I haven’t built a PC in about 15 years, and I definitely have not kept up on PC technology beyond a cursory level. However, my wife’s PC is on its last legs (it’s still running XP), and I’m considering building the replacement, which will potentially have multiple uses, none of which are gaming. I’m not at a “parts selection” level yet, but by all means feel free to recommend anything specific based on the information below. My wife is not a computer person, so for her, as long as “it works,” she won’t know the difference. Literally anything I build will be a huge step up from her current machine. She is a chorus teacher, so the main use will be as her “home office” PC: MS Office, several music composition/authoring pieces of software (Sibelius and Finale come to mind), and a multimedia suite (Roxio/Nero/Cyberlink).
I use my laptop to record accompaniment from her digital piano (just with a standard line in audio connection), because it’s portable and not as ancient as her PC. While it would be nice for her to be able to record directly to her PC, that doesn’t seem practical without going with a laptop, which, for reasons I’ll get to, may not be the best option. This is also something that only happens a couple times a year, and I just copy those files to her PC over our network. The accompaniment audio is used for in-class rehearsals, as my wife is not a pro on the piano, and it’s hard enough to conduct and work with the students without playing the accompaniment at the same time. My wife also records her own voice with a dinosaur of a recording device, a Roland CD-2, which saves files to a CF card. She plays the accompaniment that she has burned to a CD on a CD player, sings a voice part for the song, and records this combination on the CD-2. She does this for each voice part for each song and copies the resulting files to her PC.
I’m sure any audiophiles reading this are cringing right now. Obviously, none of this is recording studio quality, and it really does not need to be, but if anyone has any suggestions that would make her life easier or improve her workflow, I would love to hear them, even though that means getting her to learn something new. These recordings are given to the students to practice at home, so it’s not as if they are meant as performance pieces. As for distributing the files to her students, surprisingly, the majority prefer getting them on CDs, as opposed to downloading them from the school website. For that reason, my wife uses Roxio (Roxio Easy Media Creator 7, to be exact – wow, that was released ~13 years ago) to burn a lot of CDs. That takes a lot of time with her single burner. I see that these multimedia suites now allow simultaneous writing to multiple optical drives, so one option is to put a number of burners into the new PC. That number would be limited by the motherboard, power supply, PC case, and maybe the software? Alternatively, I could buy a standalone CD/DVD duplicator or build one myself. I would be able to have more drives in the standalone duplicator, but they’re not particularly cheap. Building one is essentially like building a PC tower, but with a controller for the drives instead of the motherboard, CPU, hard drives, etc. I don’t know the first thing about building one of those, so there may be something that takes that option off the table. Given the cost of optical drives, having multiple drives in the PC would certainly be cheaper, but I don’t know how many you can actually use given the limitations I mentioned (or didn’t mention). What would the limiting factor be for the number of burners? How many could I use on a PC, given the right components? I see cases with 10 - 5.25” bays, but I assume you would not use them all for optical drives. They look like they are there to give you options for physical location, and then there are usually fans in the leftover empty space. The advantage to using a standalone CD/DVD duplicator would be that I would have more options for the PC by limiting it to only one optical drive, namely a smaller case, or potentially a laptop.
In addition, I would like to be able to do video editing on this PC. Again, nothing professional. I record my wife’s concerts on a camcorder in AVCHD. I edit them for her on my laptop and burn DVDs for her to use in class. I don’t record much other video, but I would like to be able to use the computer to edit anything else I do record. That would be from the same consumer level camcorder.
Finally, I would like to be able to stream video from the PC to some device connected to a TV in another room over our home network. I’m not sure how reasonable of an expectation that is. I’m not talking 4K content, but I would still be at the mercy of the wireless network. As it stands right now, the PC could technically be connected to the TV via an HDMI cable (20-30 ft.), but it would have to go through a wall or along the floor under a door. Not particularly desirable. A separate HTPC would be ideal, as you could get a wireless keyboard and mouse and have the actual PC output on the TV. That way you’re not limited by whatever platform you would have to use when streaming. Obviously that means another computer and I’m not sure how much that would cost to build.
