# Anything Glaringly "Off" About These PC Specs?



## SchnookyPants (Mar 13, 2020)

One-man-show REAPER user here.

I'm just about to pull the trigger on this Dell XPS, but I first want to run it by you guys. As a replacement for my 10 yr. old i5 quad core w/ 8GB RAM and single 1TB HDD, I think this should hold me for awhile, but I sure would appreciate it if you could give it a quick look-over.


*XPS 8930

Processor*

9th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 9700K (8-Core/8-Thread, 12MB Cache, Overclocked up to 4.6GHz on all cores)

*Operating System*

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit English

*Windows AutoPilot*

No Windows AutoPilot

*Memory*

32GB DDR4 at 2666MHz; up to 64GB (Additional memory sold separately)

*Driver*

DW1810 driver

*Hard Drive*

512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM 3.5" SATA HDD (Storage)

*Video Card*

AMD Radeon™ RX 5600 Graphics with 6GB GDDR6

*Sound*

Integrated 5.1 with WAVE MAXX Audio® Pro



I'll be using it w/ my SL88 Grand and 18i20.

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.


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## novaburst (Mar 13, 2020)

I would say no, and move towards AMD you will get faster better and great value you will need to reseach as there are quite alot of options in the AMD


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## Quasar (Mar 13, 2020)

I would say (apart from the Intel vs. AMD wars) that these specs look fine. The Radeon card is a good choice. No red flags from my POV other than that Dell QC can be spotty. Do you know what PSU this comes with? I prefer to build, but if someone gave me one of these, I'd possibly swap out the PSU.


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## SchnookyPants (Mar 13, 2020)

Quasar said:


> I would say (apart from the Intel vs. AMD wars) that these specs look fine. The Radeon card is a good choice. No red flags from my POV other than that Dell QC can be spotty. Do you know what PSU this comes with? I prefer to build, but if someone gave me one of these, I'd possibly swap out the PSU.



Comes w/ 460 watt Power Supply, with a listed option to bump up to "850 watt PSU [80 Plus Gold Efficiency]" for +$50.


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## Quasar (Mar 13, 2020)

SchnookyPants said:


> Comes w/ 460 watt Power Supply, with a listed option to bump up to "850 watt PSU [80 Plus Gold Efficiency]" for +$50.


If the 850w is certified as 80+, and the 460w is not I'd probably spend the extra for that. But what I'd really probably do is get a known good brand such as Corsair or Seasonic. But I'm a big believer in not having a generic or cheap PSU for a DAW workstation, so that's where I err on the extreme side of quality and caution, and off-the-rack companies like Dell tend to throw in whatever inexpensive OEM models they happen to have, so you never know. But you'll probably be fine in any event.


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## novaburst (Mar 14, 2020)

Quasar said:


> I would say (apart from the Intel vs. AMD wars)



!00% not a war between AMD and Intel even Intel openly admit it will need time to catch up to AMD in the Desktop CPU realm, 

All that has happend is that there is a wider healthier choice when it comes to AMD and this almost came out of the blue as most including myself did not give AMD a second thought when it comes to building a new rig or purchasing one, and this attitude was going on for a number of years.

Since then AMD has taken gaint steps and raised thier game to a very high level of CPU offers.

Now its a no brainer to go AMD after carefull thought an consideration, towards the end of this year and next year Intel is expected to level to playing ground but the difference will be flick a coin and choose as AMD has reached the same quality and prices may still put a smile on your face.

But there was no war its just AMD have grown up. as of now AMD are offering more Cores, threads, and monster Cache level, and out of this world CPU power and speed, simple over clocking that works, higher RAM speed that works on thier MBs and prices are very manageable, and they future proof.

What more could you ask for


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## MartinH. (Mar 14, 2020)

novaburst said:


> But there was no war its just AMD have grown up. as of now AMD are offering more Cores, threads, and monster Cache level, and out of this world CPU power and speed, simple over clocking that works, higher RAM speed that works on thier MBs and prices are very manageable, and they future proof.
> 
> What more could you ask for



Are they also better in single core clock speed? I know for audio stuff this isn't relevant at all, but I'm just curious because for games that's often what matters more. I used to buy only AMD CPUs long ago and then switched to intel. Can't even remember why to be honest.


