# Advice on building a PC slave for VEPro appreciated



## stargazer (Jun 24, 2020)

Today I run VEPro Server and Pro Tools on the same Mac, but I’m about to get a PC slave for an additional VEPro Server installation, to divide the load.

I’ve been looking at:
Intel Core i9 10900 2.8 GHz 20MB








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ASUS PRIME Z490-P





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VENGEANCE® LPX 64GB (2 x 32GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16 Memory Kit - Black





VENGEANCE® LPX 64GB (2 x 32GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16 Memory Kit - Black


VENGEANCE LPX memory is designed for high-performance overclocking. The heatspreader is made of pure aluminum for faster heat dissipation, and the eight-layer PCB helps manage heat and provides superior overclocking headroom.




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Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB








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Need some advice to find the sweet spot between price and performance:

• Any thoughts on a small (250GB) M.2 SSD for Windows 10 vs a larger one where I could also put some of the sample libraries?
There are two M.2 slots available, so I’m gonna get as large drives as I can afford there, but maybe it’s better to keep the OS drive dedicated?

• Further SSD:s - Would there be a lot to gain with M.2:s on a PCIe card compared to 6GB SATA SSD:s for streaming samples?
Today I use a few mechanical SATA drives in my MacPro5,1. Should I add one of those in the slave, or would it bottleneck the SSD:s performance in some way?

• Thoughts on the i9 10900 2.8 GHz vs a faster CPU?

• Would you take the read speed of SSD:s or DRAM into account?

• Start with 64GB RAM and possibly add 64 more later or get 128 GB at once at the expense of less storage space?

• Advice on Ethernet switch? Also, is there some easy way to move files over Ethernet from the Mac (with Wi-Fi) to the PC, or should I get a Wi-Fi card for the PC for downloads, updates etc? I intend to build a template on the PC and then avoid interacting with it more than necessary, e.g. starting it up in the morning.

Any thoughts appreciated!


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## merlinhimself (Jun 24, 2020)

if youre set on the new 10 core I would invest in more RAM to make it worth it. I built a PC back in 2016 with a 6 core i7 and 64GB of RAM, and I have had 0 issues with performance, you could definitely make something cheaper that will perform as much as you need it. For VEP Machines they dont need much really, especially if theyre hosting 90% kontakt instances.

EDIT: (knock on wood) about the 0 performance issues


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## JohnG (Jun 24, 2020)

hi there,

the tech is moving so fast that I won't comment on everything.

A few tips:

1. Be sure your CPU can clock at 4.0GHz or better to handle some of the heavy scripting that samples are using now. I have read some people who seem to know a lot describe amazing performance from low-clock but many, many cores, but my own experience with string libraries is that you need 4.x or higher.

2. I have not seen any data to support the hypothesis that faster RAM speed does anything for music composing. Maybe it does, but all I've seen are testimonials and hunches.

3. Ok -- smart people whom I respect (like @chimuelo on the forum here) advocate the M.2 drives. They know more than I do. Anecdotally, for myself, not scientific, having now installed on one PC a PCIe card that had multiple SSDs wired into it and, on another PC one of the very expensive Intel Optane PCIe drives, I am not convinced they're any better than a run-of-the-mill Samsung 'regular' SSD for streaming samples. I haven't discerned any benefit either from the M.2. However, have not done proper experimenting so take it for what it's worth. It just seems that a boring SSD does the trick.

*Apple Instead*

The next computer I buy is not going to be a PC. I am totally sick of Windows and all the BS you have to go through to strip out the nonsense -- then when you "update" you have to strip it out again. Everyone says "Apple is expensive" but I am able to operate with one that's 11 years old as my DAW. PCs seem cheap but require non-stop vigilance, and that's for the three I have that are recent AND are almost never connected to the internet.

Also, see Charlie Clouser's post in this thread: https://vi-control.net/community/th...s-missed-the-big-apple-story-this-week.94978/ He says it all.


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## merlinhimself (Jun 24, 2020)

Also, definitely keep your OS drive separate.
And as for the drives I would totally make use of your m2 drives, just be sure to do your research as using the m2 slots takes away other capabilities on the mobo
RAM Speed with SSD speed is great to load up the session fast.

with the ethernet you could totally use a switch, ive found it somewhat difficult to setup as networking isnt my thing so i just did ethernet to ethernet port. For sharing I use this program called sharemouse which is great, you can copy or drag and drop files from each machine too.


