# CPU's



## fraz (Jan 11, 2018)

Hi,

Hope this is the best place to post about CPU questions!!!

What experience do the members here have of the 7800X? - No name calling please, eg this ones better than that one eg 8700K vs 7800X

I've got a 5820K or two that I'll use, now obselete but the here and now are always gone quite quickly looking back. Other members really do like their 5820's even if they like their "other" CPU's more!

6800K had 5-8% over the 5820K (other members report) - And the 7800X is supposed to have another "x" % over the 6800K - But I've not heard much from the other members yet on the 6 core 7800X - X299 was rush released and then problems on the motherboard heat sinks + the release of Coffee Lake has maybe watered down other peoples enthusiasm for the latest HEDT 6 core.

If anyone uses this for their VSTi sample based or not please chip in to share your experiences with this - thanks -


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## Damarus (Jan 12, 2018)

Well honestly, why consider a 7800x when the 8700k is available?


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## fraz (Jan 13, 2018)

Yes quite correct, the 8700 K is very good


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## fraz (Jun 27, 2018)

Hi,

I've got one of each, vsti / sample banks etc... take a lot of power, some people may just get a 12 core which will cost over 1000.

Just found out that 7800X has AVX512 which may be some sort of future proof ??? (maybe not) but 8700 K does not have this.

Any real world uses from folks here please mention -thanks


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## Bill the Lesser (Jun 27, 2018)

Go for highest possible clock speed in a low wattage chip. It's probably best to not go over 14 total cores because of real time operating system issues with the current version of Windows 10, which may eventually be lifted. I'd go for the 8700X and a giant Noctua fan based heatsink, running at at whatever clock rate would keep it consistently under about 55C. Give 10 cores to your daw, let Kontakt share 4 of those, and leave 2 for other processes. I know that both Reaper and Cubase are set up for the efficient use of multicore CPUs, if you're using any other daw check to make sure it can benefit from multicores.

Don't use a Nvidia card unless you plan to use Premier for movie editing, it has an obtrusive driver problem which can force you to use large, laggy ASIO buffers. A medium level Radeon 570 or 580 video card is a good choice that will still allow good video editing performance and with proper bios tuning will let you use buffers down in the 64 to 128 element range which is optimal for fast keyboard playing. There are several cheap fanless video cards that would also work well, I'm not up on those however.


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## Sami (Jun 27, 2018)

The 8700k is a sweet spot at the moment. It benefits from the lower latency of the 1151/370 platform as well meaning it punches slightly above its weight in comparison with some x299 chips.


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## chimuelo (Jun 28, 2018)

But latency on an X299 drops drastically if stable overclocks are achieved and you want big RAM DAWs.

https://www.tweaktown.com/guides/8637/supermicro-x299-overclocking-guide/index.html

This is serious hardware we’re seeing from Supermicro.
Foxconn builds great boards for Mac guys. But can you imagine a Mac with Supermicro?


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## Scrianinoff (Jun 28, 2018)

Throw in a 7980xe and there you go, almost three times the number of voices the 7820x gives you, on a low 64 samples buffer:





https://techreport.com/review/32607/intel-core-i9-7980xe-and-core-i9-7960x-cpus-reviewed/12


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## Scrianinoff (Jun 28, 2018)

The 8700k reaches _exactly_ the same polyphony of 800 as the 7820x at 64 samples:


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## Scrianinoff (Jun 28, 2018)

The results above are confirmed by the _sensibly overclocked_ results of Scan:
http://www.scanproaudio.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/7960X-DB6.jpg


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## Sami (Jun 28, 2018)

I think for the money the 8700k is hard to beat, especially if you screw any notion of "sensible", delid the little son of a bitch, smear her lovingly with liquid metal and then set her VRMs on fire with a 5.1 GHz OC.

I love the smell of burnt caps in the morning...


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## Scrianinoff (Jun 28, 2018)

I stopped at 4.7, no delid, no liquid metal, no noise and ... haha, no smell either. 

