the "today we build our studio pc"-thread

[CharlesEdward]

Will anything in this list cause any dpc latency issues?

[CharlesEdward]

I know that the dominator ram and cnp12x won't work, so is there a cooling alternative so I can keep that specific ram or should I just opt for a low profile ram. Also it seems that crucial has a low profile ram with the lowest cas latency and timing, but am not sure if this ram is good for overclocking. Also is there a significant difference between a cas latency of 9 and 10 or are they about the same.

Also plan to use my computer mainly for ITB music production with flstudio,ableton, and studio one, so I'm not to concerned with tracking except for vocals. I also plan on learning about 3D animation, so would like a system capable of handling intense graphic, so would I be better off with a graphics card from the nvidia quadro processor family or will the gtx680 suffice for now?

[a2dpapi]

So what do you guys think of trying to build a DAW with a server board? There are some with 4 and even 8 (I believe) CPU sockets. 64 cores?!

[Masaaki]

@CharlesEdward,
Zalman CNPS could be very loud (I got rid all of them), so Noctua NH-L12 might be a better choice for the 4U case. I usually use Mushkin Blackline which has a little heat spreader but not like the dominator or vengeance. Cas latency isn't really important, in my experience. GTX680 is very good to start.

[CharlesEdward]

Originally Posted by Masaaki

@CharlesEdward,
Zalman CNPS could be very loud (I got rid all of them), so Noctua NH-L12 might be a better choice for the 4U case. I usually use Mushkin Blackline which has a little heat spreader but not like the dominator or vengeance. Cas latency isn't really important, in my experience. GTX680 is very good to start.

Thanks! Will opt for the Noctua NH-L12 instead.

[Masaaki]

Just a general rule of thumb, it's safer to buy low profile RAM if the CPU cooler is low profile. Heat sinks are often wider and longer.

[machoboy]

I think I've decided to do away with the $50 motherboard I originally ordered. I've upgraded everything else - nice big NZXT tower, liquid cooling, returned the wimpy coolermaster psu and bought a nice corsair instead, etc. I went with Patriot Viper 3 Extreme ram which beat the Vengeance stuff in benchmarks and has a really nice heatsink design that's wide/thick rather than tall (although ironically the water cooling system leaves me with tons of room for any memory type now).

So as far as mobos I'm out of the ultracheap junk range and looking at $100+ "solid but not excessive" stuff.

Any of these stand out as superior to one another?

Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 ($130)
ASRock P67 Extreme4 ($140)
ASRock P67 Fatal1ty ($100)

I know I need a GPU for the P67s. No big deal. Basic GPUs are very cheap nowadays.
The Gigabyte and Extreme4 both have VIA Firewire chips and I'm not sure if that's worthwhile compared to just buying the cheaper board and plugging a TI pci-e FW card into it.

Other suggestions are welcome. I want a modest, stable overclock in the low 4.X range that I can leave on for hours while in my DAW. If I understand correctly power phases are a factor for that and ASRock seems to have more than other brands under $200?

[DAW PLUS]

Originally Posted by a2dpapi

So what do you guys think of trying to build a DAW with a server board? There are some with 4 and even 8 (I believe) CPU sockets. 64 cores?!

Not required. Dual CPU is fast enough for anything audio, and it would be cheaper buying 2 of them instead of a custom 4 CPU system.

We built a 4 CPU system once, for chess software. To keep the cost down, we used a "standard" case for quad CPU workstations. Noise was no issue for the customer.
The thing sounded like a 747 full throttle and probably could be heard 3 buildings further away.

[aquablu8]

So I'm a newbie planning to build his first DAW. Which is the best option for processors now and in the near future? I was thinking of going with a Sandy Bridge-E 6 core, or would an Ivy 4 core be the better option? How about going duel xeon 12 core? My budget is 2k or so.

I plan to use orchestral samples and soft synths. Will these chips be obsolete in the near future and if so, should I wait?