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## stargazer (Jun 25, 2020)

JohnG said:


> A few tips:
> 
> 1. Be sure your CPU can clock at 4.0GHz or better to handle some of the heavy scripting that samples are using now. I have read some people who seem to know a lot describe amazing performance from low-clock but many, many cores, but my own experience with string libraries is that you need 4.x or higher.


Thank you, JohnG!
I’m a novice when it comes to PC/Windows.
The CPU I’m looking at is a 2.8 GHz, 5.2 GHz with turbo, but no overclocking.
So, if it’s turbo you’re referring to, it seems to be ok.
What about overclocking?


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## stargazer (Jun 25, 2020)

merlinhimself said:


> Also, definitely keep your OS drive separate.
> And as for the drives I would totally make use of your m2 drives, just be sure to do your research as using the m2 slots takes away other capabilities on the mobo
> RAM Speed with SSD speed is great to load up the session fast.
> 
> with the ethernet you could totally use a switch, ive found it somewhat difficult to setup as networking isnt my thing so i just did ethernet to ethernet port. For sharing I use this program called sharemouse which is great, you can copy or drag and drop files from each machine too.



Thanks, merlinhimself!
Sharemouse seems interesting if it works between Mac and PC.
I think I’m gonna go for a KVM solution, or even manually switch the display input, since I’m hoping the slave is gonna be a set and forget satellite.


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## JohnG (Jun 25, 2020)

stargazer said:


> Thank you, JohnG!
> I’m a novice when it comes to PC/Windows.
> The CPU I’m looking at is a 2.8 GHz, 5.2 GHz with turbo, but no overclocking.
> So, if it’s turbo you’re referring to, it seems to be ok.
> What about overclocking?



It does sound promising, but I always turn off anything labeled "turbo" on my BIOS. In the past, people have told me, that has been a kind of trick word for "throttling down when not needed" or, put another way, that the computer is going to decide when to turn on the extra juice. That's fine for spreadsheets or maybe highly buffered processes like video rendering, but not sure about it for real-time audio.

By contrast with throttling, I like to overclock to 4.x GHz, leave it fixed, leave all the cores on full all the time. 

Maybe in this case "turbo" means something else?


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## JohnG (Jun 25, 2020)

stargazer said:


> I think I’m gonna go for a KVM solution, or even manually switch the display input, since I’m hoping the slave is gonna be a set and forget satellite.



I still use a KVM setup to switch among 3 PCs, but I think I've read that there are satisfactory software solutions now that are cross platform. I am not looking forward to the day my KVM switch dies...


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## stargazer (Sep 3, 2020)

So, a few months later I’m ready to put together my PC slave.
Any final advice regarding the following list?

Right now the Samsung 970 EVO 500GB is on sale.
It’s got a bit slower write speed than the EVO Plus (2.300 vs 3.200 MB/sec). Will that matter for a system drive in a machine built mainly to stream samples?

*Gigabyte Z490 VISION D
Intel Core i9 10900K 3.7 GHz 20MB
Corsair 128GB (4x32GB) DDR4 3200MHz CL16 Vengeance LP

Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB (for Windows 10 Pro)
Intel 660p 2TB
Samsung 870 QVO SATA SSD 4TB

Corsair RM750 750W (2019)
Noctua NH-U12S chromax.black*


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## JonS (Sep 3, 2020)

JohnG said:


> hi there,
> 
> the tech is moving so fast that I won't comment on everything.
> 
> ...


I agree with what John said. I have both SSDs and NVMe drives and when it comes to streaming off disk inside Kontakt I don’t see any performance difference. The only place I do see a speed enhancement is when you first load up VEPro off NVMe it will open up your template faster but operationally that’s it as there are no playback improvements. 

I have both PC and Macs over the decades and Macs are much less maintenance and more stable to run. Yes, you pay an Apple tax, but “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy...”


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## stargazer (Sep 3, 2020)

JonS said:


> I have both PC and Macs over the decades and Macs are much less maintenance and more stable to run. Yes, you pay an Apple tax, but “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy...”


As a Mac guy, it’s going to be interesting to see how this turns out.


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## JonS (Sep 3, 2020)

stargazer said:


> As a Mac guy, it’s going to be interesting to see how this turns out.


Hamlet doesn’t end well...


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## vitocorleone123 (Sep 3, 2020)

If going with SSD instead of M2, go with something that is as fast as possible (why not) and that also has a lot of durability in terms of rated hours of use. A new, quality SSD will max out the PCI bus at this point, and can saturate a gigabit network. M2 drives are even faster - best used for a boot drive, gaming, and things that need to load quickly even if large in size.

