Anybody have a good recommendation for a decent recording desktop pc?

newholland

newholland

Roadie
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hey all-

my new to me xeon server box with 64gb of ram... died. i used it for two weeks and now it wont even turn on. tried a different bid card, tested everything.... its either a mobo glitch or power supply.. but it wont post.

anyhow... looking to get a new rig and was looking at a 2022 lenovo m90t tower with an i7, 12500 ddr5 (16 gb, but ill add more as time and funds allow) and a 1tb ssd. bout $650. seems solid and its in a big tower cause i still roll firewire.

my track counts are low, my vst use isnt outrageous, and ill seldom get into projects running more than 24 tracks. i run reaper and itd be win 11 that never sees online.

thanks yallz!
 
There are sometimes a row of 4-5 led's on the motherboard that will give a trouble code. A small mobo speaker will give a few beeps as well. You may not have one plugged in. You can reset the bios with a jumper or sometimes a button on the motherboard or back panel. Try taking out a few RAM sticks as well. Power supply failure is fairly common. No spare?

As far as a new one, I like picking my own parts and putting it together. I think a lot of the fancy gamer motherboards are worth it for the nicer caps, voltage regulators, and heatsinks. I think they are a good jump in quality from OEM.
 
I've run reaper much harder with lesser computers.. you'll be good.

Or troubleshoot the other one
 
im gonna give a coupla more things a whip- i just hate getting into swapping power supplies when it could be a crapping out ssd. what i think im gonna do is yank the ssd and test that first. my biggest concern is the time spent reloading all my fricken vsts. ALL this machine does is literally record.. so if the data is solvent on that drive im happy. four solid days of updates and unpacking software sucked!

now.. if that drive is good... ill swap power supply and ram out and not worry about a hundred bux here or there.. but the time chasing it down isnt worth it without the data if i have a bad drive and i haveta redo everything. this box cost me zero dollars, but so far, its been worth what i paid for it.
:LOL:
 
newholland said:
im gonna give a coupla more things a whip- i just hate getting into swapping power supplies when it could be a crapping out ssd. what i think im gonna do is yank the ssd and test that first. my biggest concern is the time spent reloading all my fricken vsts. ALL this machine does is literally record.. so if the data is solvent on that drive im happy. four solid days of updates and unpacking software sucked!

now.. if that drive is good... ill swap power supply and ram out and not worry about a hundred bux here or there.. but the time chasing it down isnt worth it without the data if i have a bad drive and i haveta redo everything. this box cost me zero dollars, but so far, its been worth what i paid for it.
:LOL:
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If you're going to build a new desktop anyway, you could just buy e.g a powersupply suitable for a future build as well.

What I would do first is reduce RAM to the absolute minimum so you can easily rule out faulty RAM. Then I'd check if you are getting any power to the board at all. Any indicator lights etc. Or if it doesn't have those, it might do beeps from a PC speaker jack when connected to a crap speaker.

Reset CMOS from the jumper and see if it comes back to life.
 
mobo is def powered- plenty of indicators on that, and no errors on the onboard indicator! i did the cmos- no dice there- brand new battery.

im gonna start with ram this weekend- this machine is super capable and ran like a beast initially but was a pain in the ass to get stable... it bsod'd a ton of times getting set up, so im thinking its ram or hard drive.

my IT friends said theyd check the drive for me, and@if its nit toast theyd clone it for me!
 
newholland said:
it bsod'd a ton of times getting set up, so im thinking its ram or hard drive.
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Now I'm thinking it's very likely RAM. If the mobo enables e.g XMP by default, try turning it off and see if it remains more stable. RAM is not built equal so some require more voltage than XMP settings state to be stable.
 
not the ram- i swapped it around and still nothing with a known good vid card.. i think something else is cooked at this point. a MORE than sufficient gen 9 i7 with 64gig of ram is less than 500 bucks, so think im gonna go that route. this machine was free to me, and sadly it was glitchy to set up.. i shoulda known! ah well!
 
aha! i found an i7 10th gen full sized tower with a 1tb ssd and 64gb of ram (expandable to 128, which is absurd for my needs..), usb c just in case my firewire eats it, for just over $500. bout as future proof as ill need for a while!

the xeon was a seventh gen and had no usb c support- so even though it dwarfed my ancient dell- it was maxed and kinda painted me in a corner for the eventuality that my interfaces ate it.
 
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