Upgrading to a Music PC fit for the future

[MusicBringer]

I am about to embark on upgrading my PC.

The present one is: AMD Athlon XP 2000+ CPU, Motherboard is VIA KT-266A VT8233A, 512 Meg DDR memory, 2 x 80 Gig 7200 rpm Maxtor HDDs (I like to have two hard drives), Floppy drive, USB four port card, 16 Meg SIS Graphics card, LG CD-RW GCE 8523B and LG DVD-ROM GDR8160B CD-ROM drives, and an old Audigy 1 Platinum eX Soundcard (not Audigy 2), running XP Pro SP2.

I should be grateful if you would let me have your views, ideas, and comments as to what parts I should consider so that the new machine will be up-to-date, without being excessively expensive. Don’t ask me what my budget is, coz I tend to go and spend more anyway.

I am prepared to spend a bit now on a PC that will be fit for the future. I know - as soon as you get the machine home it is out of date and worth half what you paid for it, but you know what I mean. I am used to upgrading an odd part each year, but I shall not be in a position to do that in future, so I’m planning the big upgrade now.

I use the PC mainly for playing my music collection through my HiFi. (I have a 300 Gig ext HDD to store backups of music files). I shall be getting a better sound card. I’m looking at the E-MU maybe the 0404 or 1212M. I need analogue in and out, and a headphone socket too please. As it’s for Music I must have a quiet fan. The PC is on all day and I don’t want to be listening to the hum of the fan.

Do I need a DAC. They seem to have been flavour of the month for several months now.

I am not a Gamer, nor do I watch many films on the PC.

Otherwise it’s used for the Internet (TeleWest 1 Meg Broadband) and the usual apps such as word and excel. Plus a little bit of photo tweaking. And of course SS and SB for my cherished NH1 and NH900.

My LG 19 inch screen, mouse, and keyboard will remain.

You folk here on this particular forum are so good with real suggestions. Please tell me what you think...

[greenmachine]

Seems like a CPU in the 300-600 Mhz range would fit your needs as long as it has a quiet cooling, at least 256 MB RAM (for photo editing) and a good soundcard. The slower the CPU, the less heat it will produce. the less heat, the less cooling is required. The less cooling, the less fan noise (at least with the conventional fan method). But seriously, i don't see any reason for you to upgrade, except maybe to a quieter cooling if the noise annoys you. A better (not necessarily the currently best) graphics card, which can be had cheap as well, could also improve the performance for graphical applications, but seems like you wouldn't even need it.

[atrain]

i'd be looking at a new motherboard so you'll be able to rechip every 12-18 months for awhile.

[Bananatree]

Raid a few disks together and get a TB going eh?

An External DAC would be nice as long as you kept it away from your fans/motors/whatnot.

I remember with my n505 netMD, I could hear the disc spinning, who wants that? Unless you are just using speakers, then, I'd just use an internal if it's more cost effective.

[MusicBringer]

i'd be looking at a new motherboard so you'll be able to rechip every 12-18 months for awhile.

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good idea

Raid a few disks together and get a TB going eh?

umm, what's TB

Seems like a CPU in the 300-600 Mhz range would fit your needs as long as it has a quiet cooling, at least 256 MB RAM (for photo editing) and a good soundcard

I have a 2000CPU, 512 Ram, and an Audigy soundcard now. I wish to upgrade. I fail to understand to the message behind your suggestions greenmachine. Please clarify for me

[greenmachine]

What i wanted to say is that i don't see any reason for an upgrade considering your non-demanding usage.

[MusicBringer]

point taken - thanks

[Syrius]

I agree. You don't have to keep it to the latest specifications. The only thing I see needing some upgrade is the video card, but if you are not doing any gaming, or video editing, then don't bother.

If you upgrade, just buy a motherboard, CPU and RAM (and maybe a card, as yours might not be compatible with the new board) and reuse all your drives. I have an old 6-gig, a 20 gig, and an 80 gig. And none of them is full to the brim.

Also TB=Terabyte.

[Damage]

I am about to embark on upgrading my PC.

The present one is: AMD Athlon XP 2000+ CPU, Motherboard is VIA KT-266A VT8233A, 512 Meg DDR memory, 2 x 80 Gig 7200 rpm Maxtor HDDs (I like to have two hard drives), Floppy drive, USB four port card, 16 Meg SIS Graphics card, LG CD-RW GCE 8523B and LG DVD-ROM GDR8160B CD-ROM drives, and an old Audigy 1 Platinum eX Soundcard (not Audigy 2), running XP Pro SP2.

