Hi All,
I'm looking to build myself a new DAW machine from the ground up. Currently I have an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe motherboard, AMD 1700+ Athlon CPU, and M-Audio Delta Audiophile (PCI) soundcard. For the most part it's served me well, but about 6 months ago I decided to add a SATA drive to the mix (was just using IDE prior) and all of these pops/crackles reared their ugly head any time I transfer data to/from or otherwise utilize the SATA drive. I've updated just about everything there is to update driver-wise and done tons of research on the M-Audio and ASUS sites and it seems that . . .well, that's just life. The chipset is NVIDIA NForce, and for whatever reason the M-Audio card and the SATA implementation on this board just don't wanna play nice. The easy fix of course is to get a new soundcard, but I think it's about upgrade time anyway, and this machine can then be relegated to "office machine" as it does double duty (studio/office) right now.
So that said, what seems to be a good problem-free motherboard these days? My day job is IT consultant, so I have a pretty good handle on the technical aspect of things, but I don't build machines for clients so I don't tend to keep up on the latest hardware out there unless it's specific to a problem that a client is having. I realize that there's probably several options out there, but I'm looking for first hand experience and/or reviews.
Also, should I be considering SFF as an option? I definitely like the looks and small footprint factor, but I hear they tend to run a bit on the hot side which means stronger cooling which means the possibility of more fan/cooling noise. At the moment that's another issue I'm having with this machine I'm on now. The Power Supply is too loud, the CPU fan is too loud, the drives are too loud, etc. (Now you see why I'm opting for new machine over new soundcard). I would prefer the lowest noise floor possible as at some point I"ll be using a microphone . .. the less noise the better.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
I'm looking to build myself a new DAW machine from the ground up. Currently I have an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe motherboard, AMD 1700+ Athlon CPU, and M-Audio Delta Audiophile (PCI) soundcard. For the most part it's served me well, but about 6 months ago I decided to add a SATA drive to the mix (was just using IDE prior) and all of these pops/crackles reared their ugly head any time I transfer data to/from or otherwise utilize the SATA drive. I've updated just about everything there is to update driver-wise and done tons of research on the M-Audio and ASUS sites and it seems that . . .well, that's just life. The chipset is NVIDIA NForce, and for whatever reason the M-Audio card and the SATA implementation on this board just don't wanna play nice. The easy fix of course is to get a new soundcard, but I think it's about upgrade time anyway, and this machine can then be relegated to "office machine" as it does double duty (studio/office) right now.
So that said, what seems to be a good problem-free motherboard these days? My day job is IT consultant, so I have a pretty good handle on the technical aspect of things, but I don't build machines for clients so I don't tend to keep up on the latest hardware out there unless it's specific to a problem that a client is having. I realize that there's probably several options out there, but I'm looking for first hand experience and/or reviews.
Also, should I be considering SFF as an option? I definitely like the looks and small footprint factor, but I hear they tend to run a bit on the hot side which means stronger cooling which means the possibility of more fan/cooling noise. At the moment that's another issue I'm having with this machine I'm on now. The Power Supply is too loud, the CPU fan is too loud, the drives are too loud, etc. (Now you see why I'm opting for new machine over new soundcard). I would prefer the lowest noise floor possible as at some point I"ll be using a microphone . .. the less noise the better.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
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