run my huge music programs. Some of those are like 50GB programs. May be I can upgrade in the future on the SSDs.

It is literally one of those. I will never run out of anything on this machine for my needs. Look at the price! They are plain machines, but what you get for the price is so much power compared to the bank busting games machines prices. I don't require the graphics either, but if you do then with a Power Supply like these guys have you could install your dream graphics card with the available PCIe slots.

Really, machines have surpassed my immediate requirements now and I can buy a ridiculously powerful studio PC that I will never use up, CPU wise and will be able to multi task on even if I had 2X Quad the number of my own digits (fingers).

I am always up for learning about PC systems, what people have, so if you know how to achieve alternative Power PC budget solutions please do inform. I hope I may have given someone an idea of how to achieve a lot on a budget for gaming and graphics as well as music. Yes, it's always a gamble I guess, but these machines are about as indestructible as you can get. That is why corporations use them. It seems as if they are just left running to perform analytical processes and functions, monitoring, which is not heavy or varied use so wear may be light. Poor boy like me has to be a gambler to raise his stakes and gain his POWER, lol!

I am just a customer and in no way affiliated to these guys. It is just to inform you of what I chose and why. Various companies are at this racket in UK, U.S and Germany. It is green, too, as they are recycled machines.

$786.00 is what it convert to at the moment, for those that are interested in it.

Make sure your music software is enabled to use multiple cores as some may not be, seems like 2x4core xeon processors and 48gb seems reasonably sweet in the processing angle.

The 120gb SSD will be there mainly for the OS and important SW and there will be a normal pile of spinning rust to soak up the big files.

Do be aware these sort of things are big boys and weigh a lot so if you have a bad back you'll need a friend.

Wouldn't mind it myself but I can't afford that level of luxury at the moment.

If you do buy it get it out of the box and give it a few hours to warm up as its probably been frozen in the warehouse unless its 4pm on a hot day as sudden thermal stress can kill off some kit.

Never , ever buy an entire system . They give ya what they want you to have.
If you have a beginner tech skill in computers , build your own . Using hand picked components .
Not only is it better, it can turn out much cheaper.
Or , if you do purchase a pre-built system check to see if it is upgradeable . Then learn how to install components yourself.
The key is the ability to upgrade for yourself next year.
I havent bought a PC since 1992

I can't recommend 'Adamant Computers' enough, they're based out of Ohio or Philly, I can't remember, but they've got an Ebay store where you can pick between nearly every possible compatible component on the market, from the case, motherboard, power supply, ect. They build it to your specs and ship it with a 2yr warranty. I cross checked on pcpartpicker.com and adamant only charges about %20 over what it would cost to build the same rig yourself. I gladly paid that %20 to have it built for me, with a 2yr warranty.

It'll be 2 years this fall, but at the time I wanted to hurry and build the fastest PC I could with Win7 Pro, while it was still available. Minus the, keyboard, mouse and monitor, I built the best PC I could for under 2k.

Asus Z97-PRO (WiFi ac)
i7-4790K 4-Core 4.0GHz
GeForce GTX 980 4GB
16 GB DDR3 1600MHz
Corsair CX750 750W
Corsair Carbide Spec-01 (bada$$ led tower)

I paid around $1800 and I'll be able to run any program, play any game for the next decade. I also bought a 144gh 4k Monitor last year. Thing is a beast.

a reply to: Revolution9
Your mechanical hdd's are causing a major bottleneck.
$ to performance comparison will show ssd's are the best investment you can make.
Rather get a TB ssd, the xeon is total over-kill.
Just my $00.2

1. Go to pcpartpicker.com
2. Get the parts you want while saving money
3. Build it yourself and learn about the different components

a reply to: Gothmog

I don't know, I'm normally all for the build-yer-own angle, but thats still a pretty good deal. Probably, at least.. they aren't too descriptive about internals and IIRC, the last 3.06ghz Xeons are skt1366...

That said, I'm really unfamiliar with UK taxes. When it says "£486 exVAT," does that mean it adds on to the £584 or is it already included? That would change things..

Of course, one of the biggest advantages of build-yer-own is that some of the parts will never have to be purchased again (case, even things like PSU). Making future builds that much cheaper.

a reply to: Revolution9

The problem with most USB and Firewire is bandwidth along with the fact that they usually have far fewer AD/DA stages than they have connections.

To my way of thinking, there should be a 1:1 relationship between channels and converters in professional sound situations. The caveat is that it is overkill for a home studio.

That being said, if you are going for virtual mixers, then you can do it all digitally with few converters but this will lead to less separation as everything must fit within the single threshold of your converter, meaning that summed outputs can produce transients that clip, unless you turn down volumes but then you begin to approach the noise floor of your equipment.

There are PCI cards at similar costs to high-end USB/Firewire ones, which will give you more bang for buck IMHO. You also want balanced audio connectors for the superior noise rejection.

a reply to: rexsblues

Star for an awesome retailer but 20% is too much for me. Building PC's is really easy. I taught myself before I took a course to prove that I could do it. Lego is more complicated tbh.

a reply to: Wide-Eyes

I think that many are intimidated by how it USED to be. Linux is much the same way.

Back when things like DIP switches on the mobo were involved, it could be tricky sometimes.. but now? Things are even color coded frequently. The hardest part, in my opinion, is actually cable management. Maybe part selection too, but thats more tedious and time consuming than difficult.

With resources like YouTube walkthroughs, etc. I don't think there is any reason for anyone not to build their own PC. Unless they just find some stellar deal.

I'm still curious about the VAT though. Without it, the PC linked in the OP is a pretty good deal even for a premade, but if that gets tacked on to the price I would struggle to recommend it.

a reply to: Serdgiam

ExVAT is before tax. Take that number and add 20%.