Thanks, I’m looking at the desktops right now. All the crazy components, acronyms, and numbers are overwhelming.
I laid one out for you earlier.
Concentrate on
RAM 32gb minimum.
Processor - i7 or i9 (intel) or AMD RYZEN 7 or 9
Graphics Cards - Nvidia GTX or AMD
This site ranks all the Processors
Mobile Processors - Benchmark List - NotebookCheck.net Tech?
Select Desktop only
And hit the restrict button
That will then list all the processors in order of current Benchmarking trends.
So you can easily see if your processor is in the top 10 or really bad.
Graphics Cards
Mobile Graphics Cards - Benchmark List - NotebookCheck.net Tech?
You can do the same here
Yes I was going to get minimum of 32 RAM. This is good to know, but when I went to several sites, and I try to build a custom one, there are layers and layers of pages with components and numbers and acronyms.
By the way, is there something like that for Audio card ranking?
But anyway, I may decide to go with a local PC builder business. Will be speaking with them.
For sound cards - you probably need to rely on maybe customer rating ranking on Amazon or something - i’m not an audiophile so i can’t say.
Would it matter for music vs movie editng? I don’t know the difference. I’m tone deaf.
For processors stick to the top 20
For graphics cards stick to the top 20
RAM 32gb or more
This is another good site
Processors
Graphics
If you are in about the top 20 it’s great
Obviously the closer to 1 the better it is overall.
You can also test if there are bottlenecks
Put in the components and it can make recommendations on what to change
or if there are no problems at all.
I can help you with it.
Just drop a few links of PCs you’re looking at and I can check them out.
Or someone will, hopefully.
Why do you need a special audio card? Do you need the features they’re meant to address? What’s the point?
Are you after stellar-quality sound output? if so, you’ll need some equally impressive speakers, as in several thousand more dollars, and possibly a good amplifier to run those speakers.
Will you be making professional audio recordings, as in extremely high-quality music recordings, and will the audio card somehow help facilitate that? From everything you’ve written, I’m really doubting that you need anything other than what comes with the computer, plus a good set of over-the-ear headphones.
Yes, I want to work not with the super high-end studio gear that costs like a car, but with the mid to top level. Yes, I will work with music, audio recording, and I want that music to be high end. I haven’t even chosen the site that will built my PC. I spent too much time yesterday on several of those builder sites that are ranked the highest for Best Websites for PC building… and it was overwhelming with complexities to go to each of those sites and try to build a PC… And those rainbow blinking light PCs are starting to get on my nerves too. If I am looking for pro audio PC, then obviously I wouldn’t want a bunch of fans to be blowing and making noise because it will intervene with the recording… Maybe I have to consult with the audio forums as well, and see what they have to say; but I definitely want only one PC for everything that I do. I will likely opt out of studio sound monitors and go for pro studio headphones. I have actually heard an interview of a musician who does the same thing… So, right now I will hold on for a little, and I may even go to check out a local PC building business here where I live.
Other people seem to be covering the computer specs well, but on the topic of fans and cooling again, if you’re going to be doing audio recording and video rendering on the same box, see if you can find an option with fan controls. There should be options for both external and internal controls, so you can turn the fans on high when you’re rendering and the box is getting hot, and turn them down when you need it to be quiet.
That being said, the local business might be the right route for you - they should know what you’re talking about and how to get you the best box for your needs. When in doubt, talk to a pro.
You must follow vrtechsol .com for a better solution. It was a quiet sideways suggestion that you consider an iMac but I anticipate a lot of advice from other posters about how a Windows machine will be better and cheaper (yet to be proven to my satisfaction.
I’ve proven it time and time again - the exact same parts for RAM/Processor/Graphics Card - comes in about half the price of a Mac.
It’s not the same OS. But you can easily buy a top end PC at the same price of a Mac that would blow it out of the water.
Right, it’s a lot less toy-like.
I hate both - I use both - I just get on with it.
I hate the argument that Mac is better or that Windows computers can’t be as good - it’s completely untrue.
25 years ago Windows computers were designed for Office workers - they didn’t need to be powerful.
But it’s long since caught up. And Mac I feel have actually gone backwards, they used to have the best computers but as the playing field leveled in terms of parts/technology - Windows and Apple are on par now.