Also, will water cooling help me out and produce a quieter system?

[Masaaki]

Originally Posted by machoboy

Any of these stand out as superior to one another?

Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 ($130)
ASRock P67 Extreme4 ($140)
ASRock P67 Fatal1ty ($100)

ASRock is a cheaper division of ASUS, you know, but at this price point ($100-$150), I don't think any motherboards would work just fine. Personally, I have a good experience with Gigabye.

[Masaaki]

Originally Posted by aquablu8

So I'm a newbie planning to build his first DAW. Which is the best option for processors now and in the near future? I was thinking of going with a Sandy Bridge-E 6 core, or would an Ivy 4 core be the better option? How about going duel xeon 12 core? My budget is 2k or so.

I plan to use orchestral samples and soft synths. Will these chips be obsolete in the near future and if so, should I wait?

Also, will water cooling help me out and produce a quieter system?

I would choose Sandy E if the work deals with lots of VI/plugin intensive stuff. Intel will change the socket when Haswell comes out, so both sockets 2011 (for Sandy E) and 1155 (for Sandy and Ivy) will be obsolete sometime soon. But you know, who cares? If you can do what you need to do with what you get, it doesn't matter. That's how I think. I'm totally happy for my DAW work with i7 960 on 1366, and no plan to upgrade. Only down side is it's a little stressful for big HD video work I do recently, so I may replace mobo and CPU, if new benchmarks convince me the performance gain.

[aquablu8]

Originally Posted by Masaaki

I would choose Sandy E if the work deals with lots of VI/plugin intensive stuff. Intel will change the socket when Haswell comes out, so both sockets 2011 (for Sandy E) and 1155 (for Sandy and Ivy) will be obsolete sometime soon. But you know, who cares? If you can do what you need to do with what you get, it doesn't matter. That's how I think. I'm totally happy for my DAW work with i7 960 on 1366, and no plan to upgrade. Only down side is it's a little stressful for big HD video work I do recently, so I may replace mobo and CPU, if new benchmarks convince me the performance gain.

Thanks for your help. I'm thinking of going water-cooled overclocked sandy-E....

[machoboy]

I actually found a shootout between the motherboards I mentioned (or at least, extremely similar models), and it was damn near a tie. I went with the z68 since it has onboard graphics and I swore I wouldn't use this machine for gaming/no need for a fancy gpu.

The Gigabyte will be here soon and I am RMA'ing the MSI (it's actually surprisingly beefy, but I still don't want to fry $800 worth of stuff to save $70).

So my finalized "bedroom studio PC":

i5-2500k processor (probably won't OC much but nice knowing it can take it -- any processor people routinely run at 5 ghz must be quality)

Antec Kuhler 620 closed-circuit water cooler (hate cleaning dust out of heat sinks -- sent back the coolermaster hyper evo after thinking about what its like to clean) EDIT: after seeing that my new case has a gigantic radiator holder on top I might get the corsair H100 instead. EDIT the corsair leaked haha. I am back to air cooling with a Zalman CNPS9900MAX

arctic 5 cooling paste stuff...

NZXT Tempest 410 case (plus extra coolermaster fans -- this case is basically 1 big fan)

WD caviar blue 500gb (I still don't trust solid state for audio/video stuff because of issues I had in the past that destroyed hours of work. They're probably great for anything where you're not erasing/redoing the same file 1,000 times in a row. They seem to run into serious issues with that.)

Patriot Viper 3 ram 16 gb (looked the coolest)

corsair CX600 power supply (almost half off from new egg between rebate and coupon code)

SIIG TI pci fw card (although the gigabyte has built in VIA FW and I'm not sure if I'll even need it)

focusrite saffire pro 24 (thought about getting a pci soundcard and using an external preamp but I don't know anything about pci soundcards so I went with what I'm familiar with -- have owned focusrite stuff before and it seems to last)

Woohoo! Ever since my old Frys frankenstein computer died I was relying on a cheap laptop for my at-home setup and it has been truly painful. Can't wait to put everything together.

