Case and Motherboard ideas for Quiet, low-profile, live music performance PC

[woodslanding]

H all!

I'm just starting to look into my dedicated music performance machine.
I've been using laptops for years, but recently purchased a
touchscreen, and am thinking of building a custom PC for my unusual
needs. I've never built a PC from the ground up before, but I've
installed drives, ram, PCI cards, all that, without problems..... So it
seems do-able.

I'd be curious about any advice you would have. Here's what I need:

1. I need the fastest possible processor, although I'll probably end
up a little shy of that, for budget reasons. I don't believe my
software has been optimised for dual-core much yet, but I suppose it
will eventually. Music software runs the processor very continuously
at a high rate, unlike most applications. My Laptop (1.8 ghz centrino)
runs my current setup at right about 60% cpu. I've found if I get any
higher than that, I get dropouts running at a latency of 256 samples.
I'm working on a new setup that is running closer to 80% and therefore
won't run on this computer..... but I'll always keep adding features
until I maximize what the machine can do! Tried overclocking my PPC G3
way back when, with liittle success, but might consider trying it
again....

2. I need to fit it in a road case with the touchscreen and a
keyboard, all side-by-side, to sit on top of my digital piano, so I'd
like an SFF enclosure with a low profile. I could either use it with a
firewire audio interface, or a PCI card. I haven't been able to figure
out whether there are any half-height pro audio cards out there, but
I'm leaning towards the firewire anyway. Still, having some minimal
PCI expansion would be a good idea. I'll also need space for a 3.5" HD
and a DVD burner. If it fits full-size PCI cards upright, it's getting
to be too tall.... I'm shooting for under 4 inches high, 15 inches wide
and 15 inches deep. Room for a second HD might be nice, but not
crucial.

3. I need all the high-powered graphics necessary to address a whopping
1024x768 screen. I could even make do with 256 colors, but I know
that's silly these days. From the reading I've done, it sounds like
there is basic graphics support built on to motherboards these days,
yes??

4. It doesn't have to be silent, but the quieter the better. I'm
willing to budget for low noise. Could mean just getting better fans,
but convection would be better, if I can get away with it.... It will
be pretty much open when in use, so there should be good airflow. But
sometimes ambient temperature gets pretty hot under stage lights,
outdoor festivals etc.

5. Don't need legacy ports, probably use ethernet someday, would love
support for 4 mb of RAM (I'm using 1.5 already) need to have firewire
and usb2......a built-in card reader might be nice.

So here are some thoughts so far:

It looks like even without dual processor optimizations in my software,
the core 2 duo chips are the way to go. I guess vista-compatibility
would be nice, although I'm usually pretty slow to change OSs..... Any
thoughts about 6300 vs. 6400?? I'd love to go top-of-the-line, but I
need to stay on a budget..... how are the mATX motherboards coming
along for these chips? I haven't been able to find one that supports 4
mb of RAM yet....

There are cases that support a full size motherboard one way or
another. The Silverstone LC02 fits a full size motherboard and 2 pci
cards, and still fits under 4".... The LC11 has the cool inverted
design, and looks to be well designed for quiet operation, but at 17'
deep, it's starting to push the envelope... and it does require a micro
ATX board. Anybody have experience with either of these? I haven't
looked, but I'm guessing they're expensive. I don't need anything so
nice-looking, so any budget options out there in a similar style? Any
other case options that would fit a full-sized board? A 2 space rack
would be great, but I'd need to keep it to about 15' or so in depth....

Any ideas???

Thanks in advance!
eric

 

[Paul]

H all!

I'm just starting to look into my dedicated music performance machine.
I've been using laptops for years, but recently purchased a
touchscreen, and am thinking of building a custom PC for my unusual
needs. I've never built a PC from the ground up before, but I've
installed drives, ram, PCI cards, all that, without problems..... So it
seems do-able.

