Music enthusiast PC & occasional gaming for $1500?

[Locovin128]

Can anyone help me put together a PC for someone who just wants to rock out on his MP3's and CD's with an occasional gaming thrown in. I want to use this to blow people's minds away when they hear the sound this sucker will produce. I have a budget of $1500. Any ideas?

 

[Snale]

If you're into sound, get a Dual core Intel or a 6X1 series if you want a single core.

PCI-X mobo from any retailer if your not planning any overclocking...

1 GB RAM is a must. Just get some Value ram from Kingston or Corsair.

A WD 150GB Raptor is quite expensive but it's really nice, otherways, get a SATA WD or Hitachi...

I you're gaming a little i'd get a geforce 6800GS or X800GTO, powerful and not-very-expensive cards. You could even get one step lower in performace and manage a fanless 6600GT which will make 0 noise.

Of course get an X-Fi sound card from creative. They're great. There are some diferent models but i'd pick the entry level one.

Get a silent PSU. I recommend Tagan for silence

Get a TFT monitor, its clearer than a CRT.

And that's about it.

I

 

[pyrix]

I agree, definitly an X-FI. Get yourself some high end THX speakers as well, then get other components with whats left over. You are going to want lots of storage as well if u r into music. Recommend at least 200gb of SATA storage.

AMD + 6600GT fanless would do the trick. Perhaps water cooling to bring the noise level even lower.

 

[Locovin128]

Any recommendations for some great speakers? I am willing to spend at least $400 on some speakers that would make everyone take notice of my sound system.

 

[JokerFMJ2]

Klipsch do make nice sounding speakers. These Altec's i've had for several years also sound fairly amazing... Definitely worth a buy if you're on a tight budget.

 

[g-paw]

If you really want good sound, you should seriously think about running the sound card through your stereo system. Given audio doesn't take a lot of resources and it doesn’t sound like your into resource intensive games, you could put a nice AMD Dual Core 3800 for about $1000 and it could be a lot less if you didn’t go with Dual Core and put the rest of your money into your stereo system. If you don’t have a stereo system, you could put together a nice stereo (i.e., 2 channel with a sub) starter system for less than $1000.

 

[penguin_d]

First is this just to blast the tunes, or create the tunes?

If just to blast em, go with a entry level X-fi, sound card, otherwise if you are producing, take the hit on the cash for the top of the line X-Fi (it's about 550 Cnd). As for everything else, I'd go with a middle of the pack mobo and AMD cpu, and an ATI X800GTO or similar card.

As for speakers:

If you want sheer volume, enough to make people on the next block over call the cops, go with the Logitec Z5500 speakers 1005 watts total power, and some great connectivity as well. Also they have a DTS2 decoder built right into them.

If you want picturesque sound quality at the loss of volume go with a set of klipchs pro media speakers.

Or if you are a little electronically inclined, and want the hottest/loudest setup, purchase a receiver and buy the speakers yourself. A note here, if you want some GREAT sounding speakers, look at polk audio.

That's my $0.02