New Build

[Dan Fulton]

Looking at setting up a system for a 4 piece band.

2 guitars
bass
Drums

right now have the demo running on a dell dimesion 8300
2 gigs of ram otherwise it is stock with the hardware that came with the system

right now to play with i have a older STA ADC DAC 2000 and a berhinger ada8000 on order for a test rig

Looking at setting up a main rack mounted right and had a few question

I understand that you need atleast a 3.0 single channel cpu

was looking at a
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor BX80570E8500 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115036)
to run the system

was looking at a ZOTAC G31MAT-B-E LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500033)

the question i have is on the memory speed is only ddr2 800. Is that gonna be a problem?

we are planning on a 16 channel system when it is setup
with 2 ada2000's

using about 12 channels in
4 in ear moniters
2 channels main out to the house
and possible reverb on some channels and use of eq compression and gating on most channels

so am Looking a decent board or is should i find one that uses ddr 3

thanks for the info

Dan

[Wink0r]

You should be fine. I run an 8500 with 32 ch and several monitor mixes, usually 4 - 6, and seldom go over 40%. Generally around 16 ch and 4 mixes will be 16-18%. I do have slightly faster memory, but it is still ddr2 as I recall.

[gdougherty]

For your small bar band rig, the e8500 will be huge overkill. You could easily get away with a slower less expensive processor if you wanted. I'd put my money toward a better motherboard and faster memory.

[Yogi]

The E6700 is less than half the price of the E8500, and will run just as fast. I've got an E8500 and the E6700 and benchmarked them running SAC and the processor load was exactly the same. Get a good board for overclocking and you can easily get 4.0 GHZ out of that chip with minimal extra cooling and it will purr right along. For the small system you describe you'll never see processor load go above 20%. I'm running 56 channels with a load of 42% with a TON of VSTs on inputs and outputs and 8 monitor mixes.

[gdougherty]

The E6700 is less than half the price of the E8500, and will run just as fast. I've got an E8500 and the E6700 and benchmarked them running SAC and the processor load was exactly the same. Get a good board for overclocking and you can easily get 4.0 GHZ out of that chip with minimal extra cooling and it will purr right along. For the small system you describe you'll never see processor load go above 20***37;. I'm running 56 channels with a load of 42% with a TON of VSTs on inputs and outputs and 8 monitor mixes.

Are you talking about an overclocked E6700 vs a stock e8500 running at the same load?

Ah, just figured out you're probably talking about the Pentium E6700 instead of the older Core2Duo E6700. 2.16GHz vs 3.2Ghz. Why oh why did Intel have to give two chips the same short moniker?

Interesting to note then. SAC is likely not Cache intensive or the 3x increase in cache difference is offset by the slight increase in clock speed for the E6700. FSB then at 1066 is also apparently fast enough to shuttle all the data SAC needs to process. This is actually great info to know and shaves a decent little chunk off a good SAC system.

I just found a new favorite processor for a SAC rig :)

[Yogi]

Nope, running SAC, both processor set up EXACTLY the same. If you go to the CPU thread and go to the chart you'll see that the E6700 is only 2***37; slower than an E8500.

Here's the thread
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

The primary difference between the two processors is the 2MB cache for the 6700 and the 6 MB cache for the E8500 which is by and large moot for a SAC system.

[Yogi]

George, I'd spoken about this chip over 4 months ago. 100 bucks is 100 bucks, and for 2% increase in processing power double the price just isn't worth it.

[gdougherty]

George, I'd spoken about this chip over 4 months ago. 100 bucks is 100 bucks, and for 2% increase in processing power double the price just isn't worth it.

Very much agreed. Doesn't save too much on an overall system, about $100 over an i5 based system I recently spec'd with same everything except CPU, mobo and memory (DDR3 vs DDR2). But it does make a high performance SAC rig $100 cheaper.

[Dan Fulton]

so this is the animal i should get

Intel Pentium E6700 Wolfdale 3.2GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor BX80571E6700 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116370&cm_re=E6700-_-19-116-370-_-Product)

with this board
ASUS P5G41T-M LE LGA 775 Intel G41 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131622)?

[Yogi]

Personally I'd go with this one and not have to worry about adding a graphics card.
ASUS P5G43T-M Pro LGA 775 Intel G43 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131602)

A great slim case is this one.

N WIN BL641.300TBL Black Steel MicroATX Slim Case Computer Case 300W Power Supply (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811108106)

[Dan Fulton]

don't have to worry about video with the one i selected on thing different is that one i picked out is it doesn't have hdmi just dvi and vga