Your Pimp Computers

[Pandabear 414]

Show off your tweaked and modified computers.

These are my current specs

PC

Windows XP Home Edition

Inter Pentium 4 Processor 3.00 GHZ

504 MB of Ram

180 GB Harddrive

Accessories

Basic Keyboard

Logitech USB laser mouse

BOSE computer speakers

Sony SDM-HS73 17'' LCD screen with 1280 x 1024 display

Yeah I know it’s not impressive but that’s because I have yet to upgrade my machine. I will be building a home studio but first I really need to make some modifications to my PC in order for it to handle the demands of being an audio processor. Plus I’m down to my last 30 gigabytes of memory and one of my drives has been broken for the last 4 months. I will be probably be getting a terabyte or at last 500 Gb of extra hard drive memory since all the music software I’ll be installing, in addition to all the loops and music samples will easily take up a couple of gigs and I need to take into account all the space the raw format of songs being recorded will take up. Will probably upgrade my RAM to at least 1 gig or maybe even 2. I also need a good pair of fans that are efficient at cooling and are quiet. The ones I currently have are stock fans and are really noisy. Will probably install a basic drive to replace my broken one and might get an Audiophile soundcard or PCI to hook to my monitors. Not sure which yet.

Actually if anyone knows some good products of the items I just mentioned, recommendations would be welcomed.

[Ito 2438]

PC Specs:

Antec 900 Case

EVGA P55 mobo

Intel 2.8GHz Core i5 cpu

Nvidia EVGA GTX 460 gfx card

PNY 2gb DDR3 1600 RAM x 2

Corsair 2gb DDR3 1600 RAM x2

OCZ 600 watt PSU

1tb Western Digital Caviar Black Drive (main drive)

1tb Seagate Drive

500gb Seagate Drive

tl;dr - 2.8ghz Quad core processor, 8gb RAM, 2.5tb storage, good video card.

Accessories:

HP w2408h 24" 1920x1200 screen

iMo AT-7 7" secondary screen

Blu-tooth dongle

Logitech G15 keyboard

Logitech MX Revolution mouse

Wacom Intous4 Wireless tablet

Seagate 500gb external HDD's x2

The sound system is a whole other deal, I won't bother getting in to that xD. I love my system, though I really want to get a new cpu heatsink (still have the stock one) and a better gfx care would always been appreciated. I am also thinking of replacing the fans in my system, I seriously hate how noisy it is.

I fucking love logitech products too. I have bought Razer stuff, but I just think logitech blows them out of the water. I originally bought a Razer keyboard instead of the G15, but ended up returning it and spent $20 more on the logitech...freaking worth every penny, such a better keyboard. And the Logitech MX Revolution is the best mouse I have ever used. It is so comfortable, smooth, precise, and has all the controls on it that make me happy. If this one ever breaks, I will be going on ebay right away and picking up another one.

[Ito 2438]

Show off your tweaked and modified computers.

These are my current specs

PC

Windows XP Home Edition

Inter Pentium 4 Processor 3.00 GHZ

504 MB of Ram

180 GB Harddrive

Accessories

Basic Keyboard

Logitech USB laser mouse

BOSE computer speakers

Sony SDM-HS73 17'' LCD screen with 1280 x 1024 display

Yeah I know it’s not impressive but that’s because I have yet to upgrade my machine. I will be building a home studio but first I really need to make some modifications to my PC in order for it to handle the demands of being an audio processor. Plus I’m down to my last 30 gigabytes of memory and one of my drives has been broken for the last 4 months. I will be probably be getting a terabyte or at last 500 Gb of extra hard drive memory since all the music software I’ll be installing, in addition to all the loops and music samples will easily take up a couple of gigs and I need to take into account all the space the raw format of songs being recorded will take up. Will probably upgrade my RAM to at least 1 gig or maybe even 2. I also need a good pair of fans that are efficient at cooling and are quiet. The ones I currently have are stock fans and are really noisy. Will probably install a basic drive to replace my broken one and might get an Audiophile soundcard or PCI to hook to my monitors. Not sure which yet.

