Ultimate DAW PC. Cheap, quiet, stable, robust.

[Reminor]

[quote="DJDM]
<crap skipped>
Best of luck,
- DJDM

This guy has problems.

Hold on fellows, he'll be outa here soon.

[Mr. Dipity]

As far as the dual booting the system, it was the mantra, back in the early win2k days - my current machine is a dual booter. Perhaps you could go into the reasons this slows you down a bit? I created the partitions before installing the OS on them so that the sections would be contiguous.

No partitioning. This is a successful DAWer (LOL) mantra! When you create two (or more) "virtual" disks on a single physical drive you make your drive heads jump twice as often and travel much larger distances. What kind of performance boost are you expecting doing that?

Yeah, I just realized on my way in to work, that I haven't used partitions in a few years - I just installed two versions of windows on the same one. It's kind of junky (IE doesn't launch on my second partition, but I can type URLs into thge explorer. Graphics card install keeps fighting with itself on boot up) but it works. I think next time I'm going to dedicate drives .

[Reminor]

As I promised here's the picture of the enclosure I use. Note another drive on top.


As you see I also don't use the top cover of the drive case, to let the heat dissipate easier.

You got the idea. Such Aluminum enclosure should be in under $30 range. Plastic ones (which are ok, but I personally don't recommend for heat realated issues) are about $10 a set. Up to you on that.

Theoretically you can get just one and keep switching drives themselves. Really easy, you can skip using screws (no real need for them), just connect power and data cables and drop the drive inside the enclosure. Up to you on that again.

[exit2studios]

Which motherboard option do you choose?

[exit2studios]

and what do you do to be able to order from Dell SB? I don't have a tax id number.

[Mr. Dipity]

As I promised here's the picture of the enclosure I use. Note another drive on top.

You got the idea. Such Aluminum enclosure should be in under $30 range. Plastic ones (which are ok, but I personally don't recommend for heat realated issues) are about $10 a set. Up to you on that.

I've got tons of these too - at work and at home. I have one duplicate for every drive of data I use - mp3 collections, music, samples etc.

We've have several failures of the drives at work, Most likely due to the fact that they are left on 24-7, and get carted around the place in the mobile computer racks I built. If you can find aluminum ones in your price range, I would suggest the upgrade. If you can find them in the $15 range, please let us know here.

Here is the next upgrade I am looking at for my studio, after I can swoop in on a couple or three of the dells (isn't fxteleport wonderful?):

4 bay firewire drive enclosure

I have all my pcs in another room, so swapping drives out is a major pain. That. and all my drive enclosures are non-hot swappable. With this 4 bay, and a $5 15 foot firewire cable (also from ebay, unless I can find cheaper), I can kill three birds with one stone - bring the removeable drives out of the closet, make them hot swappable (in a fashion), and also get the drives out of the computer case and the heat that goes with it.

A friend of mine turned me on to this - he's pretty happy with his. I've looked around, and this is the best price I could find.

[Reminor]

[quote="sserendipity]

We've have several failures of the drives at work, Most likely due to the fact that they are left on 24-7.

They are all designed to be on 24x7. In fact it is bad if you turn them on and off all the time (power spikes). Your drives most likely failed due to overheating.

I would suggest the upgrade. If you can find them in the $15 range, please let us know here..

Several days back I saw aluminum enclosure set (drive+rails) in Danvers, MA CompUsa for like $19 a set. Surprisidly cheap, as they are usually in $30 range. Check it out in your local store.

Here is the next upgrade I am looking at for my studio, after I can swoop in on a couple or three of the dells (isn't fxteleport wonderful?):

4 bay firewire drive enclosure

Don't forget that a firewire card you have to put into your 400sc will be a PCI card. Your sound card and that firewire card will share your PCI bandwidth. I am not sure if it is safe performance-wise. Well, try it..

So I still would recommend a SATA Raptor 73Gb permanently affixed inside of your 400sc as a main audio drive.

Hope you like your Dell.

[Mr. Dipity]

[quote="sserendipity]

We've have several failures of the drives at work, Most likely due to the fact that they are left on 24-7.

They are all designed to be on 24x7. In fact it is bad if you turn them on and off all the time (power spikes). Your drives most likely failed due to overheating.

Yes, that's what I meant - overheating due to being left on and in their removable cases for extended periods of time. That and being constantly swapped (and resultantly power cycled) between machines. Whatever, my company is loaded. I should have upgraded all the drives to aluminum hot swaps, if only I wasn't too busy tapeoping here, and looking for deals on Dell's site :>

Here is the next upgrade I am looking at for my studio, after I can swoop in on a couple or three of the dells (isn't fxteleport wonderful?):

4 bay firewire drive enclosure

Don't forget that a firewire card you have to put into your 400sc will be a PCI card. Your sound card and that firewire card will share your PCI bandwidth. I am not sure if it is safe performance-wise. Well, try it..

Good point. In any case I don't intend the firewire drives for active use - storage, backup, and maybe to house a DVD burner. They're probably not going to be hooked up to my main audio machine, if I can help it. I'm more concerned about the Gig-E card hogging pci bandwidth - I'm buying this additional machine to run VST plugins and instruments over ethernet.