...

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First things first, dump the Audigy. While it's great for gaming, it's not recommended for serious audio duties. I won't do the recommendation bit, but you have several options when it comes to upgrading your PC's audio.

If nothing else, you want to use digital out (COAX or SPDIF) and I do believe Audigy supports that in one way or another. Use that with your HiFi if your set allows for digital inputs. Other cards of interests are cards powered by VIA Envy-24 Chipset. I think Chaintek makes a model that's been the FOTM at Head-Fi for ages. If you want to stick with creative, you can get couple of EMU professional line of cards. Onkyo makes another one (I believe import only) powered by Envy-24, but it's nothing like you've ever seen in a soundcard, it's a veritable city of Capacitors for power and line conditioning.

By the by, your choice of EMU 0404 or 1212 is fine, though the 1212 might be overkill for your purpose. Unless... Wait, you've been poisoned by Head-Fi-itis, have you?

I will, however, reiterate the need for some sort of digital out capabilities (even if you don't use a DAC, nor one necessary for headphone listening), espeicially when using a HiFi set at your home. With my setup, the HT-Receiver works as a DAC, and for all intents and purposes, the sound quality from that setup works well. Or at least, nothing that I wouldn't notice dramatically. The price you pay for a quality DAC IMO is better spent elsewhere.

Just for zippier performance, you will probably want to get a new CPU and mainboard combination, though that particular chip/mainboard combo will do fine for music and movies, occassional surfing, and productivity type. An Athlon64 processor and a mainboard that allows use of regular unregistered DDR would be the cheapest way to upgrade.

Finally, considering consolidating your optical drives into one with a modern DVD burner, with one exception. If you're heavy into CD ripping, you still may want to invest in a plextor CD-burner drive and pair that with Exact Audio Copy for audio ripping duties (or likewise, using a known CD-Drive that can rip through almost anything is ideal these days). As for that DVD drive, I recommend Pioneer DVD burners. Why? Let's just say a firmware hack unlocks that drive's full potential.

[MDX-400]

I will, however, reiterate the need for some sort of digital out capabilities (even if you don't use a DAC, nor one necessary for headphone listening), espeicially when using a HiFi set at your home.  With my setup, the HT-Receiver works as a DAC, and for all intents and purposes, the sound quality from that setup works well.  Or at least, nothing that I wouldn't notice dramatically.  The price you pay for a quality DAC IMO is better spent elsewhere.

I was pretty much going to say the same as what Damage has said. When you [MusicBringer] say you use your "HiFi" for playing your music, what exactly does that mean??? I realise the good ol' term "Hi-Fi" is one used in England and everything, but it really doesn't say much if you're looking for suggestions to increase sound quality output.

If you don't already have these, on the non-PC side of it, get yourself a good HT receiver and some good speakers. A decent HT receiver will provide pretty good D/A conversion and all you need is a digital stream from your PC from a decent soundcard (even onboard sound can provide this on newer motherboards). External D/As are mainly something for elitists and like Damage said your money is likely better spent elsewhere, particularly if we're talking about listening to MP3-type music files because speaking about audiophile gear like an external D/A and MP3 do NOT go in the same sentence.

Usually from a PC you will want to use an optical (Toslink) S/PDIF connection instead of coax. Coax is technically a better connection method (as it has better bandwidth than toslink) but with PCs you're dealing with a lot of RFI/EMI interference and such from the various computer components and the power supply. Therefore using an optical cable to connect the PC to the receiver is usually the better way to go in such a connection.

On the PC side of things, if you are feeling your PC is getting a little slow these days, I'd follow some of the suggestions given above by other members. IMO the Athlon XP was never a very good CPU anyway (I'd rather a P4 Northwood over any AXP) and at only "2000+" that doesn't do you any better. Something like a new machine with an A64 CPU (the A64 is a far better CPU than the AXP was), perhaps around 1GBof RAM, and maybe a 300 gig or so HDD, would fit the bill. Again, with modern PCs the better motherboards will have an onboard sound solution that will have an S/PDIF output which would likely do you fine. Also the onboard video offered on a lot of motherboards will also suit you fine since you don't use any graphics-intensive programs (i.e. games). You should probably look into an SFF (Small Form-Factor)PC because these will be nice and small, quiet (in many cases), and would probably be best suited to you from what I can see.