As I mentioned at the start, I’m not trying to nail down specific parts yet, but I want to make sure I’m considering everything I should. I don’t have a hard cap on cost, but considering that my non-tech savvy wife will be the primary user, I don’t want to spend more than I have to, but I also don't want to just pick the cheapest options for parts. So, generally, what would be recommended for specs for the use cases I’ve described?
- CPU: I’m not going to be overclocking. I imagine the video editing will be the limiting factor here. I've always used Intel processors.
- Motherboard: The CD writing solution will drive this decision, at least in size.
- GPU: Do I need a standalone GPU or will on board graphics be acceptable?
- Memory: How much?
- Storage: I’m thinking 1 SSD for Windows 10 plus the SW I’ve mentioned (256 GB? 512 GB? How much space does Windows 10 use?), then maybe two large traditional HDDs. Is it worth considering a RAID, or just back up to external drives?
- Case: In terms of size, a full tower is not a problem. If I don’t need one, that would be nice, but it’s not a deal breaker. I’m not looking for anything fancy, just functional.
- Power Supply: I assume this will just be a function of the other decisions.
- Network Adapter: It looks like most motherboards have Ethernet ports built in these days, so I assume there is no need for a separate NIC anymore. I would like to have the option of a wireless connection and I see that some motherboards have that option. From the little I’ve read so far, people seem to prefer an external USB interface for wifi as needed. Is that the way to go?
- Sound Card: Some of the more advanced features of the music software require an ASIO-compatible soundcard or a MIDI interface, but my wife has never mentioned being limited in what she does. I’m sure there are better ways to do the recording she does, but it’s not worth spending a ton of money. Even if I don’t install a sound card initially, I want to have that option in the future.
- Cooling: Case fans, fan controllers, CPU fans, liquid cooling systems. What do I really need for what I’m doing? Most cases seem to come with fans, but are they enough? There are cases with fan placement options all over. Is there some objective methodology to fan choices/placement? I've seen some CPUs that come with fans and some that do not. I assume you definitely want one, but how do you select them, if there isn't an adequate fan included with the CPU? I have not dealt with fan controllers or liquid cooling systems, so I’m not sure when those are necessary.
I probably left something out, but that looks like more than anyone will even want to read. Let me know if there are any questions and thanks in advance for the recommendations.
Matt
I use my laptop to record accompaniment from her digital piano (just with a standard line in audio connection), because it’s portable and not as ancient as her PC. While it would be nice for her to be able to record directly to her PC, that doesn’t seem practical without going with a laptop, which, for reasons I’ll get to, may not be the best option. This is also something that only happens a couple times a year, and I just copy those files to her PC over our network. The accompaniment audio is used for in-class rehearsals, as my wife is not a pro on the piano, and it’s hard enough to conduct and work with the students without playing the accompaniment at the same time. My wife also records her own voice with a dinosaur of a recording device, a Roland CD-2, which saves files to a CF card. She plays the accompaniment that she has burned to a CD on a CD player, sings a voice part for the song, and records this combination on the CD-2. She does this for each voice part for each song and copies the resulting files to her PC.
I’m sure any audiophiles reading this are cringing right now. Obviously, none of this is recording studio quality, and it really does not need to be, but if anyone has any suggestions that would make her life easier or improve her workflow, I would love to hear them, even though that means getting her to learn something new. These recordings are given to the students to practice at home, so it’s not as if they are meant as performance pieces. As for distributing the files to her students, surprisingly, the majority prefer getting them on CDs, as opposed to downloading them from the school website. For that reason, my wife uses Roxio (Roxio Easy Media Creator 7, to be exact – wow, that was released ~13 years ago) to burn a lot of CDs. That takes a lot of time with her single burner. I see that these multimedia suites now allow simultaneous writing to multiple optical drives, so one option is to put a number of burners into the new PC. That number would be limited by the motherboard, power supply, PC case, and maybe the software? Alternatively, I could buy a standalone CD/DVD duplicator or build one myself. I would be able to have more drives in the standalone duplicator, but they’re not particularly cheap. Building one is essentially like building a PC tower, but with a controller for the drives instead of the motherboard, CPU, hard drives, etc. I don’t know the first thing about building one of those, so there may be something that takes that option off the table. Given the cost of optical drives, having multiple drives in the PC would certainly be cheaper, but I don’t know how many you can actually use given the limitations I mentioned (or didn’t mention). What would the limiting factor be for the number of burners? How many could I use on a PC, given the right components? I see cases with 10 - 5.25” bays, but I assume you would not use them all for optical drives. They look like they are there to give you options for physical location, and then there are usually fans in the leftover empty space. The advantage to using a standalone CD/DVD duplicator would be that I would have more options for the PC by limiting it to only one optical drive, namely a smaller case, or potentially a laptop.
