well, after i sell my dirt bike i'll have a good amount of money. since my dual core 2.5 ghz laptop can't handle all the vst's i want to use without stuttering and generally pissing me off, i want to upgrade to a kickass desktop.
so, i'm doing psychedelic rock. therefore, i will be using gajillionz of vsts, from reverbs, to phasers, and loads of different virtual instruments, theremins, organs, mellotrons, and all that. i will also be buying NI komplete 7 when i get the money saved up. now, what kind of power will i need to be able handle all this shit i'm doing, and be able to record low latency with up to 10 tracks at a time all at once? i was thinking of building a comp with the new intel core i7 sandybridge 2600.. shit looks nice, but this gateway has everything it seems i'd want for 800$ retail:

http://www.amazon.com/Gateway-FX6850-51 ... B004QZAXXE

is that overkill? school me on recording comps, guize

No such animal as overkill for recording, IMO.

I'm bouncing down some stems for the Garda session at The Goo Goo Dolls' studio tomorrow night right now, and my i7 Rackintosh displays no meaningful CPU usage over eight cores (four real, four virtual) with multiple softsynths and samplers going. Like, none, doesn't even register on the meters in Logic. In 24/88.2, no less. Native systems are manly as all get-out these days. Get the beefiest thing you can swing the bucks for and pay attention to your hardware compatibility.

would you reccomend building my own or just getting that gateway? if not that gateway, what is good for around under 1000?

I wouldn't buy a Gateway if my life depended on it.


If you're going to buy a pre-built PC, get a Dell or an HP.

I'll agree with mf on this one. You can get a shitload of PC from dell for $1000. Check into their business class stuff, less bullshit on them. Optiplex or XPS series maybe. You can narrow the search by selecting a price range, I went to the 800-1200 price range and they had quite a bit to off. I'm sure you can do the same with HP.

Also, Sign up at ebates.com, get the dell or hp link from there and you will be a paypal credit for 3-7% in a few months. Hey it's like free monies

I might buy this one sometime soon:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=1886

Not an i7 though. But I am broke, so i5 sounds just fine. Definitely better than my early-gen core2duo.

Plus it looks like a oldschool cylon.

Since I didn't graduate yet, I could buy a new Dell and get a free XBox.


Top that.

(If you go that route, they make the systems more expensive to begin with, and the price difference = the amount an XBox costs ... imagine that.)

Actually this Gateway is kind of tempting at a quick glance:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... G180-11002

Get an Asus