[Sparky191]

Since the XP range beats the equivlent P4 Northwood in most tasks, and is usually cheaper, personally I always thought the XP range was pretty good. Really grabbed a decent chunk of the market for AMD from Intel anyway. So some people must like it. Intel system do tend more hassle free overall though.

I would agree that for audio alone you don't need to upgrade. However if you want to upgrade I would go for a larger case with room for lots of drives and expansion. Its easier to keep a bigger case quiet and cool. Something along the lines of this, http://www.silentpcreview.com/article254-page1.html (Good site for info for keeping your PC quiet BTW) . If it has to more visually appealing then sliverstone are popular for HTPC and Audio systems. http://www.silverstonetek.com/product-case.htm.

Again I would also go for a socket 939 A64 board and CPU. Any gfx card would do, but I would consider juggling the budget to get dual TFT screens. Dual monitors is a massive productivity boon over a single monitor. Dual Core CPU's are now on the market which are essentially two CPU's on one chip. They are eyewateringly expensive, but it means that when you multitask the machine won't slow down as much.

Theres a good section on PC Audio systems over at the head-fi.org forums. http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=59 Though it is very Audiophile.

Also consider a backup system. I use a couple of USB2 external Harddisks which I use to keep a copy of the HD in my PC. Any critical stuff I also backup up onto DVDRW.

Personally even though I've been building my PC's for years, last time I picked up a cheap PC from the Dell outlet store, rather than build my own. I was short on time and money and sometime this is easier and more cost effective in the short term. Though in the long run one you build you're self is better as you will be able to upgrade it bit by bit.

[MusicBringer]

Wow! What comprehensive replies. I never expected such helpful detailed suggestions.

Thank you so much guys. To take it all in, I'll have to sit down and read your posts again.

[Christopher]

It's important to get a fast hard drive as well. I would look into Maxtor's DiamondMax 10 series that are 250gb - 300gb SATA (not IDE) drives with 16mb cache. If you had two of these in RAID then you could really zip zoom and fly with Sonicstage or any other program and satisfy space requirements for any audio endeavor. These hard drives (the 300gb model at least) are about $130ish, perhaps more depending on the store.

I echo a Socket 939 board, but dont' splurge too much on the processor if you go with RAID. Make sure you get some RAM with fast timings, as well.

[Breepee2]

Speed is absolutely not necessary for a HiFi PC. Playing back audio is something even an 300 mhz cpu can do. Fast and complicated cpu's and low memory timings isn't only of no use, it even creates more 'background noise' inside the PC, which in theory results in more errorneous bits (although this is very common in today's high speed PC's and is being corrected all the time, it's this is a mathematical fact. Since speed is of absolutely no importance, just stick to 'slower' settings).

Big disks is the thing you need to worry about. The music has to be sotred somewhere, and lossless of course (else it wouldn't be HiFi). Speed of these discs isn't important, today's big drives (200GB +) are without exception more than fast enough.

Other than that, I'd built a system that is low on power consumption. That means buying an Pentium/Celeron M or Athlon/Sempron 64, or getting an old CPU (Celeron 300-500 mhz for example). When going for an Athlon 64, a 939 board isn't going to help you, except increasing your power bill.

Also, if it's possible, use the DAC's of your amplifier, and not your sound cards. If you must use you're sound cards, look on the web for cards that seem to please (Maudio 7.1 for example seems to be a nice card).

I think I'd buy a barebone, either an HTPC-ish one, of sometihng like this: http://www.asus.nl/products/desktop/pundit-ae3/overview.htm. Room enough to stick big drives in and a decent audiocard.

[Sparky191]

The older pundit system and SFF (Small Form Factor) PC's in general tend not to be that quiet as they are cramped internal and use small fans to cool. Some of them are quiet though. You'd need to shop around. http://www.hushtechnologies.net/ are well regarded but expensive. A64 have cool and quiet technologies, so would be better than a P4. But a mobile chip like a P4 M is much cooler. Celerons (is there a M version?) do not have power saving, so I'd be uncertain how cool (and thus quiet) they would be.

The only thing a faster CPU give you would be faster encoding, ripping or processing of music. Especially in SS. It would also be a more responsive system when doing the other tasks such as photo editing. Which would be no fun at all, on a Celeron 300-500 mhz....

What AMP are you connecting to BTW?

Edited September 6, 2005 by Sparky191

[MusicBringer]

What AMP are you connecting to BTW?

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AudioLab 8000A

It has no digital input to take an optical cable

[Sparky191]

Its a decent amp so its worth putting a decent signal through it.