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## novaburst (Mar 14, 2020)

I think Intel is still the king of games with the i9 by a very small margin, allso Intel seem to be the only ones that have single cores in thier CPU line up, there are some games i think multi player that may take advantage of multi core, but i think gaming is about grathic card power and single core speed.

Multi core is perhaps for production, video, streaming, and so


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## SchnookyPants (Mar 14, 2020)

I'm not as knowledgeable as you guys (that's why I'm here). So I have some basic questions.

On the subject of the PSU; is this a performance issue or more of a long-term reliability thing?

AMD vs Intel; what kind of real-world difference would I see there?

Dell vs ??? I'm not going to build my own. If you think there's a better way to go than buying this XPS, is that because of performance, value or reliability?

I can get the above Dell for around $1550 usd. What would _you_ buy in this price range if you weren’t rolling your own?


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## Quasar (Mar 14, 2020)

The PSU is 100% a long-term reliability thing. If you have a smooth flow of power, you're less likely to have hardware issues and your components are more likely to last longer. But it's not as though a better PSU will enable you to run more tracks at better latencies or anything like that...

Novaburst's point about AMD is an arguably valid one and is currently shared by many, but not all. I still hope to re-build at some point this year and may well go Ryzen. But I tried to answer the specific question you asked about anything being "glaringly" off, and those specs look fine. There are also arguments to be made that Intel will still give you better single-core performance at similar price points, and much about the real-world performance of these newer processors remains unknown, or will vary from person to person.

The good news is that if you get either a relatively top-end consumer-grade machine with 8th gen or later Intel i7 or i9, or an AMD Ryzen 3700x or better, you should have a great machine for music production and be good to go.


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## Quasar (Mar 14, 2020)

SchnookyPants said:


> I can get the above Dell for around $1550 usd. What would _you_ buy in this price range if you weren’t rolling your own?



Yes, that's a very fair price for a PC with those specs.


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## Andrew Aversa (Mar 14, 2020)

Not a good price at all IMO. 

First, the 9700k is a weird choice of processor because it's not hyperthreaded, so you get 8 cores total and... that's it. Not a great value at all. Ryzen is a way better buy at that price range.

The video card seems like way overkill for audio production. And the power supply is pretty weak overall. It's probably loud too.

I put together a build on PCPartPicker that swaps over to a Ryzen 3900x (12 cores / 24 threads, instead of 8 cores / 8 threads) and goes with a more modest RX580 video card (still quite powerful and good for 1080p gaming if you want to do that) as well as faster RAM.

Total cost: $1280. And that's with a better power supply, too.

If you live near a Micro Center or Fry's you can pay somewhere around the $150-200 range to have this assembled for you, and you'll walk away with a much more powerful system for audio production.


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## SchnookyPants (Mar 14, 2020)

zircon_st said:


> Not a good price at all IMO.
> 
> First, the 9700k is a weird choice of processor because it's not hyperthreaded, so you get 8 cores total and... that's it. Not a great value at all. Ryzen is a way better buy at that price range.
> 
> ...



OK. I'm trying to be flexible, here. Does this make more sense:


*Processor*

AMD Ryzen™ 7 3700X (8-Core, 32MB L3 Cache, Max Boost Clock of 4.4GHz)

*Operating System*

Windows 10 Home, 64-bit, English

*Video Card*

AMD Radeon™ RX 5700 XT 8GB GDDR6

*Memory*

32GB Dual Channel HyperX™ FURY DDR4 XMP at 2666MHz

*Hard Drive*

512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)

*Chassis Options*

Dark Side of the Moon chassis with Low-Profile Smart Cooling CPU Heatsink and 850W Power Supply


I don't know anything about "Boost Clock Speed" and "RAM speed". Enlighten me.


