Building a New PC for Music - Part 6: Finalising System

After a few weeks rest I found the time to finalise the installation. Got all necessary 64-bit drivers from the ASUS website, for the motherboard and the XONAR sound card. There was also a driver for the RAID array: this driver allowed me to reset the RAID array error message. However, one in a while this error still occurred out of the blue. I have a suspicion that it is linked to the online networking... it appeared once when I started Windows Internet Explorer, and a subsequent scan revealed that there were file errors in one of the IE tmp directories. Consequently I disabled the WIFI and ran the PC in stand-alone mode - have yet to see this error occuring again.

Building a New PC for Music - Part 2: Assembly

At home the big unpacking started. The case makes a nice impression, although it is quite budget-priced: £ 30. Had to get a power supply separately, as no one is included. I was told that a steel case is quieter than aluminum, but that aluminum conducts heat better. Since my emphasis was not on overclocking-gaming but on music, I was fine to go with a steel case. The case has two thick screws in the back for removing the side wall, so this can be done by hand without the need of a screw driver.

1. Affix the power supply into the case. 4 screws were provided with the power supply, no problem attaching it in the upper rear corner. I am surprised to see so many power leads coming from the power supply. 6 years ago there basically was just the connector for the main board and the usual 12/5V connectors for the disk drives, but now there are a lot of connectors which are yet unknown to me. I guess I will find out what they are for.
   
   
2. Unpack motherboard and processor.
   
   
   Mount processor in slot. Affix gigantic cooling fan on top of it. Is simply done by clicking the 4 corner connectors in the 4 holes around the processor. The cable from the fan to the connector on the mainboard is quite short, but just fits exactly. The thick fan provides a convenient handle to lift the whole board.
   
   
   
3. Identify the 8 locations where the motherboard needs to be screwed into the case. Put those 8 brass socket screws in place into the case.
   
   
   Affix cover plate for external connectors in the back. It just clicks into the cut-out, no further affixment necessary.
   
   
   Then I mount the motherboard onto these 8 base socket screws into the case.
   
   
   
4. Connect power supply to mainboard: 24-pin, and 8-pin EATX12V (no idea what the latter one is for; the old boards 6 years ago did not need that).
5. Connect the rear fan to mainboard CHA_FAN1; this meant I had to remove the standard power cable that was plugged into the fan cable, and connect the fan cable directly to the motherboard.
6. Plug the graphics card into the first PCIe slot. I then realised that the huge cooling metal of that graphics card blocks the adjacent small PCIe slot, which I had reserved for the audio card... so I move the video card into the PCIe2 slot. The manual states that for performance reason one should put the video card into the first slot... maybe I should get a card with a smaller cooling metal.
   
   
   
7. Install the memory. I ensure that each of the two triplets in which the memory was sold is installed in the same colored slot, although I think it does not really matter.
8. Now I want to see if the system works in principle. Connecting the power and the display: the fans begin to rotate. First nothing, then I realise that I need to press the illuminated "start" button on the board. Text on the monitor appears. No keyboard connected, no boot device, so is waiting for input. Pressing "reset" on the board results in the screen getting black, but no continuation; also pressing "start" again does not help, I need to switch off and on at the power supply switch. Screen comes on after about 10 seconds. Text stays there very short only, I can read that the setup can be reached by pressing the "DEL" key. This is what I will do when I start up the system next time.
9. Connect front USB of case with USB78. Connect front panel audio (audio HD) with AAFP on board. Put the cable connectors from the case (power, LED, reset, etc.) into the one loose white labeled connector, which then can be plugged onto the board. Only the connector labeled "AC’97" is not plugged in anywhere.
10. Install 2 SATA HDs. For being able to connect both sides mechanically, the 2nd wall of the case needs to be removed, giving access to the screw-less attachment mechanism. Connect power from case and SATA cables from mainboard (use SATA1 and SATA2).
11. Remove front panel of case. Is just clicked into the case. Remove upper front grill of uppermost 5.25 slot from front panel. Install DVD drive in uppermost slot. Connect power from case and IDE cable from mainboard. Instead of using the screwless attachment mechanism, I use the screws, to be able to adjust how much the drive protrudes, in order to show a matched front face.
    
