Where can I buy a nice desktop tower for cheap?

[creekster]

My son uses his to record music. But I don't think he does it on the same level as Shaka likely does. And don't forget the brake pad theory.

[Shaka]

Wow. What is it that you do?

I've run my home studio and a mobile recording rig on two MBP's and one HP laptop. I use a lot of software instruments, effects plugins, and other digital modeling gear which is all processor intensive. If I use too many instances the fans go crazy, performance bogs down, and everything goes to hell. Also it doesn't help when you're playing 20-60 tracks back at a 48kHz 24 bit sample rate all at the same time while simultaneously recording 8 tracks of audio. I was very careful about keeping the exhaust ports clean and maintaining the computers but eventually the heat got the MPB's GPU and I'm guessing was related to the death of the HP. I used to love the MPB but I've since realized that their cooling scheme's are terrible and the internet is rife with angry owners who had heat issues with the GPU and logic boards. I do not do much mobile recording at the moment but I've used my current pimped out Dell laptop and it has done pretty well.

I have no problem with a similarly spec'd desktop. I also do not have the same kind of trouble with my Mac Mini which is weird because they are compact like a MPB. I think they must have designed a better cooling scheme for those. Mine is a server edition with I7, maxed out ram, and two 7200 rpm internal drives. They have detuned the latest versions because the old Mac Mini servers were almost as good as performers as the regular Mac Pro for far less money. Audio, video, and graphics guys were starting to favor them because the Mini Server won the bang for the buck contest going away.

[Jeff Lebowski]

That's cool, shaka.

[Shaka]

That was my thought, but aren't MacBooks used for recording, DAW, etc. all the time? I thought they were very popular for that.

I am no professional though, so I could well be wrong.

They are widely used but not so much as a primary recording rig. Up to 16 tracks with minimal soft instruments and plugins really works great. Also I use Pro Tools which is definitely a resource hog. I have a couple of buddies that run Logic on their laptops that say that it performs better than Pro Tools from a resource standpoint. Also Garage Band (Which runs off the Logic engine but is stripped down) has become very popular for the singer/songwriter types and regular folks who like to just dink around with recording.

[Shaka]

That's cool, shaka.

What's going to be even more cool is resurrecting one of those MBP's by baking the logic board in my oven!

Actually I'm going to bring it to work where my solder people will shield everything around the GPU and then use some sort of specialized heat gun to reflow the joints.

[Clark Addison]

They are widely used but not so much as a primary recording rig. Up to 16 tracks with minimal soft instruments and plugins really works great. Also I use Pro Tools which is definitely a resource hog. I have a couple of buddies that run Logic on their laptops that say that it performs better than Pro Tools from a resource standpoint. Also Garage Band (Which runs off the Logic engine but is stripped down) has become very popular for the singer/songwriter types and regular folks who like to just dink around with recording.

These are the ones I am more familiar with.

Sounds cool. Thanks for sharing.

[Uncle Ted]

I've run my home studio and a mobile recording rig on two MBP's and one HP laptop. I use a lot of software instruments, effects plugins, and other digital modeling gear which is all processor intensive. If I use too many instances the fans go crazy, performance bogs down, and everything goes to hell. Also it doesn't help when you're playing 20-60 tracks back at a 48kHz 24 bit sample rate all at the same time while simultaneously recording 8 tracks of audio. I was very careful about keeping the exhaust ports clean and maintaining the computers but eventually the heat got the MPB's GPU and I'm guessing was related to the death of the HP. I used to love the MPB but I've since realized that their cooling scheme's are terrible and the internet is rife with angry owners who had heat issues with the GPU and logic boards. I do not do much mobile recording at the moment but I've used my current pimped out Dell laptop and it has done pretty well.

I have no problem with a similarly spec'd desktop. I also do not have the same kind of trouble with my Mac Mini which is weird because they are compact like a MPB. I think they must have designed a better cooling scheme for those. Mine is a server edition with I7, maxed out ram, and two 7200 rpm internal drives. They have detuned the latest versions because the old Mac Mini servers were almost as good as performers as the regular Mac Pro for far less money. Audio, video, and graphics guys were starting to favor them because the Mini Server won the bang for the buck contest going away.

You and fala should get the Mac Pro... your cat will love it:

[Shaka]

I'd love a Mac Pro but I'd spend the cash for one. When I decide to get rid of the Mini Server currently running my rig I will either go Hackintosh or just switch to Windows OS. My experience is that Mac and Windows run my software just fine.