In addition, I would like to be able to do video editing on this PC. Again, nothing professional. I record my wife’s concerts on a camcorder in AVCHD. I edit them for her on my laptop and burn DVDs for her to use in class. I don’t record much other video, but I would like to be able to use the computer to edit anything else I do record. That would be from the same consumer level camcorder.
Finally, I would like to be able to stream video from the PC to some device connected to a TV in another room over our home network. I’m not sure how reasonable of an expectation that is. I’m not talking 4K content, but I would still be at the mercy of the wireless network. As it stands right now, the PC could technically be connected to the TV via an HDMI cable (20-30 ft.), but it would have to go through a wall or along the floor under a door. Not particularly desirable. A separate HTPC would be ideal, as you could get a wireless keyboard and mouse and have the actual PC output on the TV. That way you’re not limited by whatever platform you would have to use when streaming. Obviously that means another computer and I’m not sure how much that would cost to build.
As I mentioned at the start, I’m not trying to nail down specific parts yet, but I want to make sure I’m considering everything I should. I don’t have a hard cap on cost, but considering that my non-tech savvy wife will be the primary user, I don’t want to spend more than I have to, but I also don't want to just pick the cheapest options for parts. So, generally, what would be recommended for specs for the use cases I’ve described?
- CPU: I’m not going to be overclocking. I imagine the video editing will be the limiting factor here. I've always used Intel processors.
- Motherboard: The CD writing solution will drive this decision, at least in size.
- GPU: Do I need a standalone GPU or will on board graphics be acceptable?
- Memory: How much?
- Storage: I’m thinking 1 SSD for Windows 10 plus the SW I’ve mentioned (256 GB? 512 GB? How much space does Windows 10 use?), then maybe two large traditional HDDs. Is it worth considering a RAID, or just back up to external drives?
- Case: In terms of size, a full tower is not a problem. If I don’t need one, that would be nice, but it’s not a deal breaker. I’m not looking for anything fancy, just functional.
- Power Supply: I assume this will just be a function of the other decisions.
- Network Adapter: It looks like most motherboards have Ethernet ports built in these days, so I assume there is no need for a separate NIC anymore. I would like to have the option of a wireless connection and I see that some motherboards have that option. From the little I’ve read so far, people seem to prefer an external USB interface for wifi as needed. Is that the way to go?
- Sound Card: Some of the more advanced features of the music software require an ASIO-compatible soundcard or a MIDI interface, but my wife has never mentioned being limited in what she does. I’m sure there are better ways to do the recording she does, but it’s not worth spending a ton of money. Even if I don’t install a sound card initially, I want to have that option in the future.
- Cooling: Case fans, fan controllers, CPU fans, liquid cooling systems. What do I really need for what I’m doing? Most cases seem to come with fans, but are they enough? There are cases with fan placement options all over. Is there some objective methodology to fan choices/placement? I've seen some CPUs that come with fans and some that do not. I assume you definitely want one, but how do you select them, if there isn't an adequate fan included with the CPU? I have not dealt with fan controllers or liquid cooling systems, so I’m not sure when those are necessary.
I probably left something out, but that looks like more than anyone will even want to read. Let me know if there are any questions and thanks in advance for the recommendations.
Matt
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