If you factor in the cost of the rest of the system, I am not so sure the 8700k is more cost effective. The 7980 is for sure more noise effective.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 29, 2018)

Bill the Lesser said:


> It's probably best to not go over 14 total cores because of real time operating system issues with the current version of Windows 10, which may eventually be lifted.



This is a confirmed problem with Cubase. It is not really important in, say, Reaper (confirmed by Reaper devs - anticipative processing in Reaper is doing stuff in the background so those threads don't need MMCSS priority).


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## Olfirf (Jul 29, 2018)

This is very interesting, indeed! So, we are slowly getting to the point where one PC could replace a 2-3 PC system 1-2 generations before it in regards to polyphony. What I did not find anywhere on the internet is how a comparable Xeon W with 18 cores or more compares to that. Many professionals are still using Xeon. The biggest advantage of the Xeon would be that it can be maxed out with 256gb of ram, hence, allowing you to load the same amount of samples as 4 64gb slave PCs. If the polyphony of such a system would be comparable to the i9 7980XE (or even surpass it) it would be a viable option to keep electricity bill and heat production in the studio (which is a relevant thing unless you have a seperate machine room!). A maxed out i9 seems interesting, too, and will cost a lot less, as you do not need ECC memory. But in order to make an intelligent decision I would really need to compare results between Xeon and i9. Does anybody have a clue where to find such details?


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## Olfirf (Jul 29, 2018)

EvilDragon said:


> This is a confirmed problem with Cubase. It is not really important in, say, Reaper (confirmed by Reaper devs - anticipative processing in Reaper is doing stuff in the background so those threads don't need MMCSS priority).


Oops! I read something on the Steinberg forum that this is actually a problem caused by MS, while Pete Brown from MS stated that Steinberg had updates of their Cubase code in the works ... is this something where we will only get a solution for with Cubase 10? Or even later? This sounds quite alarming to me and will probably hold me off a while. I am still on an older Mac Pro for my main machine and will need a replacement, soon. The time just never seems to be right for some reason ...


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## URL (Jul 29, 2018)

https://www.visiondaw.com/store/pc/configurePrd.asp?idproduct=128&qty=1

Or build one, if you need extra pci-e cards, use WS MB socket 2066.
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/WS-X299-SAGE-10G/


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## EvilDragon (Jul 29, 2018)

Olfirf said:


> I am still on an older Mac Pro



Unless you're running Windows on that Mac Pro, you have nothing to worry about, this is a W10 specific issue.

In any case, if Cubase really depends on having all of its audio processing threads with MMCSS priority, then they're fucked because it doesn't seem MS will be changing this restriction on number of MMCSS priority threads soon (I guess until processors with more than 14 logical cores are a LOT more commonplace, I suppose?)...

Reaper doesn't have any problems with this because it can process stuff anticipatively, and this type of processing doesn't require MMCSS thread priority (because stuff is delayed by design, you don't need the most aggressive priority level on those threads - which is only logical). This is why Reaper is so efficient btw. Not sure if Cubase's ASIO Guard is the same thing, it doesn't seem to be the same thing, otherwise Steinberg wouldn't even need to have such a knowledgebase article...




Olfirf said:


> What I did not find anywhere on the internet is how a comparable Xeon W with 18 cores or more compares to that. Many professionals are still using Xeon.



Xeons are usually sacrificing core count for core speed. So you have lots of cores but they for sure aren't going to be running at 4 GHz or even close to 5 GHz which is what you can push some of their newer CPUs... You're definitely not going to be getting the same single core performance on Xeons as you do on beefy i7s or i9s, and...

Single core speed is still *king *in audio realm. Please mark this down in your brains. What we all want is *more cores *and *all of them faster! *Not more cores but them being slower (which is what Xeons are by and large).


