Home Recording/ Dual Boot/ Dual Monitor Setup Recommendation

[illuminationexcursion]

Hi Guys,

 

I'm looking to build a new comp for myself. I will be mainly using this comp for recording my music and stuff. On top of it, I'm looking to use it for general purposes (word processing etc) and as a bonus, perhaps simple gaming (but really not important).

 

With this in mind, I have gone through the various possible setups and came up with the following questions which I hope you guys can help me out with.

 

1. MOBO/Processor/RAM

 

I was contemplating between a Core2 Duo 3.0ghz and a Core2 Quad 2.5ghz. I'm not sure whether a Quad would be overkill. Moreover, the Quad at 2.5ghz is more expensive than the Duo at 3.0ghz.

 

In addition, I'm thinking of going with 8GB of RAM. The DDR3s are expensive so I'm thinking of going with 4 x DDR2s 2GB.

 

What do you guys think and if so, which mobo should I choose to go along with this setup.

 

 

2. Graphics Card

 

I would like to have a duo monitor setup if possible, so which graphic card should I get? I have no intention of doing heavy gaming or graphics related work on it so 256mb or 512mb doesn't really bother me. Then again, the 512s are not that much more expensive than the 256.

 

Any recommendations?

 

 

3. Dual Boot or separate boot

 

For my recording purposes, I understand that I'll have to have a separate OS-less drive to "scratch" on. I'm thinking of getting a 1TB for that. As for the OS drive, since I want to run both Mac and Windows, should I get 2 separate harddisks with one installed in each? Or should I just get just 1 harddisk and dual boot on it. Is there any difference with dual booting on 1 harddisk as opposed to 2 OS on 2 harddisk?

 

 

4. Sound Card

 

This is the most important part of the setup since I'm using the comp for recording purposes. Going through the list of setups, I realized that Audio seems always to be a problem.

 

I can choose USB/ Firewire or PCI interfaces, but PCIs are supposed to run the fastest with least latency right? I'm currently looking at the Creative 1212M which has 2 TRS input, 2 TRS output, Midi in out and SPDIF in out. My guess is it prolly won't work on Mac.

 

I'm looking to first just setting up a singer/songwriter setup in which I'll be recording pretty much me, myself and my guitar. So I intend to have just a good preamp which goes TRS into the PCI card dry. Everything else should be done on the comp.

 

Any guys out here who have done recording on a Hackintosh?

[lespaulmarshall]

Hey dude,

 

I'm almost in the same situation as you haha. I am building a new computer, primarily for recording at home but also for gaming at medium to high levels when/if I want to. At the moment I have a Presonus Inspire for recording... http://www.presonus.com/products/Detail.aspx?ProductId=7 Check 'em out.

 

Now these bad boys really are a high quality device - when you can get them to work. I had mine with Vista and I had a {censored} load of troubles and I was ready to sell it, but decided to chuck XP on and at the same time found new drivers for it. And she looks beautifully now. It's deadset studio quality to my ears through high end headphones. They use firewire and as such I will be going with the PCI option as the mother board Im looking at doesn't have a direct output.

 

Heres my specs.

 

 

CPU: Intel E8400 S775 $207

Motherboard: Gigabyte P45-DS3 $143

RAM: 2 x 2GB G.Skill DDR2-800 $96

HDD: Western Digital 640GB 16MB SATAII $97

GPU: 512MB HIS HD4870 $340

Case: Coolermaster RC-690 $95

PSU: Corsair HX-620 620W $149

Optical Drive: ASUS 20x BLT-2014 Lightscribe SATA $33

 

The big question is if I can get it to work with firewire in Mac. F*** I would be happy if I can get it to work!! But even if I can't XP is great for recording as it doesn't take much of your computer memory etc etc.

 

Let me know what you think man.

[Zaap]

3. Dual Boot or separate boot

 

For my recording purposes, I understand that I'll have to have a separate OS-less drive to "scratch" on. I'm thinking of getting a 1TB for that. As for the OS drive, since I want to run both Mac and Windows, should I get 2 separate harddisks with one installed in each? Or should I just get just 1 harddisk and dual boot on it. Is there any difference with dual booting on 1 harddisk as opposed to 2 OS on 2 harddisk?

 

For hardware, there are a ton of build lists around here you can look at and start building your options from.

 

As for dual booting, I'd recommend keeping it simple and do 2 separate drives approach. It makes things much simpler, even easy. With Gigabyte boards, all you need to do is hold down F12 at startup to select which disk/OS to boot from, and set one as the default if you don't do anything.

 

 

Here's the approach I've been following:

 

1. Create two partitions on the first drive, for two installs of OSX. Install OSX TWICE- once on each partition. (Optional, but I highly recommend).

 

2. From within OSX, partition the second drive with 3 partitions according to your needs: 1. DOS partition that will be reformatted later for Windows. 2. DOS partition that will stay DOS so it can be a shared drive. 3. Another Mac OS Journaled Partition.

 

 

3. Unplug the OSX drive from power. Disconnect any USB drives or card readers present, so that you just have an optical drive, and hard drive. This assures that Windows doesn't try and install its bootloader over OSX, or assign any other drives as C: rather than the hard drive. (Something Windows has an annoying habit of doing.)

 

4. Install Windows on the first DOS partition of the second drive (reformat to NTFS)

 

5. After Windows is set up, plug the OSX drive and other drives back in.

 

You now you have OSX, a backup install of OSX (for repairing/servicing the other, or for testing updates before you hose your main install) and Windows. Both installs of OSX will boot from Darwin on the 1st drive, and Windows will boot independently from the second.

 

On the OSX desktops, you'll see 5 drives: OSX1, OSX2, WINDOWS, SHARED (DOS), and BACKUP (Mac). The 'BACKUP' drive- perfect for Time Machine- is the 3rd partition on the 2nd drive. The SHARED drive is the DOS partition that stays DOS to allow for easy cross-platform file transfer. The WINDOWS drive will mount in OSX, and you can read from it, but natively not write to it.

 

On the Windows desktop, you'll have the Windows C: and the SHARED (DOS) partition that you can move files back and forth to. Keep in mind, if you use a tool like MacDrive in Windows, you can skip the DOS partition and just move files to any Mac partition.

[illuminationexcursion]

Hey LP Marshall,

 

I think your build is pretty neat. But for me personally, i won't wanna blow a good $300 odd on a graphic card which will cause me to play games and distract myself from recording work.

 

Then again, all the bench mark tests out there are totally gamer/graphic-biased. I haven't been able to find any authoritative bench mark tests on DAWs. So in deciding between core2 quad and core2 duo, my biggest question is this: "Are the DAWs (such as cubase, protools etc) able to exploit the multi core setup?"

 

Also I'm not so sure about cases, prolly will be good to invest in a good quiet case and PSU. You won't wanna have my fan spinning sound in the background of all my recordings.

 

Anyway, isn't 620W PSU abit overkill? Does the setup suck that much juice?

 

To Zaap: Thanks for the detailed writeup.

[peach-os]

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...&pid=940826