# I9 9980xe & asus ws x299 pro/se



## Synetos (Feb 3, 2020)

What do you guys think of this: i9 9980XE, Asus WS X299 Pro/SE & and 128GB Ram for a VEP Slave or primary DAW machine?

I have a chance to buy (at a great price) a used computer with this CPU/MB combo. Anyone running this?

FYI- I fried my second 6950x cpu, so I need to replace it.


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## Damarus (Feb 3, 2020)

Beast of a processor - really depends on what 'Great Price' is


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## Synetos (Feb 3, 2020)

Damarus said:


> Beast of a processor - really depends on what 'Great Price' is


About $1700 for MB, CPU, Ram all running for about 18mo and never OC'd


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## Damarus (Feb 3, 2020)

Synetos said:


> About $1700 for MB, CPU, Ram all running for about 18mo and never OC'd



That is good.

Alternatively I've quickly thrown together a build to compare prices of an AMD processor
AMD 3950x: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/YJ7mFG


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## Synetos (Feb 3, 2020)

Damarus said:


> That is good.
> 
> Alternatively I've quickly thrown together a build to compare prices of an AMD processor
> AMD 3950x: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/YJ7mFG


Seems like a good price, but I have never run AMD for audio. I probably would stick with Intel at this point in time.


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## Damarus (Feb 3, 2020)

Synetos said:


> Seems like a good price, but I have never run AMD for audio. I probably would stick with Intel at this point in time.



yup that 9980xe will do nicely - it most likely runs very warm so make sure its got adequate cooling


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## Synetos (Feb 3, 2020)

Damarus said:


> yup that 9980xe will do nicely - it most likely runs very warm so make sure its got adequate cooling


It has a nice liquid cooler...although I prefer Noctura Tower coolers, so we will see. I don't plan to push it too hard. I just want a VEP machine that puts every VST I own at my finger tips. With 36 cores, I ought to be able to make that happen.  

I will not buy another 6950x after having two die. That thing cost me $1750. This last one was a warranty replacement. It lasted less than a year. I was only OC at 3.3. It was just idling overnight when it died...same as the first one. It was not working or hot. So, I am done with them. Now it is outside the warranty, so I am on my own for replacement. 

I have a 5960x that I dropped into the machine. I think if I make that my DAW, and offload all my VSTs to the 9980XE, and my primary plugs to soundgrid server, I can get by for a while without needing a new DAW machine. (wanting one... well that lust never fades) haha


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## jononotbono (Feb 3, 2020)

If I knew someone selling this, I would buy it for that price. That CPU is a beast! You’ll definitely be able to run at least a couple of Kontakt instances with that bad boy!


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## Synetos (Feb 4, 2020)

Would you guys make the 9980XE the primary DAW and run VST's in local host mode only? Or would you make it a VEP Slave and run 5960x as the DAW? I've never had anything with that many cores.


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## mscp (Feb 4, 2020)

I've heard that the extreme series does not provide great latency for real time compared to the i9s. Is it correct?


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## Synetos (Feb 5, 2020)

Phil81 said:


> I've heard that the extreme series does not provide great latency for real time compared to the i9s. Is it correct?


Well, all the processors I own have 3.0 base clock. I have thought about replacing my dead 6950x with a lower core count, hugher base clock cpu. However, cpu is rarely my issue for real-time audio performance. It nearly always something else.


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## jononotbono (Feb 5, 2020)

Synetos said:


> Would you guys make the 9980XE the primary DAW and run VST's in local host mode only? Or would you make it a VEP Slave and run 5960x as the DAW? I've never had anything with that many cores.



I'd use it as my main machine. Just so Cubase's Cursor doesn't look like it has Parkinson's disease. Cubase is a dog on OSX. This machine would bring much joy to a Cubase user.

I would then, after setting this up as my main machine, look at building some dual CPU machines for VEPro. Slower Clocks but more Cores. To do the heavy lifting. It's amazing how much juice you add to your system with just a mediocre computer. So you'd add a lot of horsepower by doing this (if you need it).

Visit VisionDAW to get an idea of what a respectable PC build is for Audio. In fact, I'd probably buy my next machine from them instead of building one. I know it will just work without hassles and that is worth the money.


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## Synetos (Feb 6, 2020)

So...it turns out it is a 7980XE. I still bought it, but bought the whole machine for $2475...including NVMe drives and EGVA GeForce 2080. I didn't like the case, so I rebuilt it in a new case using a Noctura DL14 dual 140mm fan. Even pegged at 100%, the CPU never went over 40c. So, I think it's safe to say I will be able to OC it to 3ghz without any trouble.

This should give me lots of horsepower for what I am doing. I will keep my 5960x machine dedicated to eMotion LV1. I may invest in a new machine for tracking, but not sure what I want to do with that, yet. The AMD stuff is looking interesting.


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## Synetos (Feb 11, 2020)

Interesting twist with VEP7. I setup a single large instance on local host. Gave all 36cores to that instance. It chokes with the instance CPU going over 100% just playing Omnisphere multi by itself. It is acting like it is only using 1 core.

It actually performs better with the VSTs right in Cubase, which is odd.

Enabling turbo mode in BIOS helped some, but I am guessing I will need to OC it a little to use it as my main DAW.


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