Also regarding RAM... I'm not sure why 256 GB is necessary, with all libraries on SSD you can drop the DFD buffer to the lowest value globally and purge whole instances after patches are loaded into them, this is the best way to save RAM and still have a ton of stuff loaded in, since samples load only as they are necessary to be played in the patch... But I guess if you want to have absolutely every patch ever loaded, well in that case even 256 GB ain't gonna cut it


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## Olfirf (Jul 29, 2018)

EvilDragon said:


> Unless you're running Windows on that Mac Pro, you have nothing to worry about, this is a W10 specific issue.
> 
> In any case, if Cubase really depends on having all of its audio processing threads with MMCSS priority, then they're fucked because it doesn't seem MS will be changing this restriction on number of MMCSS priority threads soon (I guess until processors with more than 14 logical cores are a LOT more commonplace, I suppose?)...
> 
> ...


I know I have no problems with 14+ cores on the current Mac pro ... I asked because I consider switching to PC (I use Cubase). The i9 could be my test candidate for switching to Windows 10 on the main machine this year (I am already familiar with it on my Slave PC). In case the Mac Pro in 2019 (or possibly even the new mac mini) will turn out to be a great machine, this i9 will still be a good slave PC due to the high number of voices in can play. That is why I wonder if this Cubase problem is likely to stay there for a longer time ...
Regarding loading all possible patches I have ... sure! If you have a lot of libraries, even 256gb will not load all of them. But you can load a lot of instances on VEpro disabled or purged and enable many of these before running out of memory. At the moment, 128gb will be enough, I think. But as these libraries are getting bigger and bigger and I always load all patches (purged) into my template, I want to plan ahead a little.  Just look at the great video series recently released by Jason Graves. What I currently have as a rig is pretty similar, only 3-4 generations older!  There you can see, why it is not crazy to want to have so much ram. It really can make sense, if you are aiming for a huge template, where you have basically everything you might ever need loaded and disabled or purged.


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## EvilDragon (Jul 29, 2018)

Unless Steinberg doesn't crack down and flesh out a new audio processing engine that works more similarly to the one in Reaper so that audio threads don't necessarily have to depend on MMCSS, you're out of luck. At least with Cubase. Will they do it is anyone's guess...


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## Olfirf (Jul 29, 2018)

EvilDragon said:


> Single core speed is still *king *in audio realm. Please mark this down in your brains. What we all want is *more cores *and *all of them faster! *Not more cores but them being slower (which is what Xeons are by and large).


I wonder: have you checked out the benchmarks regarding voices by @Scrianinoff ? To me, streaming voices is king. Maybe you use more CPU-intensive soft synths like Diva? In that case, "single core speed is king" might apply. But if voices is king, it seems the opposite can true, right? I think Jason also mentioned in his videos that he has highly specialized machines. The main rig running Cubase is few cores, high clock, so good for running lots of synth and FX plugins, while the slave machines are Xeon with lots of cores and lots of RAM as well. Since he custom ordered these by Vision DAW, why would they offer him inferior machines at a higher price? I don't think they could afford to recommend these, if they would not offer a better performance for sample playback ...


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## Olfirf (Jul 29, 2018)

EvilDragon said:


> Unless Steinberg doesn't crack down and flesh out a new audio processing engine that works more similarly to the one in Reaper so that audio threads don't necessarily have to depend on MMCSS, you're out of luck. At least with Cubase. Will they do it is anyone's guess...


Thanks! That was kind of what I feared to be the case ...


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## EvilDragon (Jul 29, 2018)

No, it still stands that the faster the cores the better the audio performance. A LOT of audio processes *cannot be parallelized. *But I guess for slaves just for streaming it'd be more or less fine...


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## Olfirf (Jul 29, 2018)

EvilDragon said:


> No, it still stands that the faster the cores the better the audio performance. A LOT of audio processes *cannot be parallelized. *But I guess for slaves just for streaming it'd be more or less fine...


Hmm ... so, you doubt that these tests by DAWbench were executed properly? If that is not the case, how do you explain, that they clearly show you can stream more than double the voices in Kontakt with the i9 7980XE than any current i7 is capable of? I don't won't to prove you wrong or anything like that ... I am just genuinely interested to make the most educated decision in buying my next PC!  And those charts clearly indicate (given, they were properly executed), that the i9s are better for getting the most out of Kontakt and VEpro. I might have overlooked something, though, and we don't know how the Xeon compare to the i9s ...


