[Nottingham] Buying advice sought

[Martin]

Graham,

> I want to buy a new desktop PC and would like some advice on how to go about 
> it please.
> 
> The machine will be used at home as a general purpose computer but also as a 
> Digital Audio Workstation (at a amateur level).

Easily accommodated.


> I boot into Linux 99% of the time but there are occasions when I need to use 
> Windows for example updating my satnav so I need to boot off of two separate 
> hard drives (as I do at the moment).

There's always one irksome 'must have' historical app... :-(

We've got a virtual machine expert in the group to solve such woes ;-)


> My current machine is a Pentium 4 3.20 GHz with XP on one drive and OpenSuse 
> 12.2 on the other. A local PC repair shop built it for me about 3 years ago 
> for £250 and the only problem till now has been with the case, which is badly 
> designed and cramped so I have to e.g. remove the memory in order to fir a new 
> hard drive.

Cases are a bit of a problem. Worth taking a little care for access and
airflow. Also good if it looks nice!

You could well reuse your existing case and have space to spare using a
uATX board. Don't forget to replace the PSU!...


> I use Ardour for recording and it works reasonably well although in order to 
> achieve low latency I have to do things like disable my wireless network card, 
> and shutdown a few other non-essential processes. It would be nice if I didn't 
> have to do that with a new machine.
> 
> So, I am thinking: PCWorld? Dell? Build it myself? Is everything 64 bit 
> nowadays?

For a 'desktop' system, we are all 64bit now (32bit is sooo last decade
;-) ) and 4GB+ RAM and SSD. You also now have a good choice for going
quiet and/or low power and still enjoy good performance.

I'd advise checking online or go for a local source you can trust. I've
found big name systems to be always irksomely compromised for whatever
price point they work to. That is, they are bolted together for the
price point and for whatever Marketing numbers can be conjured up for
that price. Whether or not that works well is irrelevant.



If you're nearby, you're welcome along to lots of comment during our
meet this evening (Wednesday).


Cheers,
Martin


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