$640 AUDIO EDITING/AUDIO REMIXING/VOICE OVER BUILD

[syxxnyne69]

Approximate Purchase Date: 10/7/11 tomorrow. Possibly today depending if i can finalize my parts list.

Budget Range: $550 before rebates

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Moderate to Heavy Audio Editing and Recording i.e. Voice Overs and Making remixes of popular songs. I am a club dj and radio station dj


Parts Not Required: I only need parts to build a tower nothing else


Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg, amazon, tigerdirect. whoever is reasonable


Country of Origin: usa


Parts Preferences: No particular preference of brands

Overclocking: no


SLI or Crossfire: no


Monitor Resolution: 1024x768


Additional Comments: I do not game at all. I do not plan to. so i wont need a beast of a graphics card.

I have included a pic of what i have chose so far. and a link for the sound card

http://www.amazon.com/M-Audio-Track-Audio-Interface-Standard/dp/B002VFYS0K

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/sxSoc.png" alt="" title="Hosted by imgur.com" />

 

[008Rohit]

Processor : Intel Core i3 2100 - $125
Motherboard : ASRock H61M-U3S3 - $70
RAM : Gskill Value Series 4GB DDR3 1333 - $20
Sound : Creative PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series - $150
Storage : Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA III - $55
PSU : Corsair CX430 V2 - $45
Case : Xigmatek ASGARD II - $30

Total : $495 before rebates

This sound card is a BEAST!

 

[008Rohit]

Ooops... I missed the optical drive. LG 24X SATA DVD Burner - $20

So, total $515 before rebates

 

[jmsellars1]

Sounds like the most important factors are quietness, a decent amount of RAM and a fast HDD for bouncing etc. I'd go for something along these lines:

i3-2100 - $124.99

Plenty of power there for audio tasks, i got through a music degree easily on a core 2 duo with 3GB of RAM so this is more than enough. The low power consumption helps toward low noise too. Also the hyperthreading is a big bonus, not to mention it's cheap.

8GB G.Skill Value Series - $41.99

Well priced and you really don't need anything more than this, 8GB is more than enough for audio stuff even if you like to have lots of VST's open.

ASRock H61M-VS - $53.99

Well priced board, doesn't have RAID, USB 3.0, SATA 3 or any other bells and whistles but you really don't need them.

ASUS HD5450 SILENT - $34.99

Takes some pressure off the motherboard and leaves you open to run 2 monitors, also 0db and cheap.

Fractal Design Define Mini - $99.99

May seem expensive but I think it looks awesome and it is very quiet and well built with lots of nice features like dust filters and noise reduction/anti vibration measures.

SeaSonic S12II 380B 380W - $65.99

Again, may seem expensive but so worth it for rock solid reliability and should be really quiet.


Lastly for your HDD, if you don't need much space and/or have an external drive for your stuff i would go for this:

Intel 320 Series SSD 40GB - $99.99

Most reliable SSD around, completely silent and super fast booting/loading/bouncing etc.

If you do need the space then this would be noisier and nowhere near as fast but you get 1TB of storage:

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 1TB - $59.99

That's a total of $540.92 with the SSD or $500.92 with the HDD both before rebates and shipping.

 

[jmsellars1]

Processor : Intel Core i3 2100 - $125
Motherboard : ASRock H61M-U3S3 - $70
RAM : Gskill Value Series 4GB DDR3 1333 - $20
Sound : Creative PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series - $150
Storage : Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA III - $55
PSU : Corsair CX430 V2 - $45
Case : Xigmatek ASGARD II - $30

Total : $495 before rebates

This sound card is a BEAST!

That's not really a professional sound card mate, also he has an audio interface already. An audio interface is effectively a sound card for professional audio stuff.

 

[syxxnyne69]

I have not purchased anything as of yet that is just an audio interface that I was leaning toward purchasing. However if you guys have any other suggestions post them please. Yes quiet case is an issue. That case however is a little on the high end. Thank you for the suggestions so far keep them coming please. Or feel free to create an entire build from scratch. I am however increasing my budget to $640.

I checked out a proposed build by batuchka that is thuban based so I worked on one tell me if this seems better.

This is the correct audio interface I was thinking about purchasing.

M-Audio MobilePre Audio Mixer

This is a new proposed build that falls within the new budget.

 

[syxxnyne69]

bump

 

[008Rohit]

Well, I don't really understand sound cards well. 😛

You can go with my build except the sound card and get one of your choice.

I can build a Phenom II X4 build as well within your budget that may convert music files faster.

About the build you've posted,

i) Western Digital drives are costlier but not faster. Seagate or Samsung Drives perform the same (if not better) at lower costs.

ii) You don't need a Six-Core CPU and 8GBs of RAM for Audio Editing.

iii) 600W PSU is overkill for that build.

iv) That AM3 MoBo will not support bulldozer processors, so no upgrade paths open for your PC.

 

[jmsellars1]

Agree on the psu and hdd. Also I don't think that 6 core is going to perform much (if any) better than that i3 to be honest. Also i just realised if you don't want 2 monitors you can drop the gpu for a sandy bridge build, I'd keep it for an and one though. Also i think my build would be far quieter because the higher power consumption of that amd equals more heat which equals more noise. Also everything about that fractal case is for low noise, it all adds up. My suggestion is go for my build but if you don't want 2 monitors go for a scythe shuriken or something for lower noise. It's up to you in the end though.

 

[jmsellars1]

If you factor in the new budget you may even be able to kit the case out with a few Noctua uln fans instead of the stock ones and change the psu for a seasonic x-400, it would be inaudible then. That's maybe a bit extreme though, alternatively get both the hdd and SSD or upgrade to I5/I7.

 

[syxxnyne69]

with as many 20 vst and optional plugins open at one instance as well as when the files are rendering i do in fact need processor speed aswell as high amount of ram as my current setup up is easily bogged down. granted its a dual core laptop with 4gigs of ram. i dont plan on upgrading in the near future so this build will be my go to build for all my audio editing needs. I use Sound Forge, Adobe Audition, mainly those to application as well as Samplitude

 

[jmsellars1]

Maybe try my original build but take out the SSD and GPU for an i7-2600.