Planning to buy a new pc in the next few weeks ive got about £500 to spend anybody point me in the right direction of which pc to purchase and before anybody says buy a mac i’d love to but simply can’t afford one.this is what i’l be running on it
ableton 8
audio kontrol1
sylenth
massive
and im also planning to buy sonic maximiser and a good reverb in the very near future.cheers
You don’t specify whether it should be a laptop or desktop machine, but if it’s a laptop, I would look at HP. You won’t get a high-end cpu for that price, but for what you plan on using it for, an Intel i3 processor should do the job just fine.
First Tip - build your own - its really easy as I have been doing it for years, at 500 quid you could get a very decent machine
Processor i7 or AMD equilvent
RAM - as much as you can afford - I went for 8gig
Motherboard - don’t go for the cheapest
PC’s are great - You’ll love whatever you get Mate 
Lots of ram, lots of HD space (more than one - at least 3 including System HD - you can get the extra HD’s down the road… but make sure you have at least 2 - so that you can use one for samples / tracks.) and the fastest fkkn processor that you can afford.
Balance the high numbers off against what you can afford. Thats the right one for you 
Some of the Lads here have built PC’s themselves, so they can probably tell ya about doing it all yourself.
Make sure that whatever you get, you have the OS disks with it incase you need to start everything afresh. Best of luck Man!
You should be able to build a pretty top spec PC for that!
Take a look at these ‘bare bones pcs’ which are good starter points, saves you having to instal the mobo etc, then all you need to buy is the RAM, GFX, HD, Soundcard etc…
So pretty much you get to customise your specifications.
jonev,
I’m a proponent of building your own desktop. It gives you more confidence as to the quality of the parts you have in there, and not to mention more customizability in the long run. Really try to consider how much you’ll be moving around or putting together tracks on the fly. If you know for a fact you bounce around a lot, then of course a laptop makes more sense.
I have nothing against Macs except for the obnoxious price. I work for HP and know for a fact you could get a system that rivals those specs for much cheaper. When it comes down to it, a laptop is only as good as the manufacturing quality of the parts, and it just so happens that we outsource our manufacturing to the same companies in China that Apple does (go figure!). Keep in mind, a laptop will be more fragile in almost every case, and its longevity is moreso affected by how you treat it rather than how much you paid for it.
I’ve got nothing against PC’s at all - I have 2 of them & also a Mac.
But I’ve had experiences with 2 HP machines - and found them to be steaming piles of sh!t. I’m sure not all are - but do your homework before you leap.
Run any possibilities here Mate before you buy & you’ll get some neutral advice.
I’m not saying Clockwork(?) was giving bad advice or anything - - but just try and do your research first.
I am no fan of HP or Dell to be perfectly honest and would not buy off either
I like ACer laptops as I have never had any problems with them
[quote]gofunk (15/02/2011)[hr]1) AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition 3.3 GHz Socket AM3 6MB Cache Retail Box Processor
2) Asus CROSSHAIR IV FORMULA 890FX Socket AM3 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
3) Crucial 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10600 Ballistix Memory Kit CL7 (7-7-7-24) 1.65V
Thats about £400 bucks, upgrade the ram later. £100 bucks left so it depends what else you have and/or wanna use the system for.
Do you have a PC already? Do you have hard drives and DVD drives, a case and power supply & monitor?
check out ebuyer.com that where I get all my pc stuff
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I did this except I got 16 gigs of RAM , 3 Hard drives. I overclocked my CPU to 4.2ghz.
The whole thing cost me $800 american. It will piss all over every MAC except the 5k MAC PRO.
Let me say I own a PC and a Mac, and I have to admit I love doing creative stuff on the Mac.
However, if you know you’re using Live 8 then it doesn’t really matter–it’s basically the same on the PC.
Maybe it’s me, but I’ve had two HP laptops in the past and they both had hardware issues–the trackpad kept jumping around during typing (maybe not an issue with producing) and the display began to go greenish after a few months (it was a connection to the screen, because when I plugged it into an external monitor it was fine).
I agree Acers and Asus are nice laptops–I’d try and go for processor speed like 2.4Ghz or better and a system that can support atleast 4G of ram. You can always get an external drive later, but you can’t upgrade the other two very easily.
Not to mention the brand that must not be named, but if you already have a monitor have you checked out the Mac Mini…it’s in the ballpark as far as budget. 
[url]http://www.apple.com/uk/macmini/[/url]