# Comments please on upcoming i7 build [postscript]



## Guy Rowland (Feb 9, 2014)

OLD THREAD started in Feb 2014

---------------------------------

There's been a few threads I've been involved with fact-finding, and how I have my (final?) list for my new DAW - I'll probably put the order in the next week or two. So I'm trawling for anything I might have overlooked. System will be built by PC Specialist in the UK - they built my current system which has been mostly well behaved (until recently when a RAM slot has gone belly up on the mobo).

Case - Fractal Design R4
Mobo - Asus X79 Deluxe
CPU - i7 4930k (not overclocked)
CPU fan - Noctua NH-D14-2011
RAM - 64gb Kingston Quad DDR3 1600mhz
Graphics cards - 2x Asus GT610 Fanless
PSU - Corsair RM 750w Modular 80 Plus Gold
Boot drive - 240GB Kingston Hyper 3X SSD
Sample drives - Existing 4x SSD 1x 2TB 7,200 RPM
OS - Win 7 Pro 64bit
Soundcard - Existing RME Babyface

Running Cubase 7.5, VE Pro 4, Pro Tools 10 CPTK, no slave. Driving 4x monitors with a variety of connections.

Current system is a p67, i7 2600k, 32gb RAM.

Just a couple of general notes - I'm keen to keep power / temperature levels as low as possible, and always allow plenty of room so the system is well away from the bleeding edge (hence no overclocking and a PSU twice the power I think I need). Graphics cards is a long story - I'd like to run my Waves plugs in Pro Tools, and there is an incompatibility with multiple monitors / graphics cards from Matrox / ATI. There are single card options, but typically they are about 4x the cost of 2x fanless GT 610s.


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## Peter Emanuel Roos (Feb 9, 2014)

Hello Guy!

I just also bought the same mobo for an i7.

The 4930 can go up to 1866, but the manual of the mobo mentions that due to CPU limitations it will run memory one step slower. So make sure to buy memory above 2000.

Succes! Will follow your adventures here and on FB, cheers


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## Jdiggity1 (Feb 9, 2014)

From my own experience, you can not use the video outputs of two graphics cards.
It will give you a performance boost in the graphics department, but you can still only use the outputs of one card.
This may or may not be true for your case, but I'd look into it if that is the reason for buying two cards.

And for the record, i run the waves plugins successfully with an ATi HD7970.


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 9, 2014)

Hi Peter - I don't quite understand? Isn't one below 1866 1600? I'm sure I read somewhere that no 64gb system supports above 1866 anyway?


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 9, 2014)

Jdiggity1 - I currently use 4 outs from 2x5450s, pretty normal stuff. The Waves issue affects multiple cards in Pro Tools, not Cubase, but not usually dual monitor from one card (except Matrox I think, which doesn't seem to like like Waves at all).


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## Peter Emanuel Roos (Feb 9, 2014)

No, I meant to get up to 1866 you need a bit faster memory.

And the mobo supports SLI and has an SLI cable, so you can easily use 4 monitors.


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 9, 2014)

Ah gotya - thanks Peter. All the wisdom here seems to suggest there's no noticeable difference from 1333 upwards for our use, but I'm all ears if anyone knows otherwise.


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## midi_controller (Feb 9, 2014)

I have almost the same system with a few alterations (3930k, Asus X79 Pro, G.Skill RAM instead of Kingston, Samsung SSDs, ect.). It's a really fantastic set-up, and over the last 8 months I've had it, I've yet to run into any problems or anything that it can't handle. Have you thought about getting the Fractal XL r2 instead? I love the extra room, feels like everything has more room to breathe, and it's easier to get in there and mess around if you need to (although you said someone else was building it, so that might not apply to you). Anyway, looks pretty good, hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy mine! :D


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## Jdiggity1 (Feb 9, 2014)

Guy Rowland @ Mon 10 Feb said:


> Jdiggity1 - I currently use 4 outs from 2x5450s, pretty normal stuff. The Waves issue affects multiple cards in Pro Tools, not Cubase, but not usually dual monitor from one card (except Matrox I think, which doesn't seem to like like Waves at all).



