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So yesterday, I discovered that I had found whole new ways of using Cubase to beat my studio computer into submission. This was not what I had in mind.
The studio computer is a 10 year old Windows machine with a fairly fast (but 10 year old) Core i5 quad core chip. It has 8 GB of RAM and mirrored 2 TB hard drives, plus a DVD drive for burning test CDs.
Replacing it turns out to be an expensive problem.
See, when I get around to replacing this box, I really need some Thunderbolt support for my (still broken! I will try sending it off once the Christmas packages are all delivered...) Apollo unit. Thunderbolt support on Windows turns out to still be a bit hard to find, although getting much more common than it was even a year ago. But it massively limits your choices.
When I start trying to build a machine with Thunderbolt support and a zippy processor, I quickly find myself heading off into the $1700 - $1800 range. That's a lot of money to spend to replace a machine that is mostly working.
As it happens, MicroCenter has one of their gaming desktops on sale for $1199. The motherboard has a Thunderbolt header, so I could pop the correct (mostly unavailable, but $75-110) expansion card in there and get Thunderbolt support. Of course, I would also want to mirror a couple of hard drives for storage, and then you're spending nearly another $300 for that, and the machine doesn't even have a place to put an internal DVD drive, so I'd need an external drive to burn CDs...
This turns out not to be a whole lot less money than configuring my own machine that would be exactly the way I wanted it (with probably a few extra bells and whistles and fewer shiny LEDs). Well, it *seemed* like a good idea.
Tonight, I headed down to the studio and checked on the motherboard. It turns out that this motherboard will hold up to 32 GB of RAM. 16 GB might be sufficient, but I don't feel like doing surgery on this beast twice, so 32 GB of RAM has been ordered.
I also ordered a 1 TB Western Digital SSD to supplement the spinning mirrored hard drives. It turns out that I have less stuff stored on the spinning drives (2 TB) than will fit on the SSD, so I will figure out how to clone the current contents over there and make it the new boot drive with all of the software stored on it.
And then we'll see how the ten year old computer wants to work.
Well, I hope.
Total cost: $275, which is a darned sight less than $1800.
This is all scheduled to arrive late next week, which means that I can do all of the computer surgery while I'm on vacation. :)
I'll let you know how it goes.
The studio computer is a 10 year old Windows machine with a fairly fast (but 10 year old) Core i5 quad core chip. It has 8 GB of RAM and mirrored 2 TB hard drives, plus a DVD drive for burning test CDs.
Replacing it turns out to be an expensive problem.
See, when I get around to replacing this box, I really need some Thunderbolt support for my (still broken! I will try sending it off once the Christmas packages are all delivered...) Apollo unit. Thunderbolt support on Windows turns out to still be a bit hard to find, although getting much more common than it was even a year ago. But it massively limits your choices.
When I start trying to build a machine with Thunderbolt support and a zippy processor, I quickly find myself heading off into the $1700 - $1800 range. That's a lot of money to spend to replace a machine that is mostly working.
As it happens, MicroCenter has one of their gaming desktops on sale for $1199. The motherboard has a Thunderbolt header, so I could pop the correct (mostly unavailable, but $75-110) expansion card in there and get Thunderbolt support. Of course, I would also want to mirror a couple of hard drives for storage, and then you're spending nearly another $300 for that, and the machine doesn't even have a place to put an internal DVD drive, so I'd need an external drive to burn CDs...
This turns out not to be a whole lot less money than configuring my own machine that would be exactly the way I wanted it (with probably a few extra bells and whistles and fewer shiny LEDs). Well, it *seemed* like a good idea.
Tonight, I headed down to the studio and checked on the motherboard. It turns out that this motherboard will hold up to 32 GB of RAM. 16 GB might be sufficient, but I don't feel like doing surgery on this beast twice, so 32 GB of RAM has been ordered.
I also ordered a 1 TB Western Digital SSD to supplement the spinning mirrored hard drives. It turns out that I have less stuff stored on the spinning drives (2 TB) than will fit on the SSD, so I will figure out how to clone the current contents over there and make it the new boot drive with all of the software stored on it.
And then we'll see how the ten year old computer wants to work.
Well, I hope.
Total cost: $275, which is a darned sight less than $1800.
This is all scheduled to arrive late next week, which means that I can do all of the computer surgery while I'm on vacation. :)
I'll let you know how it goes.