I'd be curious about any advice you would have. Here's what I need:

1. I need the fastest possible processor, although I'll probably end
up a little shy of that, for budget reasons. I don't believe my
software has been optimised for dual-core much yet, but I suppose it
will eventually. Music software runs the processor very continuously
at a high rate, unlike most applications. My Laptop (1.8 ghz centrino)
runs my current setup at right about 60% cpu. I've found if I get any
higher than that, I get dropouts running at a latency of 256 samples.
I'm working on a new setup that is running closer to 80% and therefore
won't run on this computer..... but I'll always keep adding features
until I maximize what the machine can do! Tried overclocking my PPC G3
way back when, with liittle success, but might consider trying it
again....

2. I need to fit it in a road case with the touchscreen and a
keyboard, all side-by-side, to sit on top of my digital piano, so I'd
like an SFF enclosure with a low profile. I could either use it with a
firewire audio interface, or a PCI card. I haven't been able to figure
out whether there are any half-height pro audio cards out there, but
I'm leaning towards the firewire anyway. Still, having some minimal
PCI expansion would be a good idea. I'll also need space for a 3.5" HD
and a DVD burner. If it fits full-size PCI cards upright, it's getting
to be too tall.... I'm shooting for under 4 inches high, 15 inches wide
and 15 inches deep. Room for a second HD might be nice, but not
crucial.

3. I need all the high-powered graphics necessary to address a whopping
1024x768 screen. I could even make do with 256 colors, but I know
that's silly these days. From the reading I've done, it sounds like
there is basic graphics support built on to motherboards these days,
yes??

4. It doesn't have to be silent, but the quieter the better. I'm
willing to budget for low noise. Could mean just getting better fans,
but convection would be better, if I can get away with it.... It will
be pretty much open when in use, so there should be good airflow. But
sometimes ambient temperature gets pretty hot under stage lights,
outdoor festivals etc.

5. Don't need legacy ports, probably use ethernet someday, would love
support for 4 mb of RAM (I'm using 1.5 already) need to have firewire
and usb2......a built-in card reader might be nice.

So here are some thoughts so far:

It looks like even without dual processor optimizations in my software,
the core 2 duo chips are the way to go. I guess vista-compatibility
would be nice, although I'm usually pretty slow to change OSs..... Any
thoughts about 6300 vs. 6400?? I'd love to go top-of-the-line, but I
need to stay on a budget..... how are the mATX motherboards coming
along for these chips? I haven't been able to find one that supports 4
mb of RAM yet....

There are cases that support a full size motherboard one way or
another. The Silverstone LC02 fits a full size motherboard and 2 pci
cards, and still fits under 4".... The LC11 has the cool inverted
design, and looks to be well designed for quiet operation, but at 17'
deep, it's starting to push the envelope... and it does require a micro
ATX board. Anybody have experience with either of these? I haven't
looked, but I'm guessing they're expensive. I don't need anything so
nice-looking, so any budget options out there in a similar style? Any
other case options that would fit a full-sized board? A 2 space rack
would be great, but I'd need to keep it to about 15' or so in depth....

Any ideas???

Thanks in advance!
eric

The Silverstone LC02 uses "riser cards". These allow plug-in cards to
be oriented horizontally. In the LC02, there are two cards that fit
sideways, and that is how they stay under 4 inches.

http://www.spodesabode.com/content/article/silverstonelc02/2

Your choice of Core 2 Duo is a good one. There are some AMD processors
that are reasonably low power, but I don't know whether they would
match on performance. (I guess I'll never understand why music
recording is so demanding of CPU performance. Even if the data
needs to be orthogonalized in memory before being written out,
that wouldn't even put a dent in a modern processor. And no
one would be silly enough to do FFTs or frequency shaping in
real time, when you can post process raw data at leisure later.
Some day I'm going to find an article that explains just what the
CPU is doing...)

To start the search, I start with a list of motherboards known to
support a Core 2 Duo processor. This list is an example for an
E6400 (I think E6300 and E6400 are Allendale, and the others are
Conroe, but I tend to call them all Conroe anyway). The ones
with -VM on the end of the model name are likely to be MicroATX
with built-in graphics good for at least 1024x768.