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## tack (Jul 29, 2018)

Olfirf said:


> If that is not the case, how do you explain, that they clearly show you can stream more than double the voices in Kontakt with the i9 7980XE than any current i7 is capable of?


It really depends what you're doing. If you have a large number of tracks and a large number of (say) Kontakt instances, you can get decent parallelism on just about any modern DAW. If no single track is particularly demanding, then your high core count / low clock speed processor will do just fine. This is what the DAWbench VI test is measuring.

Meanwhile, drop Zebra2 HZ with a patch using a couple Diva filters on a couple of those tracks, or do any recording with a demanding FX processing chain (because when you're record-armed, the entire signal processing chain involving the armed track(s) is collapsed to a serialized process to ensure the lowest latency for recording), and single core performance becomes the limiting factor. This is where the DAWbench DSP test will show more differences.

So there's no single answer. The best fit depends on what your projects and workflows tend to look like, and what kind of VIs and FX you typically use, and whether those things themselves are multithreaded.


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## Olfirf (Jul 29, 2018)

tack said:


> It really depends what you're doing. If you have a large number of tracks and a large number of (say) Kontakt instances, you can get decent parallelism on just about any modern DAW. If no single track is particularly demanding, then your high core count / low clock speed processor will do just fine. This is what the DAWbench VI test is measuring.
> 
> Meanwhile, drop Zebra2 HZ with a patch using a couple Diva filters on a couple of those tracks, or do any recording with a demanding FX processing chain (because when you're record-armed, the entire signal processing chain involving the armed track(s) is collapsed to a serialized process to ensure the lowest latency for recording), and single core performance becomes the limiting factor. This is where the DAWbench DSP test will show more differences.
> 
> So there's no single answer. The best fit depends on what your projects and workflows tend to look like, and what kind of VIs and FX you typically use, and whether those things themselves are multithreaded.


Thanks! So, what category would those complex Kontakt scripts like Spitfire and OT Capsule fall in? The way I understand it, the 18 core system with lower clock speed is way better as a Slave, as it can stream a lot of voices, but only as long as it does not do CPU-heavy stuff. So, probably it is still preferable to have a multi-computer setup over using just one PC with large templates? But at least you could cut it down to only one Sample Slave with an i9 (or maybe Xeon?), as long as you do not run Diva on it!


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## Scrianinoff (Jul 29, 2018)

Olfirf said:


> Hmm ... so, you doubt that these tests by DAWbench were executed properly? If that is not the case, how do you explain, that they clearly show you can stream more than double the voices in Kontakt with the i9 7980XE than any current i7 is capable of? I don't won't to prove you wrong or anything like that ... I am just genuinely interested to make the most educated decision in buying my next PC!  And those charts clearly indicate (given, they were properly executed), that the i9s are better for getting the most out of Kontakt and VEpro. I might have overlooked something, though, and we don't know how the Xeon compare to the i9s ...


Note that the 16 core 7960 in that figure is overclocked to 4.1 GHz. It is not further specified in the figure, but mostly these overclocks are constant, meaning the cpu runs all the time at 4.1, so without turbo boost. It therefore uses a lot of power and creates a lot of heat. In my opinion not necessary. An 18 core Xeon would run a lot slower at a 16 or 18 core load, I don’t know the numbers by heart but I guess below 3 GHz, still enough to stream a lot of voices, but not as many as the 7960 or 7980. Troels runs a 512 GB dual Xeon single system, so yes, it is possible. Btw, with a low number of active (100%) threads, the Xeon will turbo boost to high frequencies.


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## Olfirf (Jul 29, 2018)

Scrianinoff said:


> Note that the 16 core 7960 in that figure is overclocked to 4.1 GHz. It is not further specified in the figure, but mostly these overclocks are constant, meaning the cpu runs all the time at 4.1, so without turbo boost. It therefore uses a lot of power and creates a lot of heat. In my opinion not necessary. An 18 core Xeon would run a lot slower at a 16 or 18 core load, I don’t know the numbers by heart but I guess below 3 GHz, still enough to stream a lot of voices, but not as many as the 7960 or 7980. Troels runs a 512 GB dual Xeon single system, so yes, it is possible. Btw, with a low number of active (100%) threads, the Xeon will turbo boost to high frequencies.


