Saturday, 1. September 2007, 00:00john-mendenhall
The time had come to upgrade the heart of my studio - the computer. As Many of you (my friends) are also music producers, I thought you might be interested in how I did it. The project started with research. Kyle (-Ward, my music-making partner) and I spent countless hours scouring through websites and catalogs trying to determine the best components from which to build "The Bad-A$$ Music Computer". Incidentley, we both built new, identical machines, though he opted for a less "blingy" case. I decided upon and purchased the following components:
Apevia X-Discovery Silent case
Corsair HX520 power supply
Intel Core 2 Quad proccessor
Asus P5K Deluxe motherboard
Crucial DDR2 RAM (2 gigs)
Western Digital 320 Gig system drive
Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM 150 Gig project drive
EVGA NVIDIA graphics card
E-MU 1212m soundcard
Light-On DVD writer
Zalman CPU cooler
Antec LED Tri-Cool fans (3)
Antec V-Cool graphics card cooler
OEM 16 in 1 card reader
So, having purchased all of the needed components, the task at hand was assembly
First up: The Mother Board, CPU, Cooler and RAM
Then get to the case ready, install the industrial-strength power supply and 4 fans
On to mounting the Motherboard & Drives in the case
Let's close her up and see if she works!
Success!
(thanks to Kyle for the tricked out blue thumb screws)
Now on to the software....
I am happy (and relieved!) to report that this sucka is fast! Songs that I had to freeze tracks on because my CPU usage was going over 75% on my old system (Athlon 64) now purr along at 18% CPU.
You can see from these pix that I added a few things after the initial build:
16 in 1 card reader (fill up that useless floppy drive slot)
Cold Cathode tube for interior lighting - and custom mounted a switch on the front
(fill up that other useless floppy drive slot)
Added a Thermaltake dual slot fan as well