Ok. Must have just been my cards.
Nice looking build! The Kingston HyperX RAM is a good choice as it's low profile, so it won't cause an issue with the mega-bulky Noctua.
That is one sweet motherboard too. What I would do with that many SATA ports....
I will be building essentially the same thing quite soon too.


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## jaeroe (Feb 9, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Are you hosting VEP in Cubase or Protools? If you're hosting it in PT, think about upgrading your PT10+TK to PT11HD. PT11 is much more efficient with VI's and especially VEP, once you figure out a good DAW buffer to VEP buffer setting.

RME is multi client, so you should be able to run Cubase and PT concurrently.

an additional option for picture output (monitor) is something like black magic intensity pro. not sure about using it with cubase, but works with PT fine. they are pretty cheap and do a lot.


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 9, 2014)

Thanks jdiggity and midi - sounds good 

Jaeroe - it's just cubase with ve pro, so no worries there. Funnily enough, I've had bad experiences with the black magic cards in the dubbing suites I work in - every one I've used has needed the movs recoding to avoid aspect ratio problems (always the same thing - sides chopped off).

The rme drivers are great - the only issue running more than one daw is midi, the 2nd to launch can't see the midi inputs. It's great being able to have Audition and PT / Cubase open together though.


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## muk (Feb 9, 2014)

The Fractal Design R4 is a great case. It's very silent and the design is well thought through. I'm not sure which model would correspond to the i7 4930k, but generally if you don't plan to overclock you can get the same performance for less money in a Xeon.


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 9, 2014)

muk @ Sun Feb 09 said:


> The Fractal Design R4 is a great case. It's very silent and the design is well thought through. I'm not sure which model would correspond to the i7 4930k, but generally if you don't plan to overclock you can get the same performance for less money in a Xeon.



Ah, I'll look again into that - I thought it was more expensive last time I checked.

EDIT - hmm, the E5 2620 is the only Xeon cheaper than the 4930 and seems way below in benchmarks? http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu ... [email protected]+2.00GHz


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## jaeroe (Feb 9, 2014)

Guy Rowland @ Sun Feb 09 said:


> Thanks jdiggity and midi - sounds good
> 
> Jaeroe - it's just cubase with ve pro, so no worries there. Funnily enough, I've had bad experiences with the black magic cards in the dubbing suites I work in - every one I've used has needed the movs recoding to avoid aspect ratio problems (always the same thing - sides chopped off).
> 
> The rme drivers are great - the only issue running more than one daw is midi, the 2nd to launch can't see the midi inputs. It's great being able to have Audition and PT / Cubase open together though.



re more than 1 DAW - i run PT (w VEP) and DP (for programming) along side eachother. MIDIoverLAN works fine for connecting all the MIDI. others do it with some of the other options. Only issue becomes tempo syncing at times - Just need to update your MIDI Map in 2 places at once. i've never really had a problem with it. i just keep PT slaved to your other DAW while programming. if you're getting a lot of the dreaded PT CPU overloads, then that can become a drag, but it's usually not a problem. makes printing into protools way easier when you're done.


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 9, 2014)

jaeroe @ Sun Feb 09 said:


> re more than 1 DAW - i run PT (w VEP) and DP (for programming) along side eachother. MIDIoverLAN works fine for connecting all the MIDI. others do it with some of the other options. Only issue becomes tempo syncing at times - Just need to update your MIDI Map in 2 places at once. i've never really had a problem with it. i just keep PT slaved to your other DAW while programming. if you're getting a lot of the dreaded PT CPU overloads, then that can become a drag, but it's usually not a problem. makes printing into protools way easier when you're done.