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## Reid Rosefelt (Mar 14, 2020)

I think the M.2 NVM3 is overkill for a boot disk. A regular SSD will load up quickly. I have 2 m.2 NVMe's in my system, but a regular SSD for my boot. 

You gain much more speed from loading up your libraries from an SSD. You can get an excellent regular 1 TB SSD for $100 or so. An M.2 is tremendously faster, but you might have to pay $30 or $50 more, although sales happen often. 

The advantage with the PCIe M.2 is the initial load. After that, I don't think there's much difference from a regular SATA SSD.


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## novaburst (Mar 14, 2020)

SchnookyPants said:


> OK. I'm trying to be flexible, here. Does this make more sense:
> 
> 
> *Processor*
> ...



I would replace the 7200rpm for a basic SSD, no no no to Home W10, W 10 is a big wind up, go pro W10
Perhaps dont go below 3000mhz of ram speed and perhaps stert with 64gib up wards

All in all if your old machine is working some what, and you are getting by with it, take as nuch time as you possibly can before getting a new rig/PC/workstation, during that time do some reserch on every thing you can, then cross reference it, just give your self as long time as you possibly can, utube is a great place for this,

if you need a new rig right away it will stop you getting to know and understand whats out there and you will need to make do with what some one else says and it may or may not be the right choice.

Minus the ram, and home W10 and the 7200rpm HD i think your on the right track


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## Quasar (Mar 14, 2020)

I thought you were trying to avoid going down down the rabbit hole and just buy a premade computer, and I still think the Dell is fine for the price, BUT Andrew's probably right about everything he says, except the 9700k still tests out slightly higher than the 8700k for most benchmarks despite the more cores but fewer threads, including its single core performance, which also beats the 3700x. If going Ryzen the 3900x is fluctuating at around $100+ more than the 3700x, but it's what I would shoot for if I were upgrading now.

It is cheaper to build and you have control over all of the components, but you said you don't want to do that. Again, IMHO any computer on this level, AMD or Intel, should be be fine, practically speaking, for music creation. My antiquated i7 2600 still blazes, and it does not begin to compare with any of these in terms of processing power.

The boost clock speed is just the speed the processor will elevate to when challenged to handle demanding tasks. The base clock is what runs at idle or under light load.

I've read current builders say that if you're going Ryzen, you want 3200MHz memory. The MHz is simply how many cycles per second it can handle (3200MHz = 3.2 billion.) Faster is of course always better, but if/how much you will actually notice a difference I wouldn't know. Good luck.


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## Pictus (Mar 15, 2020)

A good and silent PC, you can edit as you see fit.
Different countries will have different prices/promotions.
https://pcpartpicker.com/ has prices for some countries and this one is USA based.





System Builder







pcpartpicker.com










-Good Performance CPU





2020 Q1 – Cpu’s in the Studio overview







www.scanproaudio.info





-Motherboard with decent VRM for the 3700x



-Probably of the most silent cooler around



-Fast RAM





Ryzen Memory testing for audio, does it make an impact?







www.scanproaudio.info






-Very fast and *durable* SSD, for easier backup(system image) create a small partition
for BOOT/programs and a bigger one for the rest, because M.2 NVMe SSDs are *very* 
fast, there will be no performance loss for audio workloads.








Надёжность SSD: результаты ресурсных испытаний [обновлено 16.12.19]


Бытует мнение, что одним из самых существенных недостатков твердотельных накопителей выступает их конечная и притом относительно невысокая надёжность.




3dnews.ru
 








-GPU with semi-passive FAN, for audio workloads the fan probably will never turn on.








Sapphire Radeon RX 570 Pulse 4 GB Review


Pulse is a new graphics card series by Sapphire, which does away with some rarely needed features in order to achieve better pricing. The Radeon RX 570 Pulse we review today is only $10 more expensive than the RX 570 base price and still comes with a backplate and an overclock out of the box.




www.techpowerup.com






-PSU with semi-passive FAN, up to +- 150W the FAN is off and up to +- 550W is very low RPM/noise.