Well, that is just your opinion, of course. To me, Windows seems just as toy-like — only a bit clunkier and built around software technology not as solid or flexible as BSD Unix that the Mac OS is built around.
There’s more to it. Windows was originally a rather incompetent effort built as a GUI layer sitting on top of MS-DOS, an OS with many inherent limitations and designed by and for a bunch of young computer geeks who didn’t have a full grasp of what they were doing or where it all would lead.
This goes way back to my first couple of years out of design school. I was on the team at Sperry-Univac that developed and sold one of the very first PC clones. At the time, Sperry was the second-largest computer company in the world, just behind IBM.
I was in the technical documentation group at Sperry and specifically assigned to Sperry’s PC R&D team. I worked closely with engineers who were brought up on mainframes and who were now trying to pick apart and reverse engineer the inner workings of DOS and the x86 chips running it.
I remember the engineers’ disgust with the project and their complaints about how poorly conceived DOS was. It was their opinion that regular people had no need for computers, let alone saddled with the deficiencies of a bad operating system cobbled together by a bunch of inexperienced kids at a never-heard-of company called Microsoft. Microsoft didn’t even invent DOS. It was a CP/M clone variation hurriedly purchased from a guy named Tim Patterson after Bill Gates astutely realized there was an opportunity to make a quick deal with IBM.
The only reason Sperry was even pursuing personal computing was that IBM was making a half-hearted effort at it. But even the IBM people had no real faith in DOS. It was just a quick-and-dirty solution to a pilot experiment they were running to see if there was a viable market in small, cheap, low-powered, standalone computers built for regular people.
Arguably DOS was one of the worst nascent personal computer operating systems IBM could have chosen, but because IBM decided to use it, it became the defacto standard. Big businesses trusted IBM, so if IBM was pushing DOS, it must be better than Apple IIs or TRS-80s or Commodores or whatever, even though it was really pretty awful.
MS-DOS launched Microsoft, but it was all thanks to IBM’s naive and short-sighted decision to use DOS as the quick-and-dirty operating system of its first half-hearted attempts at personal computing. It took 20 years for Microsoft to finally climb out of the DOS hole that it was built around.
So yes, Windows was designed for office workers, but not from the ground up for office workers. Instead, it was a rather incompetent attempt to throw a more user-friendly layer on top of MS-DOS, which was never built to adequately support such a thing.
If, in the beginning, IBM had been able to see into the future a bit better, and if they had spent their enormous resources to develop their own OS or even purchased a better OS from Apple or Commodore or whomever, literally a full 15 years wouldn’t have been wasted with people having to put up with the limitations of MS-DOS and the awful first iterations of Windows.
All this is near-ancient history, though, and today’s Windows is arguably on par with the Mac OS in many ways — depending on one’s preferences. However, today’s Windows is still built by a company with a culture that has its roots firmly planted in everything I just mentioned, and I’m not sure that will ever change — just like Sperry never adapted to personal computing and eventually withered away to finally merge with Burroughs to form Unisys — another has-been company.
I remember when Windows was released, I remember th DOS days, I used to computer program in q basic.
There’s always someone who favours a system over another. Beta max vs VHS comes to mind.
Sony’s Betamax was the better technology in several different ways. It’s just that Sony owned the patent and kept it to themselves, whereas VHS was licensed by JVC to anyone who wanted to use it.
As a result, there were hundreds of VHS choices and only one manufacturer of Betamax, with Betamax drowning in a sea of VHS players. In many ways, it’s similar to the early Apple vs. Microsoft rivalry — Apple having the better OS but keeping it to themselves, while Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to anyone wanting to use it.
The beta format remained a favorite of videographers long after it disappeared from consumer video equipment. At my second to last job, we had thousands of beta tapes from an old local television show that the company helped produce.
I still have my old Betamax in a closet in our garage. It sits beneath several VCRs that I subsequently bought and now have no need for. One of these days, I’ll decide to take them all to a recycling center.
I’d keep the Betamax one - it could be a rarity and antique for future generations.
I’m closing this topic. A thoughtful discussion regarding the pros and cons of different hardware and software is warranted. However, judging from the post I just removed, it’s also a magnet for refighting the senseless Mac vs. Windows wars from the early 2000s.
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