Sounds good - not essential in my case, but if it's hassle-free it would be useful at times. How do you get the audio to and fro between DP and PT?


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## rgames (Feb 9, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

My experience with the X79 Deluxe and 4930k have been mixed. For real-time apps (like DAW use and video editing) I find it slightly worse than the i7-920 / ASUS P6T that it replaced. I've used ASUS mobo's exclusively for more than a decade and this is the first one I've gotten that's not impressed me for real-time apps.

For raw processor performance it is, of course, much better. So rendering video and mixing down non-real-time is faster (video rendering is easily twice as fast). But editing music/video is slower because it has some real-time bugs that I just can't get rid of - I get stutters in the DAW, video editing occasionally just "hangs" for a moment with no indication of what's going on. Also, the USB implementation is extremely buggy - USB hardware that worked fine on the i7-920/P6T appears and disappears on the X79 Deluxe and causes occasional systems hangs (e.g. I have to keep my external Blu-Ray burner turned off until I want to use it because the system sometimes hangs on boot with it turned on - the P6T never had problems with it).

So it's more powerful when you're letting it crunch away but when you're actively editing something or writing/producing music, it's more sluggish than the i7-920 on the P6T (not a lot, and not enough to be a major concern, but it is more sluggish). And, on top of that, it's flaky: just this past Friday I booted up and started working on a track that would stutter every 20 sec or so. So I rebooted and then it was fine. My i7-920/P6T never did anything like that.

I think ASUS has gone overboard on their catering to the overclocking crowd. This mobo clearly is designed for people who like to sit around and watch their processors crank away on benchmarks - you can tweak so many aspects of the hardware (voltages, timings, etc) that it's mind boggling. ASUS seems to have forgotten that there needs to be some consideration for productivity, as well. Unfortunately, none of the benchmarks really measures productivity, so if ASUS is aiming this board at folks who want to run benchmarks, well, you see where that's going...

However, on the upside, the X79 Deluxe is very new. So hopefully ASUS will release some BIOS fixes to improve real-time-performance (there have already been several). But if this board is aimed at folks who only care about benchmarks then we might not be so lucky - none of the real-time fixes will get them anything on the benchmarks they're running, so ASUS might not be inclined to make the fixes.

So, sure, give it a shot. But keep your receipt handy and push it hard before your return window closes.

Honestly I think Haswell-E will be the next big bump in performance. That's due Q3, I believe. If I hadn't purchased the Ivy-E setup back in Nov, I'd probably hold out for that. In fact, if it really is a good bump and I'm still dissatisfied with the 4930k, I probably will dump the Ivy-E and get a Haswell-E setup.

rgames


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## germancomponist (Feb 9, 2014)

... and I am so happy with my 3770, 32 GB RAM...


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## Reegs (Feb 9, 2014)

germancomponist @ Sun Feb 09 said:


> ... and I am so happy with my 3770, 32 GB RAM...



And I as well 

Looks like a good build, Guy. Have fun assembling!


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## Jdiggity1 (Feb 9, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



rgames @ Mon 10 Feb said:


> Honestly I think Haswell-E will be the next big bump in performance. That's due Q3, I believe. If I hadn't purchased the Ivy-E setup back in Nov, I'd probably hold out for that. In fact, if it really is a good bump and I'm still dissatisfied with the 4930k, I probably will dump the Ivy-E and get a Haswell-E setup.
> 
> rgames



Haswell-E will most surely be a big bump, or at least offer more features (DDR4, 10x SATA 3 etc..). I also planned on holding out, but with Haswell-E CPUs starting at $1000!!??! I'm not so sure anymore..


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## chimuelo (Feb 9, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

I think the X79 chipset and Asus Topology fetching design will be a great/mature board that has decent Server features.
I took a gamble on a brand new Ivy Bridge and was very pleased with the results, as I rarely go for new designs. A few years of live use and day programming and still kickin.
So going for proven tech with an imporved feature set should be a sound investment, and not too expensive either.

