I'm wanting to build a PC for someone that would be used to store a massive music collection.
So does it need RAID1? I'm just wondering about backup strategy, if at least a DVD burner should be in it.
It would be plugged into their home stereo setup,
Digi or analog out?
and would not need to run much beside Windows XP and iTunes,
Pirated or legit XP? I ask because XP is just bloated, and since you want it "extremely cheap", if you can get linux to work it shaves quite a bit of cost off and needs not be so versatile for a single-purpose system, but do you NEED a PC for this really? There are other options for networked audio.
with possibly some other small programs on the side. I'm trying to keep it as cheap as possible, and am recycling many components, such as the monitor, keyboard, mouse, dvd-rom drive, and most importantly the sound card, which is a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum.
Why do people keep mistakenly thinking an Audigy is fit for a music PC? It is a gaming card, which mutilates audio. Hint - Creative sells cards under their other brand, meant to do better at music.
If cheap is really important, you might try the onboard audio first and if they can't hear the difference, sell the Audigy. Otherwise use it I guess but it would be better put to gaming purposes, instead of it's only real virtue wasted in a music system.
My selected parts:
Antec case w/ PSU
I think I'm set on this case, because the person I'm building it for likes it a lot, even though its kinda expensive.
Huh? If you want a cheap PC, since you have nothing mentioned that requires high performance, use an older one. Playing audio requires roughly Pentium 1/200MMX. Dead serious, it is not at all necessary to buy all new parts for this system, you could have an entire system for the cost of the case if you wanted "extremely cheap", then toss the Audigy in there if necessary. Main limitation is size of HDD an old system supports, you probably want a new drive for that just for capacity. XP on the other hand, is the overhead instead of the task, so for practical purposes, you may want at least a Celeron 800 just to get a sync memory bus fast enough for the integrated video to not lag a little.
Your purpose is to save very little, to build a system that may fail because the board was poor? I would think this system for music would need last longer than their main PC, since it won't have performance issues mandating update any year soon, music is a fairly fixed max requirement. Integrated video would be fine though.
url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820236112]1GB PNY DDR400 ram[/url]
I wasn't sure if I could get by with 512, so I figured I'd up it to be safe.
You are kidding? I have video capture systems that run fine on 256MB w/XP, with plenty to spare. For music, it doesn't even matter of the swapfile is used, because once the non-needed OS portions are swapped out, they stay out, nothing is multitasking that isn't always running. 128MB could do the job, seriously. Maybe itunes is bloated enough to make 256MB prudent, but you are not in any way building an extremely cheap PC, you are merely spending too much money on the wrong places for the purpose.
url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822148111]Seagate 250GB sata hdd[/url]
I didn't want to skimp on this, because there will be a whole lot of HDD usage and file transferring going on.
I don't understand what you mean at all, a 250GB HDD is very small for a music PC, it's skimping. No need to destroy music quality by using lossy compression on everything with today's high capacity drives available, your system would be better with a couple of larger drives and a Celeron 800 than what you presently list. Consider a single CD is a few hundred MB in lossless format, if it's all just compressed lossy then don't even bother with the PC, just use a media extender.
url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819112206]Celeron D 2.66ghz proc[/url]
For 45 dollars I can get the 2.8 ghz edition, for 54 the 3.06, and for 57 the 3.2. I didn't think those extra mhz would really matter that much, but I could be wrong.
That CPU has a horrible heat
erformance ratio, and it's even worse to create such heat (and either noise, or more expense for a good heatsink that runs quiet) when the performance isn't needed. Celeron 800 would run idle over 2/3rds the time playing audio, produce less than 1/3rd the heat, and with a ducted PSU intake over the heatsink, can even run passively cooled, or slap some old $3 Athlon heatsink on it and run the fan at 5V and it will be practically inaudible.[/QUOTE]
If anyone has any suggestions on this build, or can point out any stupid mistakes I have made, thatd be wonderousful.
Thanks!
The main mistake is thinking this is cheap for a music PC. Most cost effecitve would be picking up something thrown away or an old Dell/Compaq/etc $60 Pentium 2-3 box, putting an SATA or PATA card in it and 2 x 400GB HDDs. Network it and you have plenty of spare CPU cycles to do fileserving/NAS/etc, too. At any rate I wouldn't go with the Prescott Celeron, if you must buy newer generation parts then get a low end Athlon 64 or same-gen Sempron, then underclock it as you don't need even 1/4th the performance they provide to play audio, the only real thing requiring more than a Pentium 1 system is that it will run WinXP and whatever else they might use it for.
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