Kinda disheartened...

[Jon Sick]

I know a number of people who have been attempting to build pc's - many of them are experienced builders.

Me and 2 people in particular used to build for others, but that was back in the days of PIII, win 98, etc...

The amount of problems i've seen people having has really put me off... I haven't attempted building an Athlon or Pentium IV pc yet, but dunno if I want to...

I know there are big savings to be had and the best part is you can pick and choose your own hardware, but I'm just worried I'll go ahead and do it and I'll spend the next 6 months (like my brother) getting the dam thing to work!

My bro's is an athlon and he reformatted and reinstalled Win 2K and is having major problems with the password file in that it keeps corrupting!

That aint the half of it...

I just wanna know if anyone has had major major problems building their Athlon or Pentium IV? Not necessarily as a DAW, just as a PC for whatever purpose!

Take it easy
Jon Sick

[Rv-Sound]

Its allright. Just make sure to ask people what works and what not. Depending on what audio interface you're going to pick, ask its manufacturer what PC hardware is it compatible with. Get good quality components, a good PSU (these days you shouldn't grab anything less than 300W capable). Get quality ram and a good nice 2d agp card like matrox (that is, if you're not gaming on it as well, wich is prefered). Stop by quietpc.com for the PSU, as well as some fans and a nice quiet fan/heatsink for the CPU.
For mobo's, again ask what works and what doesn't. Find out what other people are using succesfully and try n replicate that.
You just have to be aware that u'll have to do a little research here and there before spending any money.

[+Erik.+]

yes, i too have been down that miserable road for my Athlon 1400. I have always built my own pcs since 1996 and never had i had so many problems until I started building machines to run for audio.

I found that you really have to get the right motherboard and usually everything falls into place.

Firstly, I bought a nice EPOX 8H7K+ (i think) with RAID on it and VIA chipset. It was a great board except everytime I recorded audio i would get crackling in the sound. I did the usual reformats and reinstalls, update the bios and drivers and nothing changed. I made the problem a little less by trying different VIA drivers but never eliminated it.

Then I took this back to teh shop and got an Eagletec board with Sis 735 chipset. I got XP on and everything was great, no crackles in the audio! So i thought i had found a board that was gonna work, except every 25 minutes or so XP would sponatenoulsy reboot. I reformated/reinstalled a hundred times over, new drivers, bios updates etc etc and still the damn thing rebooted. So anyway,i put win 98 back on and used that for 6 months which pissed me off because I had XP! Win 98 seemed to work fine, and it did.

I was so annoyed about having to run 98 that I started doing further tests. I ran a program called memcheck that installed itself to a floppy and booted using it's own format to check the memory outside the operating system. To my complete surprise and shock I had memory errors galore 5 minutes into the ram check.

I thought my ram was screwed but I had an idea to clock the ram from 266mhz down to 133mhz. Reran the test and not a single memory error! The computer was clocked at 1050mhz now, so i was losing performance. I tried XP again and not one single problem, it was stable, but the performance had decreased considerably.

Eventually, I took the risk and bought a new board, the MSI K7N420 with NFORCE chipset. I reran the memory test at full DDR speed and not a single problem. To this day I have not had a single issue with my PC and the speed,xp and memory are all fine. I am happy but it took over 6 months to figure it all out!!!

Athlon 1400
512MB (2x256 DDR 266)
MSI K7N420 NFORCE motherboard
Terratec 24/96
2x17" monitors
Geforce 2 MX AGP

ps. RV-Sound posted at the same time as me. He offers good advice!


[This message has been edited by +Erik.+ (edited 12-17-2002).]

[Jon Sick]

Hmmm... I'm easy with going for it, just looking at other guys having probs...

I did email tarratec and asked them about the mobo im thinking (Asus P4S-533 SiS 645DX DDR P4) and a 2gig P4 with 512mb DDR... but no reply... do they usually take a month to do so?

Jon Sick

[Jon Sick]

MMAAAHHH!! Thats the soundcard I wanna use! HA HA!!!

Cheers dude
Jon Sick

[+Erik.+]

i've emailed terratec and am still waiting for my email. about 8 months later.

i am pleased with the card though.

[This message has been edited by +Erik.+ (edited 12-17-2002).]

[Jon Sick]

Have you had many problems with the tarratec in general? Have you enjoyed it or is it a pain?

Jon Sick

[+Erik.+]

the drivers got really stable about 2 months after i bought the card (which is over 1 year ago). It offers low latency and great quality recording and using the midi with softsynths is perfect. For pure audio recording it's great.

The only problem I have found with it is in it's gsif support for Gigastudio. I have found that gigastudio only plays ball when only midi is being used by your main sequencer. If you try to play audio in the sequencer while you use gigastudio you get "driver in use errors". So it's near useless in a Cubase SX project. SO i decided not to go for Gigastudio and picked up HALion instead. Works like a dream as a VSTi.

If i were to be buying a 24/96 card today, I would be looking at the competition because i don't believe it's fully gigastudio compliant. It works but not the way it should.

However, overal i am very pleased.

[This message has been edited by +Erik.+ (edited 12-17-2002).]

[Jon Sick]

Im not sure if I'd use gigastudio - only ones Im really gonna be using is reason, cubase vst, soundforge, cool edit pro and later kontact.

Jon Sick

[+Erik.+]

well then i can thoroughly recommend it.

[bluehat]

>i've emailed terratec and am still waiting
>for my email. about 8 months later.

I am using a Terratec EWS88MT and have had the same issues. Their customer support is basically nonexistent (or at least drastically understaffed). Not even having an option for live phone support is inexcusable for several hundred dollar sound cards. Email is the only way they will reply - and they don't seem to ever respond to their automated email form on the terratec website. I was hoping that support would improve now that Fostex is running the show, but they still don't have phone support. The only way I've ever had replies is by sending email to mark@fostex.com.

I asked for specific recs on compatible hardware (Athlon vs Pentium, motherboards and chipsets, video cards, etc). He said that Terratec didn't have an official position on Athlon vs Pentium. No recs on sis, VIA, or nForce either.

I'm happy with the card, but it's ridiculous to have to go through email chains (or to never get a response from the automated website email) to get information about compatibility or troubleshooting that could be handled immediately with one phone call. That alone will probably keep me from buying anymore Terratec products. If you can't get it to work, the nicest card in the world is useless.

[Pretty Pretty Cyanide]

Get an Asus Motherboard non-via chipset. This step will do more better for you than choosing between P4,PIII or Athlon.

Even if you have the Best Pentium or Athlon, put it with a Via chipset and your chances of crackling or whatever is multiplied. I know there are fixes you can apply now, but they dont' work for everybody and why would you buy a car you know is guareenteed to be recalled.

I am neither Pro-Athlon or Intel. Both work great if configured correctly.
Just pro-Asus.

[LeoIX]

Originally posted by Jon Sick:
... the mobo im thinking (Asus P4S-533 SiS 645DX DDR P4) and a 2gig P4 with 512mb DDR...
Jon Sick

Jon, I had a lot of problems with my SiS645DX MB and 2.4GHz P4. I couldn't get it to work no matter what I did. Save yourself a lot of grief and get a board with an Intel chipset. I would recommend an Asus or Intel 845PE MB. The MBs with Intel chipsets cost more, but trust me, it's worth it to spend more the first time.