Starting over

[paulrmartin]

Hi everyone!

I am back after a long hiatus and I need your help getting back up and running with a new computer.

First question is: What is the recommended MOBO right now? I looked at Asus but there are so many.
2. Which Intel chip set is the one to look at?
3. DDR2 or DDR3 RAM?
3. Windows 7 or 8?

I still own my Pulsar 2's and hope to run Scope 5

I must say: I really missed reading up on Nestor, Ken Suguro , Gary B and the rest of you great music making people.

Thanks for helping me get back in the game!

Paul

[Immanuel]

Welcome back Paul

[garyb]

hello Paul-

there have been a few exceptions, but the newest socket 1150 motherboards seem good.
socket 775, 1156 and 1366 motherboards should all work, if you can find them.

what would be the best buy depends on exactly what you want to run. an older socket 775 computer like an HP xw4400 can be found in quantity on ebay for $150-200, possibly with a 4 head video card, and maybe including shipping. if you really want to run a lot of the latest big sample libs, then the newest socket 1150 i7s would be the way to go...

it's definitely not a world with as many pitfalls as in the win98 or early XP days, there are only a couple of big pits to avoid. the main one is socket 1155, or an AMD of the same period.

win7 and win 8 both work very well. win8 may be a little smoother, but one of the latest updates has a problem. still, i might choose win8 for a new machine. if i had a machine with win7, i certainly wouldn't upgrade, though. any advantage to win8 is very, very, very, very small, at least for your audio apps.

[paulrmartin]

Hi Gary,

What do you mean by a lot of big sample libraries? Something like Vienna Symphonic along side the orchestral stuff and the occasional Omnisphere? Huge piano stuff to accompany all that perhaps? Your answer will go a long way in helping me finalize my choice.

Thanks!

[garyb]

yes, that's what i mean.
any one or two of those and then render to audio and the $150 HP is plenty.
all of those and a drum machine and you need to spend as much as you can.

[jhulk]

the hp xwxxxx range work great they have pci cards scsi and dual zeon processors you can get a system for under £100

and they work great compared to the later motherboards that use pci convertor chips from pci-e

there also seems to be lots of problems with later 64bit os so staying in x86 seems to be the best

have one system on xp 32BIT WORKS FLAWLESSLY and one system on the win7 32bit which works ok

kontakt will have 4gb of ram with a win7 32bit os if needed but bc modular is as good if not better with the 32bit os more options with the 32bit os kontakt is limited in functions for real synthesis compared to the bc modular and scope modular 4

which allows more program-ability and with the new scope.dll you can create bc modular synths and create xml panels just like kontakt scripts but with much better control as with the scope .dll its 32bit control compared to kontakts midi control of 7bit 0-128 data

[garyb]

the model i mentioned is Core2 Duo or Quad with SATA and a decent video card, quite often the video card is an NVidia Quadro 4 head card. it's ready for win7/win8 and nearly current...

[Neil B]

No tips here Paul, but it's nice to see you back on "Z"

[fidox]

socket 1155.

I'm running Win 8.1 on socket 1155, Intel i7 with no problems. 2 years now

If changing computer now, i should go for socket 1150, i7 K versions are nice and good cooler, like Corsair Hydro H55 maybe.

I have water cooler atm in my chassis (Intel RTS2011LC) and it's really great.

[erminardi]

+1 for 1150, but only if you own a 2° gen card.

[Bud Weiser]

... the new scope.dll ...

What´s that ?

Bud

[Immanuel]

socket 1155.

I'm running Win 8.1 on socket 1155, Intel i7 with no problems. 2 years now

This is very rare. I tried a z77 motherboard and a q77 motherboard. Both failed hard - as many other 1155 motherboards apparently have.

[Immanuel]

Right now, I am fighting extremely poor performance from a Supermicro x10sla-f. Another user have had good results with it, though. I am waiting to hear which BIOS revision he is running.

[fidox]

I have this Gigabyte mobo -

http://www.gigabyte.si/products/product ... id=3702#ov

[jhulk]

scope.dll look for the source luke

if you go to the bc modular website all information is there it is a .dll file that simon and will have been working on it started out for live first but now its also vst and you can make panels via xml

it means that for those that dont have a pro card or xite or sdk they can create a modular synth in modular then skin it and run it as a vst instrument

its the new xtc mode that simon and will have been working so hard on

now back to mother boards and systems

the dsp cards work great with the hp xwxxxx series and you can get a whole system with xp and full ram and a dual head grafix card for the price of just these mobo they are talking about the xwxxxx series are fast and can run any os you want but you will be up and running in no time as its a whole computer

[paulrmartin]

Hey Guys!

What do you think of this setup?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-DUAL-CORE ... 1c1ac953e6
ws
And I await with impatience...

[garyb]

if you buy that, you might as well get a used xw4400
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-xw4400-works ... 35da6f3ca8

[paulrmartin]

Doesn't ship to Canada.... lol

Seriously, does the link make sense or should I continue looking?

[garyb]

it's ok, but seriously, the model i'm suggesting is the equal of the one you were looking at. in fact, since the xw4400 is a commercial model meant for 24/7 corporate use, it probably has better parts and it's a 1/4 of the price. there are a LOT of these computers available because they come from big companies that just replace them as a matter of course. then these computer brokers blow them out for $100-200. there are a LOT of these available. even if you upgrade the memory and hard drive, the HP is much cheaper and has better parts.

the link you mentioned is $500 and i'm sure that it will work just fine, so if you like it, buy it. or that's my opinion....
personally, i wouldn't want the Pentium D over a Core2 and i definitely wouldn't prefer the Asrock motherboard over the Intel-made board in the HP, but i don't see any reason why it won't work.

[paulrmartin]

Update: I got a xw4400 and everything is fine except for Scope 5 not wanting to start up. I saw that I will need a new key for it to work . Do I buy the upgrade to 5.1 directly or do I need to buy the complete package of Scope 5 and THEN the upgrade?