Corsair RM750x PSU Review: Improving On A Classic


Corsair's new RMx PSUs operate even more quietly than before. Moreover, the RM750x also features smaller dimensions and two EPS connectors.




www.tomshardware.com









-A decent case


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GN Awards Show: Best & Worst PC Cases of 2019 (Thermals, Quality, Noise)


This year’s award nominees pick up from where we left off, starting with the lackluster Thermaltake Level 20 MT in December of 2018. Spoilers: it didn’t win anything. -




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## SchnookyPants (Mar 16, 2020)

novaburst said:


> I would replace the 7200rpm for a basic SSD, no no no to Home W10, W 10 is a big wind up, go pro W10
> Perhaps dont go below 3000mhz of ram speed and perhaps stert with 64gib up wards
> 
> All in all if your old machine is working some what, and you are getting by with it, take as nuch time as you possibly can before getting a new rig/PC/workstation, during that time do some reserch on every thing you can, then cross reference it, just give your self as long time as you possibly can, utube is a great place for this,
> ...



You're absolutely right. I can hold-out. I was getting all wound up w/ this Dell 17% off sale ending in a few days. Clearly I've much to learn and consider, beyond amount of RAM and HDD/SSD size, especially if I want to avoid that sinking buyers remorse. This is level-headed advice. Thanks for calming me down.

A couple of last(ha-ha) questions/comments:

Every 'ready-made' I've seen allows for three HDD but just one SSD. Why is that?

Right now I'm looking at the Ryzen 9 3900. 3900x looks like higher TDP = added cooling = ++$. Seems like the non-x should be plenty. Thoughts?

I don't understand the advantage of W10 "pro" over "home."

Here's a good article on Ryzen and RAM speed, and what may be coming in the near future:






Ryzen Memory testing for audio, does it make an impact?







www.scanproaudio.info






Thank you everyone for all the thought-provoking comments. You're giving me a lot to think about.


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## novaburst (Mar 16, 2020)

W10 can be very inconvenient with random updates, and some updates take along time to complete, 

W10 Pro you can turn the update off or select when to update, but I think both platforms are very inconvenient


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## SchnookyPants (Mar 16, 2020)

novaburst said:


> W10 can be very inconvenient with random updates, and some updates take along time to complete,
> 
> W10 Pro you can turn the update off or select when to update, but I think both platforms are very inconvenient



Got it. 

Yeah, I pretty much hate W10, but I guess most of us are stuck w/ it.


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## SchnookyPants (Mar 19, 2020)

In the fight against hanging threads, I thought the least I could do was post what I ended-up doing.

I'm sure that I paid too much and made certain un-cool choices. But thanks to the advice of a number of members here, I put together sort of an amalgamated version, correcting a number of shortcomings pointed out by you guys. So, thanks for that. 

Some of the boo-boos pointed out were: No hyper threading (thank you, ISW), W10 "Home" (thank you, novaburst), under-size PSU (thank you, Quasar).

I'm pretty sure my new machine will be both a great improvement for me, while still having something for everyone to critique. So it's a win/win. Who could ask for anything more?

For about a hundred bucks more than the unit in post #1, here's what's on the way:

Dell XPS 8930
9th Gen Core i9 9900
Windows 10 Pro 64bit English
32GB, DDR4, 2666MHz
512GB PCIe x4 SSD + 1TB 7200RPM HDD
AMD Radeon RX 5600 (I couldn't talk them down on this)
Gold Standard PSU 850W

Thanks again for all the input.


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## sostenuto (Mar 19, 2020)

SchnookyPants said:


> In the fight against hanging threads, I thought the least I could do was post what I ended-up doing.
> 
> I'm sure that I paid too much and made certain un-cool choices. But thanks to the advice of a number of members here, I put together sort of an amalgamated version, correcting a number of shortcomings pointed out by you guys. So, thanks for that.
> 
> ...



Helpful Thread as in similar boat starting to replace (3) Desktop PC(s) i5-1440, i5-4440, i7 970. Was getting pushed toward Ryzen 3950x ... do it myself ... and $2k +. Staying with increased fan cooling for ~ $100. 

Hope you follow-up with impressions after everything settles in !


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