Actually if anyone knows some good products of the items I just mentioned, recommendations would be welcomed.

I am not going to say that I know a ton about building a studio, but I can give you some advice. Recording sessions take a SHIT TON of space. Seriously. If you are going to be seriously about this, expect to pick up several TB's. I have talked to my cousin and he says that is band's average studio data per session is about 80gb.

Upgrade your ram. Ram is dirt cheap, especially since your machine is older. Keep in mind, though, that on a 32bit OS the system can only read up to 3.2gb. I would check your mobo and then by 4 1gb sticks...Your system will prolly take DRR2 ram (CHECK), but seriously...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820146580

If you are going to be anal about this, buy some new fans and get some rubber mounting screws, you are going to want to reduce vibration as much as possible. Also, look into getting your system shielded to reduce noise.

Next thought, you are going to want to get a nice audio card. Really spend some time researching this, as this is important. You are going to need to decide how you are going to record shit. How is it getting to the computer? USB compressor mic? Or are you getting a small sound board? I would do this before deciding on an audio card.

Also, please tell me you are not using the Bose for monitoring. I will argue that Bose are crap speakers, but it is personal preference if you like them. However, what is not up for debate is these speakers are crap for monitoring. The response curve for Bose aren't even close to flat. If anything, sell them and buy a pair of M-Audio speakers.

[D.L.S 11]

My computers are crap and not modified, but I'll share here anyway ...

First:

Windows XP Home Edition

amd sempron 2 ghz

512mb ram

160gb hard drive

Second:

Windows 7 Home Premium

amd athlon II x4 website says quad-core (not sure on frequency but around 3ghz)

6gb of ram

1tb hard drive

w/ 18 inch 1920x1080display

[Pandabear 414]

I am not going to say that I know a ton about building a studio, but I can give you some advice. Recording sessions take a SHIT TON of space. Seriously. If you are going to be seriously about this, expect to pick up several TB's. I have talked to my cousin and he says that is band's average studio data per session is about 80gb.

Upgrade your ram. Ram is dirt cheap, especially since your machine is older. Keep in mind, though, that on a 32bit OS the system can only read up to 3.2gb. I would check your mobo and then by 4 1gb sticks...Your system will prolly take DRR2 ram (CHECK), but seriously...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820146580

If you are going to be anal about this, buy some new fans and get some rubber mounting screws, you are going to want to reduce vibration as much as possible. Also, look into getting your system shielded to reduce noise.

Next thought, you are going to want to get a nice audio card. Really spend some time researching this, as this is important. You are going to need to decide how you are going to record shit. How is it getting to the computer? USB compressor mic? Or are you getting a small sound board? I would do this before deciding on an audio card.

Also, please tell me you are not using the Bose for monitoring. I will argue that Bose are crap speakers, but it is personal preference if you like them. However, what is not up for debate is these speakers are crap for monitoring. The response curve for Bose aren't even close to flat. If anything, sell them and buy a pair of M-Audio speakers.

Yeah I'm not sparing any expense in building my DAW. I want to get as close to having a pro studio quality sound. And I'm one of those people that doesn't like to go and do something half-assed.

I probably will end getting several terabytes for recordings, but I had no idea RAM was so cheap. For some reason I had the idea that it was expensive. I'll definitely be getting at least 4gigs of the stuff once I know which ones are compatible with my mobo. And I like to have options and the window to experiment with recordings so I'll probably be getting a soundcard that best fits my need and an audio interface both of which will be at the front end of my pro mixer. Chances are I'll probably have the mixer at the back end as well and connected to sliders for some old school mixing.

Hadn't given thought about getting my system shielded but I'll be looking into that. And there's no way I'm using my current Bose speakers for monitoring. I haven't bought my monitor speakers yet but I was looking into a M-Audio speakers among others.

Also you have a pretty kick ass system. It's a reminder how much mines has to go.

[TheBistroButcher666 228]

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Intel 3.40GHz Core i7 cpu

(Four cores, each with a virtual core totaling to eight)

12 gigabytes of ram

AMD Radeon HD 6870 video card

Terabyte hardrive

Am I forgetting anything else?

