Help spec me a compact and quiet pc for use with Cubase

Salsa · 24 Jul 2013 at 13:00

My brother has asked me to build him a small desktop machine to replace his ageing and frankly monolithic Mesh machine.

He uses his machine for light surfing/word processing as well as watching the occasional movie. In addition he has recently been getting back into his music and wants to be able to use the machine with hic Cubase software package.

His current machine is running windows vista with an old Audigy card and the results in Cubase are just awful.

My plan was to do a prodigy build based on an i3 or FM2 platform but I have no idea on soundcards. Am I better off with a dedicated card or is onboard audio pretty good these days?

Does anyone have any suggestions for a build?

Thanks in advance

/Salsa

snips86x · 24 Jul 2013 at 13:30

I would recommend a sound card for what he is doing.

What is the budget?
Does he need OS/Mouse/KB/Monitor?
Does he have anything he can re-use?

Salsa · 24 Jul 2013 at 13:43

Just looking for the base unit as I have an OS and he will re-use his current peripherals.

With regards to budget probably around the £500 mark which I think should be doable?

/Salsa

Rhyswh · 24 Jul 2013 at 13:50

Can I ask what kind of things does he do on Cubase? Does he record a lot of audio? If he has a few audio tracks in one project he will need a decent CPU. If it's all synths and midi and electronic sounds then the i3 should be fine.

Salsa · 24 Jul 2013 at 14:10

My understanding is he mainly does composition using inputs from his midi kb using synths, midi etc as well as some recording from his electric guitar. No idea how many audio tracks concurrently unfortunately.

/Salsa

Rhyswh · 24 Jul 2013 at 14:18

If he does a lot of guitar recording (especially multi-tracking) then I definitely suggest a better processor. It takes a fair bit of power to deal with 8 - 10 audio tracks in a 3 minute project and I don't think the i3 has it to be honest.

Salsa · 24 Jul 2013 at 19:57

Thinking an Intel quad will push the price up quite a bit? Going for an AMD quad would be similar performance to an Intel i3?

He doesn't do a whole lot of recording so I think an i3 would be ok, at least for now.

More looking for advice on a decent sound card for use with Cubase that doesn't cost £200+. Xonar or Creative?

/Salsa

Rhyswh · 26 Jul 2013 at 09:32

If it's mainly midi and synths then the i3 should cope just fine but you might find a quad core AMD might perform better in these circumstances. Can I ask what does he use to record his guitar? If he has a decent interface he could use that as a sound card.

Cuchulain · 26 Jul 2013 at 09:36

The i3 should cope fine, I use Sonar on my laptop and record loads of multitrack stuff including guitar via Guitar Rig. But as above, you will need at least a reasonable sound interface, I use a cheap and cheerful Alesis io4 but it does the job perfectly.

Rhyswh · 26 Jul 2013 at 09:47

Cuchulain said:
The i3 should cope fine, I use Sonar on my laptop and record loads of multitrack stuff including guitar via Guitar Rig. But as above, you will need at least a reasonable sound interface, I use a cheap and cheerful Alesis io4 but it does the job perfectly.

Out of interest is that multitracks of audio?? If so, the i3 is better than I thought.