This topic is really killing me!  Whenever I thought, I understood how to choose the specs of my upcoming system to the best use, some other factor comes into play that questions everything again ...
So, in you opinion, if I were to built a slave PC with just VEpro and lots of Kontakt instances running, what would currently be the best choice? I want at least 128gigs of ram, as much voices as possible and preferably quiet operation (it would be ok, if the noise goes up with huge load on the system, but I wouldn't want a system that is constantly running at its max). What would be the best of the current processors to get that? Or are 2 separate slave PCs still way more effective? E.g. two separate i7 with 64gb ram each better than one i9 with 128gb?
And how does troels' WS with a dual xeon processor make sense? I thought that the dual processors were causing much more latency and therefore reduce the number of voices? Argh! My head is smoking ...


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## mixtur (Jul 29, 2018)

Several DAWs are designed to process everything in one audio path (ex 1 channel) one core. This is true for Live for instance. Clock speed is consequently more important than additional cores (currently that is). 

6 cores seems to be the current sweet spot for an Intel platform.


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## Scrianinoff (Jul 29, 2018)

Olfirf said:


> This topic is really killing me!  Whenever I thought, I understood how to choose the specs of my upcoming system to the best use, some other factor comes into play that questions everything again ...
> So, in you opinion, if I were to built a slave PC with just VEpro and lots of Kontakt instances running, what would currently be the best choice? I want at least 128gigs of ram, as much voices as possible and preferably quiet operation (it would be ok, if the noise goes up with huge load on the system, but I wouldn't want a system that is constantly running at its max). What would be the best of the current processors to get that? Or are 2 separate slave PCs still way more effective? E.g. two separate i7 with 64gb ram each better than one i9 with 128gb?
> And how does troels' WS with a dual xeon processor make sense? I thought that the dual processors were causing much more latency and therefore reduce the number of voices? Argh! My head is smoking ...


1. Really 'is it on or is it off?' silent ==> 8700K overlocked to 4.7Ghz, with Turbo Boost ON!, with silent air cooler, silent fans and silent PSU; see more specs in my 8700K post. Just 64GB as max though. Not enough for a purged but huge template. However more than enough for an inactive/frozen tracks 8TB samples template (my favourite), if you can live with the 2 seconds activation/unfreeze. Bonus, one dead silent system that can run everything, very very busy orchestrations with everything you _need(ed)_ active, the rest (+90% of your samples) deactivated. Extra bonus, you can use the same workflow on the go, on a 32 GB laptop for example.

2. 128GB: 7980xe overclocked to 4.1-4.5G Ghz, no question. On a few active Diva threads a Xeon would perform equally fast, once the thread count rises the Xeon succumbs and it will stream less voices per core than the 7980xe.

3. 256GB: Xeon, no choice. Freeze your Diva tracks, when finished or intermittently, but once you go down that road, you realize you could have bought a laptop with 32 GB without needing anything else, saving yourself a lot of money, a lot of hassle, and the freedom to be on the go with the same workflow. If it just weren't for those pesky 2 seconds activation/unfreeze wait times.

4. 512GB and up: single motherboard with 2xXeon. Exotic, and you might spend more time on IT than on music if you're not careful. Btw, dual Xeons have higher 'latency', it's however a completely different kind of latency, memory access latency between the channels connected to the other Xeon, it's higher latency in the order of nanoseconds or worst-case microseconds, not audio latency in the order of milliseconds. 1 millisecond is one million nanoseconds. The higher memory access latency of the dual xeon will not be a show stopper. Choosing crazy high DRAM speeds for a 7980xe is also useless, the memory access times (latency) do not drop, only throughput rises a bit, which is not a bottleneck in the first place.