I don't have any LEDs or anything gaudy like that so it's not really worth it to post a picture of my tower but the fans have built in LEDs that I didn't know they came with. A friend built a PC right around when I had mine built and got as many LEDs as he could, the damn thing lights up his living room. I used a service that physically built it for me because honestly, when all the parts arrived they'd probably end up sitting in their boxes for a few months before I finally sat down and put that shit together.

I built this PC earlier in the year specifically for FUCKING SKYRIM BITCHES.

Accessories are pretty basic.

Keyboard is a basic English / Cyrillic keyboard for when I studied Russian.

Some Microsoft brand laser mouse I bought from the employee store.

24-inch Benq monitor (1920 x 1200)

19-inch wide Hanns-g monitor (1440 x 900)

And finally I have a pretty ghetto sound system, $40 speakers from Fry's and their stands are broken because my fat cat use to walk behind my desk and pull them off all the time until one finally broke. However my noise canceling Sennheiser headphones are pretty good that I often switch over to. My hearing is already a little damaged so it's kind of pointless for me to put a lot of money into expensive sound equipment.

We also have another three laptops and four desktop PCs, my boyfriend's main PC has the same specs as mine (TWINESE) except for a few minor differences. I think he bought more ram recently totaling his to eighteen or some ridiculous number. I don't know the specs off the top of my head for the other PCs but they can hold their own with most modern video games, laptops not so much though.

LAN PARTY UP IN THIS BITCH!

[Ito 2438]

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Intel 3.40GHz Core i7 cpu

(Four cores, each with a virtual core totaling to eight)

12 gigabytes of ram

AMD Radeon HD 6870 video card

Terabyte hardrive

Am I forgetting anything else?

I don't have any LEDs or anything gaudy like that so it's not really worth it to post a picture of my tower but the fans have built in LEDs that I didn't know they came with. A friend built a PC right around when I had mine built and got as many LEDs as he could, the damn thing lights up his living room. I used a service that physically built it for me because honestly, when all the parts arrived they'd probably end up sitting in their boxes for a few months before I finally sat down and put that shit together.

I built this PC earlier in the year specifically for FUCKING SKYRIM BITCHES.

Accessories are pretty basic.

Keyboard is a basic English / Cyrillic keyboard for when I studied Russian.

Some Microsoft brand laser mouse I bought from the employee store.

24-inch Benq monitor (1920 x 1200)

19-inch wide Hanns-g monitor (1440 x 900)

And finally I have a pretty ghetto sound system, $40 speakers from Fry's and their stands are broken because my fat cat use to walk behind my desk and pull them off all the time until one finally broke. However my noise canceling Sennheiser headphones are pretty good that I often switch over to. My hearing is already a little damaged so it's kind of pointless for me to put a lot of money into expensive sound equipment.

We also have another three laptops and four desktop PCs, my boyfriend's main PC has the same specs as mine (TWINESE) except for a few minor differences. I think he bought more ram recently totaling his to eighteen or some ridiculous number. I don't know the specs off the top of my head for the other PCs but they can hold their own with most modern video games, laptops not so much though.

LAN PARTY UP IN THIS BITCH!

Just so we're clear, I hate you.

lol

I just had a mini LAN with 2 friends last weekend, we were up till 4, way too much fun

Battlefield 3

[TheBistroButcher666 228]

For PAX 2010 our Canadian friends drove down and we drank and played games until we blacked out. Greatest weekend of my life.

[Ito 2438]

And that kinda shit is the reason I will always love computers as a gaming system. Don't get me wrong, I love my PS3, but there is nothing like getting a group of good friends together with their computers, trading files, talking, and killing each other. Next one for me is either gunna be in December or thanksgiving break, can't wait

[Ito 2438]

DOUUUUUUUUUUUBLE POST!

I finally bit the bullet and added a SSD and a new CPU cooler to my computer

The cooler in its box

Had to take the mobo out, so I figured I would take everything out and rewire and try and make it cleaner (and dust!), which I think I accomplished. The cpu now runs at about 24C average versus the 40-ish of the stock cooler.