Question: isn't the IDE and sATA on the pci bus as well? I thought everything ran off the pci bus.

So I still would recommend a SATA Raptor 73Gb permanently affixed inside of your 400sc as a main audio drive.

Hope you like your Dell.

Price alert - they've just increased instant discount to $75 - that's $325 after rebate for a 2.4 Gig/128 meg@400mhz/40 gig HD box - the minimum configuration. Considering that a second identical computer costs only $225 more than an upgrade to a 2.8, I just might go for that instead. Of course, that doesn't include - better memory, the SATA raptor, and the evil tax for CA residents such as myself.

[Reminor]

Question: isn't the IDE and sATA on the pci bus as well? I thought everything ran off the pci bus.

Here's a picture from official Intel page about 875P chipset:




i.e. whatever you put on your PCI bus will share theoretical maximum of 133Mb/sec. Dual SATA ports share 150Mb/sec. My old AGP-for-video post is clearly illustrated, too.


Cheers.

[Mr. Dipity]

i.e. whatever you put on your PCI bus will share theoretical maximum of 133Mb/sec. Dual SATA ports share 150Mb/sec. My old AGP-for-video post is clearly illustrated, too.


Cheers.

Shit Reminor, you're just a fountain of knowledge!

Something else to note from the picture - those old IDE drives aren't necessarily goners. Since you wouldn't be sharing the bandwidth with the sATA drive, your throughput would be added to it.

I just learnt something else from the fat wallet forum - dell will buy back your unwanted, unused hardware. You can call them up, and return that janky 40 gig drive, CD drive and the memory. I'm not exaclty sure what you'll get for that, but I was going to be throwing them all away anyway, and this pays for >some< of the memory and hard drive I'd have to buy.

I noticed that the gig-e lan that Dell specifies on this box isn't in the picture. I would assume that means that it's a part Dell adds on, and would be flowing over the pci bus. Does that make sense? Either that, or it's actually a 100 meg connection, though that would mean that I am mistaken, or their specs are wrong. Or perhaps the Intel picture is old, and the 400sc has a gig-E? My money is on one of the first two - particularly that second one, though a server with only 100 megabit throughput seems strange to me, these days.. Am I reading that right? The line LOM 1xgigabit is refering to the ethernet throughput is it not?

Also, people have been talking down the salespeople to $400 + tax before rebate. It pays to call in. I think I'm going to do so now.

[Reminor]

Shit Reminor, you're just a fountain of knowledge!

Thanks man. I'll treat that as a compliment

I just learnt something else from the fat wallet forum - dell will buy back your unwanted, unused hardware.

Darn! Looks like my biggest secret is out.
Yes, buyback works (not always though). I bought my machines for $120 (2.8GHz, October), $100 (2.4GHz, January) and $80 (2.8GHz, February) out-of-pocket. No wonder I have three now, right?

I noticed that the gig-e lan that Dell specifies on this box isn't in the picture.

I don't think Intel has a network chip in their 875P design. It is rather a"placeholder" in the picture. Wildcard. Manufacturers are free to use any chips to provide networking functionality. So if manufacturer uses a Gigabit capable chip it is all perfectly fine. I'd do more research on that.

Also, people have been talking down the salespeople to $400 + tax before rebate. It pays to call in. I think I'm going to do so now.

Good luck. Aim for the numbers above. Let me be a good example.

[Mr. Dipity]

Shit Reminor, you're just a fountain of knowledge!

Thanks man. I'll treat that as a compliment

I'm going to have to give you credit on the next album - Hardware financing by reminor :>

I just learnt something else from the fat wallet forum - dell will buy back your unwanted, unused hardware.

Darn! Looks like my biggest secret is out.
Yes, buyback works (not always though). I bought my machines for $120 (2.8GHz, October), $100 (2.4GHz, January) and $80 (2.8GHz, February) out-of-pocket. No wonder I have three now, right?

OMG. I definitely buying two now. What do you say to the salepeople when you request a buyback? Is there a way of phrasing it so they don't resist? I'd assume this wouldn't be something they were used to doing, or something their accountants would be encouraging them to do :>

Also, how much money did you get back from them? From the numbers above it almost sounds like buying boxes and selling them back in parts could be quite a profitable business :>

[exit2studios]

is there a way to purchase from dell small business without a tax id number?

and if not, what must one do to get one?

[Mr. Dipity]

is there a way to purchase from dell small business without a tax id number?

and if not, what must one do to get one?

Yes. I just did.

I'm not sure what you are refering to - does the online form require this info? I called in, and haggled them down another $50 on my order of two.

Your tax id is your social security number, in any case. Still, there is no reason to give this to them - you don't give it to the guy at Blockbuster when you rent a movie...

[exit2studios]

Since Dell Small Business is intended for just that, small businesses, I have heard stories of them cancelling orders because no tax ID number (not your ssn) was given. Maybe if done by phone this can be avoided, but it is my understanding that the online form asks for this. I could be wrong as I do not speak from first hand experience. Just trying to help by passing on some info that could be a potential hurdle. If it is not a problem...GRjEAT!