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/....13GHz,1066FSB,L2:2MB,rev.B2)&SLanguage=en-us

Correlate with a master list of motherboards here, looking for
Intel chipsets with a "G" in the chipset name. Those tend to have
built-in graphics.

http://usa.asus.com/products2.aspx?l1=3&l2=-1

This one has a couple of Firewire ports, so that saves on a
Firewire card (P5B-VM):

http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1312&l1=3&l2=11&l3=332

Now, check Newegg for customer reviews. The customers so far have
been fixated on only one issue, and the sample size of six reviews is
not enough to get a clear picture:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16813131043

It doesn't look like that product has been shipping for that long.
This forum is hosted on the Asus web site, and so far there are
only five threads on there. Some models have close to a couple
thousand threads, and that can give you a great deal of feedback.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&model=P5B-VM&SLanguage=en-us

You can continue examining the motherboards in the lists that way,
and reviewing the boards for issues.

If you wanted a motherboard with an AGP video card slot, there
are a couple on the Asrock site that support Conroe/Allendale
and use an older chipset. The reason for selecting one of these
would be if you were trying to avoid a PCI Express based motherboard
at all costs. If you are just recording via Firewire, maybe
there is no reason to be even remotely interested in these boards.

http://www.asrock.com/product/775i65G.htm
http://www.asrock.com/product/ConRoe865PE.htm

To use those two boards, both require you to use an AGP card. That
is because the chipsets were designed to work at FSB800 and the
Conroe/Allendale run at FSB1066. Using the AGP video card, reduces
the stress on the 865G used on the 775i65G motherboard (electrical
noise caused by using built-in graphics and driving the FSB at
1066 at the same time). The ConRoe865PE doesn't have built-in
graphics, so you have to use an AGP video card with that one anyway.

I don't think those boards have Firewire, so your one PCI riser
gets used for a Firewire card.

The LC02 product info is here:

http://www.silverstonetek.com/products-lc02.htm

Note that the riser card info on that page is a bit
confusing. There is mention of PCI Express x16, AGP,
and PCI, and I would want to make sure that the right
set of risers is available so you can use both of the
horizontally oriented slots. With some of your
motherboard/hardware choices, you might be quite dependent
on the right mix of risers.

http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/lc02/lc02-index-1.jpg

Another thing to watch for, is you cannot place those
risers arbitrarily in any old slot on the motherboard.
Mechanically, there might be a restriction on which
slots the risers can fit in. The AGP+PCI riser seems to
be a good match for your average (older) AGP based motherboard.
And while the 2*PCI riser is likely to be a good fit for
the average motherboard, there could be an obscure issue
with addressing, if any PCI peripheral chips on the
motherboard happen to use the same address decode as one
of the riser slots. With the 2*PCI riser, you should get
a least one working PCI slot guaranteed.

This picture shows a video card on top. The video card plugs
into the "two brown connector" thingy. One of the brown connectors
moves the video card to the right of the picture, so the video
card faceplate aligns with the slot in the chassis. The white
connector underneath it, is shorter, and that one takes the
PCI card. If a PCI Express video card was being used, then
a different riser would be needed for the "two brown connector"
one.

http://www.spodesabode.com/articles/silverstonelc02/8.jpg

Trying to make "small" systems like this, is always a challenge.
If building PCs, it helps to get your feet wet first, by
building an ordinary sized ATX system. That gives you a chance
to observe all the mechanical details common to systems. Like
how hard it is to find CPU coolers to fit in confined spaces.
Whether PCI/AGP slots have standardized positions with respect
to the motherboard mechanical reference point. Then, when you
work on your second system, and you eyeball a cool looking
SFF case, your enthusiasm can be tempered by the challenges of
getting all the crap to fit I worked on the planning of
an SFF system for about a month before I got sick of it and
bailed on the project.

If I could respectfully make a suggestion, perhaps it would
be easier to fit the hardware into a larger case first.
Say one without riser cards You may find the execution
easier, with less research to do. You could even experiment
with larger coolers for the processor, as the larger computer
case won't restrict what coolers you can use. You can use the
larger computer as a seat, when you sit in front of the
digital piano Just don't kick it.