[machoboy]

Lesson learned along the way: NewEgg is infinitely superior to Tiger Direct.

I ordered from both sites on the same day with the same type of shipping.
TD didn't even finish processing my order by the time the New Egg stuff was at my house, and then they ended up sending me the wrong stuff.

Their excuse was their "Extremely rapid processing system which occasionally makes errors while rushing your goods to you" (they waited 1 week before even putting it in the mail). Yeah... OK. Amazon and NewEgg from now on.

[kurdish mayfield]

Any thoughts on this build for a DAW would be welcomed. I need to run lots of VST's especially Maschine

EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P4-2653-KR GeForce GTX 650 2GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

CORSAIR HX Series HX850 850W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC ...

SYBA PCI USB 2.0 & 1394a combo card Model SD-COMBO-02
Item #: N82E16815124002

G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory Model F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZH

ASUS P8H77-V LE LGA 1155 Intel H77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I73770K

2 -Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Windows 7 64x Pro

Plan to bring over 2 500 GB HD's from my current PC

Plan to use my existing EMU 1820 m soundcard

[machoboy]

Kurdish, I recommend a SIIG 1394a card. I had a Syba and it was unnecessary trouble (they haven't released a driver for most of them since Vista and their website is straight out of the geocities era). The SIIG was running in 3 minutes.

That Syba is also a compact "combo" USB/FW ExpressCard for laptops. Not what you want for an interface, and aside from that, the rest of your components seem to be for a desktop system?

Also I don't think you can OC with the H77 mobo if you're interested in that. Z77 will open up that option. If you don't want to OC then there's no point in the "K" version CPU, so while those will work together, they don't really "match" in the sense that one will limit features you're paying for in the other.

You could probably save enough money by getting a simple SIIG FW card instead of that combo Syba thing to get a Z series motherboard instead of the H. Then you would be good to go.

Looks like a very strong setup other than that though.

[machoboy]

Simple cheap FW card which is officially approved by Focusrite among other interface manufacturers:

Amazon.com: SIIG FireWire 2-Port PCIe (NN-E20012-S2): Electronics

The same ASUS motherboard you linked but the Z77 version:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RLYP2E/...hvptwo=&hvqmt=

[DAW PLUS]

Originally Posted by kurdish mayfield

Any thoughts on this build for a DAW would be welcomed. I need to run lots of VST's especially Maschine

EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P4-2653-KR GeForce GTX 650 2GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

CORSAIR HX Series HX850 850W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC ...

SYBA PCI USB 2.0 & 1394a combo card Model SD-COMBO-02
Item #: N82E16815124002

G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory Model F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZH

ASUS P8H77-V LE LGA 1155 Intel H77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I73770K

2 -Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Windows 7 64x Pro

Plan to bring over 2 500 GB HD's from my current PC

Plan to use my existing EMU 1820 m soundcard

PSU is over the top, model is good but 500W is sufficient by far.

Graphics card is over the top for audio.

What about aftermarket fans?

[kurdish mayfield]

Thanks for the replies and suggestions. I will past along to the person doing the build. Any other input is very much appreciated

[machoboy]

Just a quick heads up to anyone building an 1155 system

NewEgg is blowing out P67A-GD55 motherboards right now for $50, ends in a few hours

"Regular" price $160 >> code EMCYTZT2333 takes off $90 >> Mail in Rebate takes off $20

Total $50 for a motherboard that was not long ago going for $170 and is still $120-130 on Tiger Direct & Amazon.

It's said to OC well and has 2 firewire ports too, which are VIA, but one of their better (VT6308) chipsets that actually works with some interfaces ("Focusrite approved").

[machoboy]

Aw nice Kingston 120 gb SSDs are almost half off at TD too. I should check my email at 4 am more often.

