I'm currently looking into getting myself a new computer, as this one is entering it's eigth faithful year. The best thing I've been able to find in this town are these two, so basically I'd just like to ask a few people who aren't trying to cinch a sale if they are good choices for music, both recording and for live playing:

Processor: Intel Core2Duo E8500
Mothercard: MSI P35 Neo-FI
Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD4870, 512 MB
Memory: 4 GB (2x2048 MB) DDR2-800 MHz
Harddrive: 750 GB S-ATA, 32 MB cache
DVD-burner: 20X Samsung S-ATA
Price: About 1300$ at current exchange rate

Then there's one cranked up alternative, would it be worth pitching in the extra money?

Processor: Intel QuadCore Q9550, 16MB cache, 2,86 GHz.
Mother card: Asus P5E, X38 chipset, DDR2, SATA-2 Raid
Graphcis card: 2 st ATI Radeon HD4850 i CrossFire konfiguration
Memory: 4 GB DDR2-800 (2x2GB, 2 platser lediga)
Harddrive: 2 st 640 GB SATA-II (Seagate Barracuda 32 MB Cache)
DVD-burner: 20X Samsung S-ATA
Price: About 2000$
The firewire connection and extra slots available in this one does make me a bit partial to it.
Anyway, any input would be appreciated!

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I'd go with the second one if the extra cash isn't that big of an issue. The firewire connection is a big plus.

You could lose the fancy graphics card to save some cash.

If its for playing with live, you'll probably want to look into a notebook.

Where are you buying this from?

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A local shop; it's a concoction of their own so hopefully I'll be able to drop the graph-card.
No, the money in itself isn't an issue, I just want to make sure that the extra juice is worth those sevenhundred dollars - and there aren't many sales men out there who would say "You know what, for your needs it would be more than enough with this cheaper model".

Yea, I was thinking of one of those little notebooks too. What with having becomed the inofficial DJ of my new class I really could use one. Got any good suggestions on what to look for?

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Oh man, I just picked up a Mac Book Pro and it's safe to say I'm never going back to PC. I've had it a little over 4 months now and I haven't seen so much as a single error pop up on the screen. It competes with a lot of the desktops out there for power too if you're using it for DJing, recording etc. Maybe I'm a little biased but I'd say it's more than worth dropping the extra coin on it.

Fuck macs.

Amadeus: ADK all the way: http://www.adkproaudio.com/laptop2.cfm

They've got great prices, they let you set up your own laptop, and the customer support is fantastic. I've literally e-mailed them saying "I want this machine to do this-and-that, what should I upgrade or get rid of?" and they responded within the day and I his advice dropped the price a tad.

Now, I haven't ordered my notebook from them yet (will be as soon as I've got the extra cash to spend) so I can't say from personal experience how well they run, but from reading online testimonies and backed with a lifetime warranty it really looks like the greatest deal I've found and I've spend a lot of time shopping around for laptops.

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dude, build your own. Trust me. I did and i saved about 1k.

4 gigs of ram will only work if you're running xp64 or vista. Otherwise it will only be able to support 3 gigs. As for graphics, its really just what sort of fanboi you are hahaha. I personally got an nvidia8800gtx, but thats only because it was WAY cheap.
Now about quad cores; 99% of existing computer programs will never use all 4 cores. If you use this for gaming, only 2 of the cores will ever be used, and even then, most games rely moreso on your gpu. However if you'er a big artsy and do alot of studio recording/mastering/video editing/computer animation/etc etc, a quad core might be right for you. Just check whether the programs you use will fully use the potential of the quad core. Otherwise i'd stick to a duo core and save your money, and upgrade in the future when quads are cheaper.

now my computer, i spent a total of about 850$ on it.
Cooler master case (whatever, just a case)
640 watt BFG power supply
600 gig harddrive
intel e4600 @ 2.4ghz
2 gigs ram
nvidia 8800gtx
Asus p5q motherboard. (power efficient, easy to overclock stuff, blahblahblah gamer board. 7.1 surround sound... love it)\


Yes, i dont have a cd drive. I didn't plan on having enough room to fit one because im installing a watercoolant system in december, and cd drive just might not fit. So i use an external usb drive for anything that REALLY needs a disk... otherwise i use .iso files. However, LG makes a dvd-rw drive that reads and burns cds and dvds... and it costs 35$... so its not like its guna put a hole in your wallet.


Now if you chose to pursue this, there are some tips i'd LOVE to give you. Let me know.

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Where did you get it built?

The one issue I don't like about that option is that there isn't any technical support.

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got it built in my kitchen by my friends leftie and righty. Took 20 minutes.

and about tech support, when you build your own thing, you know EXACTLY whats going into it. No hidden bullshit going on that fucks with your shit.... like all the crap that HP puts on their laptops. For hardware support, hardforum is a good choice, also the manuals have alot of good info, and in a worst case, you can call the number on the manual to get phone support for your hardware.

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Too bad I don't have any friends that could do this. How hard could it be?

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Fucking easy! My dear mother and I built a computer together for the first time about 5 years ago, both with no real knowledge of computer hardware. I've been doing it myself ever since, and have saved bundles of money. Go to www.newegg.com, they have good deals on stuff.

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not hard at all man. Everything fits together quite nicely, and EVERYTHING has a manual incase youre confused. I think the most difficult part is probably realizing that you have to ground yourself before you touch any components (or wear cotton gloves)... and getting the heatsink onto the CPU. Heatsinks just don't want to clamp down, and you always feel like you're guna break it... but it wont break, so dont worry.

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