Good luck,
Paul

 

[woodslanding]

wow, thanks for all that info, Paul!!

well, you have tempered my enthusiasm for diy a bit.... I'm not
getting into this because making it myself seems like loads of fun, but
because nothing out there fits my needs. If I want a tower, I can buy
one pre-built in about any configuration I can imagine. SFF seems to
be different.

But if I could find a motherboard with built in video and firewire,
wouldn't that obviate the need to deal with the whole PCI/VIdeo/riser
game??? I guess if I ever needed a pci card I'd have to deal with it
then...

hmmm.

OT:

You are right that simple sequencing and digital recording/playback is
not very processor intensive. Neither is sampling. But virtual
synthesis is a different matter. Start modeling a blown tube or
plucked string, and you start making the processor work. Model a moog
modular with 40 or 50 oscillators, filters, envelopes, waveshapers,
frequency shifters, etc, and it really goes. And the fun new stuff is
convolution, which allows you to sample spaces, and place your sounds
in that place, and you're looking at something that took my PPC 10-15
minutes to render 10 seconds worth. Now it's often possible to do it
in real time.

I run a hammond b3 emulation, a prophet 5 emulation, a mini-moog
emulation, a wind-instrument modeling synth, two samplers and a load of
effects simultaneously for my shows. It's live performance, so nothing
is "offline"!!! No "leisure" in my line of work. GogoLab spits it all
out by hand in realtime, even if it sounds like sequenced dance
production sometimes. Search for gogolab on youTube if you want to
see the current setup in action.

cheers, and thanks again!
eric

 

[visions of effty]

I'd look at DJ equiptment. In the post-vinyl age there's been a lot of work
done in adapting computers for live music performance. If you get a good
idea of what's available from those sources it might save you from
re-inventing a wheel so-to-speak.

Do you have any sort of effects rack you can mount something in?

http://www.abmx.com/dj-computer-p-243.html

http://www.planetdj.com/i--PC1U

Or a place to set a laptop case?

http://www.planetdj.com/i--CSL28

Sounds fun. Good luck. Sorry about the top post.

~e.

 

[woodslanding]

nice tips, thanks. Not a bad price at all for a rack unit on that
second link.

this is the actual wheel I'm reinventing, more or less.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/20/open-labs-miko-pc-synth-workstation/


all about saving some $$, and getting more processing HP while I'm at
it.

If it can't blow my 1.8 ghz centrino laptop off the map, I'll wait to
do the upgrade!

cheers, and thanks again!
eric

 

[Phil]

all about saving some $$, and getting more processing HP while I'm at
it.

If it can't blow my 1.8 ghz centrino laptop off the map, I'll wait to
do the upgrade!

Hi, I would recommend a BareBones SFF computer. I recently built one,
my first SFF, a MSI Hermes 651P, low-end for mini-DV camcorder
processing in the field, instead of a laptop.

For your needs, I'd recommend checking out:

1) Sky's-the-limit brand-new: Shuttle MPC form factor, SD37P2, P4 Core
2 Duo, 1066MHz FSB, i975X chipset, 8GB max DDR2/667MHz ECC 2-chnl
memory, RAID-10 support, firewire, S/PDIF coax and fiber, 2X PCI-e
slots, Aluminum chassis.

2) Meet's your needs: Asus Pundit SFF, P1-PH1, P4 Duo 3.8GHz 775,
800MHz FSB, 2GB max 667MHz DDR2 memory, ATI chipset, ATI Radeon X300
video, firewire, 2 card readers front, S/PDIF fiber, 2 PCI slots on
riser, steel chassis

3) Less Money: MSI Hetis SFF, 945, Pentium D 3GHz 775, 800MHz FSB, 2GB
max DDR2/533 memory, i945GZ chipset (integrated video i950), firewire,
card reader front, 2 PCI slots on riser, steel chassis

What I liked was the front bezel, CPU cooling, important I/O, mobo and
case is all designed for you. You just need to add CPU, memory, HD, DVD
burner, floppy, if any PCI cards, LCD monitor and OS. Can do it in a
weekend. Regards, Phil