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## Olfirf (Jul 29, 2018)

Scrianinoff said:


> 3. 256GB: Xeon, no choice. Freeze your Diva tracks, when finished or intermittently, but once you go down that road, you realize you could have bought a laptop with 32 GB without needing anything else, saving yourself a lot of money, a lot of hassle, and the freedom to be on the go with the same workflow. If it just weren't for those pesky 2 seconds activation/unfreeze wait times.


Thanks! Well, if I would have a 2 computer setup, wouldn't a combination of a 8700k as main machine with an additional slave Xeon with up to 256gb of ram make sense? All the Divas and CPU-hungry resources would run on the main machine, while the Xeon could hold a huge template, while staying silent as well. The only thing I wonder: how many voices could I expect to stream from that computer? Enough for very complex arrangements with lots of fast legato lines, library layering, etc, etc?


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## Olfirf (Jul 29, 2018)

And most important: are there any benchmark tests including voice streaming with the recent Xeon processors? I thought about a Xeon W 2155. How far would that get me regarding voices? I am just watching a reduced HP Z4 G4 with that processor on board ...


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## Scrianinoff (Jul 29, 2018)

Indeed, good point, the Xeon would stay silent as well, because it would use roughly the same electrical power as an overclocked 8700K, that is, it would be as silent when equipped with the same ultra quiet parts, PSU, air cooler (the Noctua's are _not_ silent!!), fans.

It should be enough, but if you are a hard liner, and want to load absolutely everything of your 8TB of sample libs, including the 70% you will never ever use, but 'just in case', you will definitely run into problems, as I did. On top of that, the constant balancing act with every update for Windows + Cubase +VE Pro + Kontakt + Play, with an everything active template and a 95% memory load _will_ break things time and time again, turning you steadily into an IT guy. Replacing Cubase + VE Pro in that equation to Reaper made my life a lot easier, with everything in the 8TB template deactivated in a new project, and all activated tracks during a project up to and including its completion can remain active even for very complex projects on the 8700K alone. On the 32 GB laptop, only for the most complex projects do I need to freeze a few heavy tracks, but then I can work on the same project in the studio and on the go. And that's a _real_ benefit for me.


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## Olfirf (Jul 29, 2018)

Scrianinoff said:


> Indeed, good point, the Xeon would stay silent as well, because it would use roughly the same electrical power as an overclocked 8700K, that is, it would be as silent when equipped with the same ultra quiet parts, PSU, air cooler (the Noctua's are _not_ silent!!), fans.
> 
> It should be enough, but if you are a hard liner, and want to load absolutely everything of your 8TB of sample libs, including the 70% you will never ever use, but 'just in case', you will definitely run into problems, as I did. On top of that, the constant balancing act with every update for Windows + Cubase +VE Pro + Kontakt + Play, with an everything active template and a 95% memory load _will_ break things time and time again, turning you steadily into an IT guy. Replacing Cubase + VE Pro in that equation to Reaper made my life a lot easier, with everything in the 8TB template deactivated in a new project, and all activated tracks during a project up to and including its completion can remain active even for very complex projects on the 8700K alone. On the 32 GB laptop, only for the most complex projects do I need to freeze a few heavy tracks, but then I can work on the same project in the studio and on the go. And that's a _real_ benefit for me.


No, my reasoning behind going for 256 gb of Ram is not loading just about anything I own! Ijust need my favorite orchestral libraries loaded, like Berlin Series. But I would probably do something like loading all strings, brass woodwind and most used percussion purged and deactivating the libraries I don't use every day (like the ark series, some of the expansions like SFX). So, with the mentioned 2 seconds waiting time of activating those, they could be used. I also think by going with that amount of memory, I can stay way clear of using something like 90%! Otherwise, 128gb would be more than enough and for the start I might even start with 128gb. It would be good to know, though, that I could go up from there at any time.


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## EvilDragon (Jul 29, 2018)

Scrianinoff said:


> (the Noctua's are _not_ silent!!)



But they're whispering at least (and Fractal Design takes the rest with their soundproofing cases)! And they look fucking awesome, as well. (D15 over here, love it!)


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