    
    
12. Now the first "real" Power up: in BIOS only SATA2 appears to be installed. Is a problem with cable connector; I swap the connectors, seems to work now, both SATA drives are recognised. I am not sure when to set the HDs to RAID: now or after the OS install. I try to set it now, because I figure that this should be done before Windows is installed; otherwise, all installed files would need to have to be moved or rearranged, and I want to avoid that. A message on the screen appears after reboot, that disks are not RAID drives. Neither disk is yet formatted. After bootup, press Ctrl-I to setup RAID volume, and the Intel Matrix Storage Manager shows up. I choose RAID-0 (stripe), because I want the fast disk access. Create a RAID volume with these two disks. Seems to work ok.
13. The final piece of hardware to be installed is the LCD display. Would have been better to install it earlier, when the back panel for the connections was not yet installed; now the whole interior is quite cramped, and it is very difficult to put the connector into the plug on the motherboard, between the wall and the 8pin power connector. But it eventually works, and now the LCD shows text messages during boot-up, and afterwards it shows the time. The complete hardware installation is done after 3 1/2 hours.

Building a New PC for Music - Part 1: Purchase

The last time I "built" a PC was sometime 2002/2003, I do not remember exactly when that was, because at that time I experimented a lot and had started a couple of PC projects which were never really completed and finished, with cables hanging from the case, open side for constantly changing configurations. I think the last really completed PC project was when I put that Shuttle PC together (the computer "MAESTRO"), which since then served as my main music computer for sequencing, sampling, and recording. It had fine components in it: a Delta Audiophile 2496 sound card for recording from the external synth, the Gigastrings and the Garritan Personal Orchestra sample libraries, all controlled by good old Sonar 4 Producer. A nice workhorse with the very stable Windows 2000, which did its job very well for many years. But recently a few problems emerged: the audio recordings became choppy, and despite me trying all kinds of settings regarding buffer size, I could not remove this problem. It especially occurred when many instruments in parallel would be played; so I had to resort to recording them individually one by one. Eventually also this did not help, and I considered replacing the computer with a new system. One very strange problem had also occurred: when I had tried to install an upgrade of the Personal Orchestra Samples and the Kontakt Player, nothing happened – the old files just were not overwritten at all, and I could not find anywhere the location of the new files. Something very mysterious – I tried several times, the progress indicator showing a proper install, but then there was nothing... well, this would seem to confirm the concerns which some people in the music community have against using Windows for any music production activity...

When browsing options for the replacement, I considered buying one off-the-shelf system that appeared to be reasonable. But then I encountered that the bre-built systems did not satisfy my requirement for fast (and lots) of memory and fast disk drives. I considered building one at Dell. I remembered that a few years ago the options for all the components seemed endless. Now, however, there many more pre-configurations, and one has less choice in creating an individual custom configuration. In some cases there was no option to choose custom components at all. I found the XPS Studio line quite appealing, but then the resulting system still was somewhat sub-optimal: no full use of the 12GB tri-channel memory, only Vista was offered, not Windows 7 (although on some other pages there was a note that one could upgrade to Windows 7, but I wanted Windows 7 right from the start, without the uncertainty and possible instability of the upgrade). There was the other line of Alienware, suited to the extreme gamer. Great components, but my dream machine ended up to cost over 4000 pounds – definitely too much for me now.

So I explored CCL, a computer online shop nearby in Bradford, which also has a store outlet. They do have good prices, and there is the option of either ordering everything online, or just going there and buying things right there. Even in case of an online purchase, I could just go and pick it up, without charge for the shipping.

I looked at their online offerings, selected the components without ordering, and drove out there to buy them. The store is a bit strange: very little displays, more like a warehouse counter. One gets into queue to talk to a service person and orders the parts which one needs. There are PCs setup for browsing their web site (and others) and for selecting what one needs. I hesitated for a while – should I really plunge into this and buy a new PC, built from parts? Maybe I should wait a little until things became cheaper? Until the end of the depression? But then I decided that this is an investment, I really needed this new PC for making music again, and so I went ahead and lined up in the queue. The sales person was quite knowledgeable, could give advice on different items. With regard to some items I was determined to get something near the high end (processor, motherboard, memory, HD, audio), for other items it did not matter (graphics, keyboard, case), so I got whatever was cheapest. When the order was done, I still had to wait about 15 minutes until everything was brought from storage. I realised that I had forgotten to add a DVD drive – quite essential for installing OS and other software. But at the point of order receipt it was not possible to order again – I would have again to go into the queue, and I was too lazy for that. So on my way home I stopped at PC World and got a reasonably priced internal DVD drive.

These are the items I got:

• CoolerMaster Elite 330/331 case
• SilverPower SP-55500 500W power supply
• CPU: Intel i7-920 processor
• Motherboard: ASUS Rampage II Gene
• Graphics card: PEAK ATI Radeon HD4350, 512 MB
• Memory: 2 x 6 GB (3x2GB) DDR3, Corsair XMS3
• Hard disc: 2 x HD Seagate Barracuda, 7200 rpm, 250GB
• DVD/CD drive: LG 22x DVD+-RW
• WiFi: Edimax wireless nLite USB WIFI adaptor
• Soundcard: ASUS Sonar Excellence STX Asio