[Masaaki]

The 128GB SSD ~$65 looks good. I need one for my location rig. Thanks for the headsup. MIR is a bit of pain, but SSDs are getting cheaper almost every month.

[machoboy]

Yep I ordered one. At $65 its the same as a 500 gb hdd.. They're finally trickling into sane prices. Kingston is usually nice stuff too.

I hate MIRs too but I already have a stack of them from my build so what's one more...

[projektk]

its been a while since I bought a part for my new build so I decided lighter and smaller is better. HaHaHa. I do have a Case I wont be using or a PSU for a while at least. I decided I am going to start my build over and it will be Mini ITX. the other case will eventually be used for an AMD experimental build.

so the Mini ITX build I will be putting inside of a BitFenix Prodigy Case (White). I will be using the Gigabyte Z77N(or m can't remember)-WIFI motherboard. I will be using a EVGA nVidia GT 650 GPU. I will be using 2x 1TB Seagate 7200RPM HDD and I will load it with 16 GB of RAM. I will be using a Rosewill 630W Green drive because I already own one and I know they are reliable and plus I don't really care about modular with this build. The only other thing will be the Intel Core i7 3770 and the Sony Optiarc DVD RW drive. I am going to attempt a full Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion Install. I will succeed. this will become my primary build for recording and mixing.

Sent from my LG-P925 using Tapatalk

[kurdish mayfield]

Originally Posted by machoboy

Simple cheap FW card which is officially approved by Focusrite among other interface manufacturers:

Amazon.com: SIIG FireWire 2-Port PCIe (NN-E20012-S2): Electronics

The same ASUS motherboard you linked but the Z77 version:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RLYP2E/...hvptwo=&hvqmt=

My understanding is that the H77 mobo was suggested because it has native PCI whereas the Z77 has emulated PCI. I was insisting on using my Emu 1820 PCI soundcard. I'm rethinking this and maybe should go for a firewire soundcard instead.

Thanks

[DUBTEMPLE]

I'm looking for 2 x 8 GB, later expandable to 4 x 8, so common type, not rare

Relatively cheap, DDR3, 1600, timings are not very important I guess

I'm planning a very moderate overclock around 4.2 Ghz with my H60 Cooler

The Cpu is the 3770K

Unfortunately the pdf-list with verified 8 GB ram modules from ASUS only
mentions 2 types, (and not the types I would go for), very disapointed about ASUS not being more informative here,..

Any help or suggestions welcome

[kurdish mayfield]

I've updated the components in my new DAW build to go for a I7 3930 6 core.. I'd really appreciate any feedback on possible issues that anyone sees. I've asked the builder to allow PCI compatibility so I can bring over my Emu 1820m sound card and 2 hdd from my current daw. Will use SSD's for system and some vst libraries like Spectrasonics and Kontakt. I want the heavy duty power and vid card for possible future work. Will be adding cooling but no big over clocking in mind .Basically I want to use a fully loaded Maschine with vsts from the NI line like Massive ,Kontakt and Omnisphere and Trillian all at once for clients. Thanks for taking the time to look this over.

2 Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 2011 130W Six-Core Desktop Processor
BX80619i73930K


LG Black 14X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 12X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA BDXL Blu-Ray
Burner with SW, 3D

CORSAIR HX Series HX850 850W Power Supply

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit

LIAN LI PC-Z60B Black Computer Case

EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P4-2653-KR GeForce GTX 650 2GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

ASUS P9X79 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory
^ Joined: 09 Mar 2011 Member: #252165

[Masaaki]

The computer parts look all good, but Emu sound card may not work with PCI-PCIe bridging. Consider upgrading audio interface to avoid driver headache.

[kurdish mayfield]

I'm thinking that if the EMU 1820 doesnt work I'd probably go with a Steinberg firewire interface. Thanks

[DAW PLUS]

Power supply is over the top. Z60 case is nice but not easy to silence.