Advice Needed For Small Form Factor, Budget Build For Music Production.

[FourBitty]

Hi folks,

 

A friend of mine asked me to build a PC mainly for use of Pro Tools. He's looking for a small form factor desktop and to spend around $600CAD (more on this in a bit) primarily for music production for his band. This is sort of venturing into new territory for me, as I've never built anything in the Micro ATX or Mini ITX ranges and I'm having a hard time putting a list together with a good price/performance ratio. I don't need a GPU, in fact he needs a Firewire interface so if it comes to only having one PCI slot, it should be used with a Firewire card. This is also something I don't really know much about, except some light Googling revealed that Firewire appeared to be a more Mac-specific connector and that for around $13 I can get a PCIe card with Firewire ports on it.

 

So, a few questions:

 

1) I don't know anything about Pro Tools. Is it (or can it be) CPU demanding, and is an i5 necessary like it says here for recording and mixing? If there's different versions of Pro Tools, I don't know yet what exactly he's using but I can find out and update this post if needed. Can someone recommend a good CPU and motherboard that offers good price/performance for this particular application?

 

2) Is using Firewire as simple as buying a PCIe card with the necessary ports and away you go, or are certain motherboards/BOISes better for this?

 

3) If someone wants to have a crack on making a full parts list, here's everything to consider:

- Looking to spend around $600 CAD, but he can be flexible. I think he's not too sure about a starting point and just sort of threw that out there. Does not need a GPU.

- Needs FIrewire ports.

- 1TB of storage at least, up to 2TB would be preferred (disk storage is fine as I don't think even a small SSD can be squeezed out of such a tight budget).

- Needs Win10.

- Must be a very small form factor, like Mini ITX.

- No peripherals or monitor needed. Will only be driving one monitor and an audio interface.

 

The main things I need today is advice on a good CPU and motherboard and clarification concerning Firewire. Thanks in advance for any help, and a reminder that I do live in Canada and all parts need to be in CAD.

[Stardar1]

More expensive than I would have liked:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/BZKrTW
Price breakdown by merchant: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/BZKrTW/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($249.99 @ Amazon Canada) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97N-WIFI Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($139.88 @ Canada Computers) 
Memory: Team Vulcan 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($45.98 @ Newegg Canada) 
Storage: Crucial BX200 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($89.98 @ DirectCanada) 
Storage: Western Digital Blue 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($103.95 @ shopRBC) 
Case: Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case  ($69.75 @ Vuugo) 
Power Supply: Antec Earthwatts  350W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($61.00 @ shopRBC) 
Total: $760.53
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-05 13:01 EST-0500

 

you'll have to get your own Fire-wire card. 

[Caine]

it's cheaper to go with a micro atx build:

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($282.50 @ shopRBC) 
Motherboard: Asus B85M-D PLUS Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($78.41 @ NCIX) 
Memory: A-Data XPG V1.0 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($49.98 @ DirectCanada) 
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($89.98 @ DirectCanada) 
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case  ($47.95 @ Vuugo) 
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($59.98 @ Newegg Canada) 
Total: $608.80
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-05 14:02 EST-0500