RAM - just get good stuff, for music. For Intel PCs, a balance of lower latency (clk) and reasonable Mhz. AMDs benefit more from really high mhz, in comparison.

Motherboard - if you don't need all those features, that Gigabyte seems like overkill. Make sure to disable wifi on the motherboard, regardless of what you get, if it has that feature.

If you're concerned about stability, don't overclock. *Especially *if you aren't experienced with PCs and Windows. As someone who is, I OC modestly to 5GHz on all 8 cores of a 9900K, and can leave everything enabled in the BIOS to save energy, and never get crashes unless Focusrite messes up with their ASIO driver again. If it were to crash, I'm pretty good at troubleshooting. I don't know Mac as well, so when something goes wrong on one of my MBPs, I have a harder time troubleshooting.

Go with what you know if you don't have the time or desire to learn something new. In other words, if you know and like really expensive shiny appliances Macs, stick with 'em. Yes, Macs used to make life easier than Windows PCs. That started to change once there was Windows 7x64, and rapidly from there with Win10. Macs are just as much a mess, now. Or maybe I should say, "at least as much of a mess, just in different ways". Pick your poison. There's no longer any general "Mac superiority" except in people's heads (yes, each OS can do some things the others can't so there can be reasons to choose one over the other).


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## JohnG (Sep 3, 2020)

@vitocorleone123 

Well...

...I disagree on most points, even though I appreciate your spirit of adventure! I think you don't need the fastest SSDs or the ones rated for the most writes, for two reasons. First, by the time your SSD runs out of useful life, especially if it's a sample drive, some new technology (LightGizmo®) will come along and blow its doors off. Second, the "very good" costs a lot less than the "best," and at this point, the "very good" SSDs perform, for streaming samples at least, well enough for almost any conceivable purpose in music.

Same with RAM. I have 1333 speed RAM in my main mac and it is plenty fast enough to get the job done. I find _more_ RAM is quite helpful but I have never seen any reliable data that shows _faster_ RAM speed providing a meaningful benefit to composers.

Overclocking -- heck yeah! I overclock all my PCs. That's why I have the little "k" next to the processor. I don't de-lid or anything advanced, just push it to where the manufacturer says it's ok and safe.

Still think Apples are just the best. Have two of them and three PCs, but still. Would love to never see a C:\ again, or use Windows' clunky search function -- or all of it. Yes, Windows is fine but a royal pain, especially now that so much happens out of sight. Its advantage in years past has been you could control and customise it, which is exactly what MSFT seems to be trying (no doubt with good reason) to quash.


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## vitocorleone123 (Sep 3, 2020)

Heh. Fair enough. 

I do think quality gear > not, though "top" usually isn't worth the $$. I love Samsung EVO SSDs, myself, because they strike a great balance. I do have an 840 Pro with a zillion hours of use and it's going strong non-stop since it was newly released. I just installed it, again, as the main drive of my Audiogridder server. That thing will run forever. I tend to keep things like that going for at least 10 years because I know I can trust them.

RAM - I think we actually agree. I wasn't advocating for super fast RAM (though, again, there are benefits for AMD systems). Modest speed and latency are where I target, and almost always Corsair. I went 64GB as I don't actually use huge orchestral templates.

Overclocking - I still think anyone (not you, per se, JohnG) who isn't comfortable with building PCs and running a Windows PC should stay away from it and stick with the defaults in the BIOS. I've never de-lidded, either. Yuck. I have a hard enough time with that sort crunch sound you used to get when inserting the Intel CPU into the socket and locking it down. Always freaked me out. I actually slightly downclocked my old PC I'm using as the server - which is an old 3570k I ran OC'd for 6+ years to save a little power since it isn't in heavy regular use.

However, I'll agree to disagree about Apple. I really don't like using MBPs, but have had to for work for many years. Windows is a breeze to manage and use. For me. And I'm a bit unclear how it's possible to dislike things happening behind the scenes on Windows when everything is behind the scenes with Apple, but I won't mention any comparisons again since they seem to not go anywhere constructive. That's why I generally say just stick with whichever you know and like better - both are great overall, and both have flaws and quirks. They're just an OS, so the main thing is being able to do things on top of them, like make music!


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## stargazer (Sep 3, 2020)

JonS said:


> Hamlet doesn’t end well...


Mac-beth


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