ASRock just jumped up the game on Asus with an impressive Storage/Bandwidth design that will only make things tastier for DAW/Storage/Bandwidth geeks like us.

http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/ ... ry-leader/


I will wait for Asus to reply, and pray that it includes the mature Z87 and X79.
Storage and Bandwidth are the only upgrades I want to see for a while.

Have fun Guy, New DAWs are such a pleasure to play with and tweak.. o-[][]-o


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## jaeroe (Feb 9, 2014)

Guy Rowland @ Sun Feb 09 said:


> jaeroe @ Sun Feb 09 said:
> 
> 
> > re more than 1 DAW - i run PT (w VEP) and DP (for programming) along side eachother. MIDIoverLAN works fine for connecting all the MIDI. others do it with some of the other options. Only issue becomes tempo syncing at times - Just need to update your MIDI Map in 2 places at once. i've never really had a problem with it. i just keep PT slaved to your other DAW while programming. if you're getting a lot of the dreaded PT CPU overloads, then that can become a drag, but it's usually not a problem. makes printing into protools way easier when you're done.
> ...



i don't do much audio in DP - really just run production audio and possibly a bounce of something in PT. i record/edit/mix in PT, so i just have DP and PT locked up - syncs very quickly. only time i ever pull something into DP is when i need to be able to see the wave form as i program, which is rare. on the extreme rare occasion when i do edit some audio in DP, it's easy enough to just import that back into PT.

I just really prefer keeping VIs out of DP. great for MIDI, but PT is much better for recording/editing/mix and it's a no-brainer for delivery to a dub stage, game developer, or whatever.

this works fastest for me.


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## SeanAG (Feb 9, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

This is virtually identical to the build I have, and it is killer!

IMO you can save a bit of money going for something like GSkill or Corsair RAM over Kingston. Also I'd take the AX series PSU over the RM. I know RM are supposed to be quiet but AX is higher grade, manufactured by Seasonic, and more efficient. It won't spin up under load from those components anyways so noise is a non-issue. Have fun!


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## Peter Emanuel Roos (Feb 9, 2014)

Very cool topic - now that I am in the same situation as Guy  Thanks for all the comments.

@Richard: what memory speed are you getting with the Asus X79 Deluxe board? Asus is a bit vague on this issue and some people even report 1333 as maximum with 64 Gb. The manual says it uses speeds one step below the installed DIMMs.

Cheers!


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## midi_controller (Feb 10, 2014)

Peter Emanuel Roos @ Sun Feb 09 said:


> @Richard: what memory speed are you getting with the Asus X79 Deluxe board? Asus is a bit vague on this issue and some people even report 1333 as maximum with 64 Gb. The manual says it uses speeds one step below the installed DIMMs.



Wasn't aimed at me but I know on my X79 Pro, which is essentially the same board minus a couple features, I've been running at 1600 @ 64GBs without a problem, and I believe that is exactly what the chips are rated for. I know there have been a few BIOS updates since these boards were released, perhaps those issues are in reference to before the updates were available?


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 10, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

I appreciate everyone's input here, thank you all.

Richard - your report alarms me! I definitely don't want a situation where I get occasional stuttering and need to reboot. Are you sure this is inherent in the mobo and not some combination of RAM / timings / lord knows what? A few others here seem to have that mobo and no-one else has reported it. These kinds of things are the worst to pin down, I know.

Also I definitely don't want to be thinking about switching out something like a mobo after 9 months.

Chimuelo - The stock options from PC Specialist are all ASUS - p9X79 LE, Sabertooth X79, X79 Deluxe and the Rampage IV Black Edition. The Deluxe, on paper, is the best choice for DAW use and from my reading around seemed the most liked in use too, but I'm all ears.

Sean - the Kingston is the only option from PC Specialist for 64gb and they don't seem to offer the AX either. I can switch these out to something custom from me, but (long story) it might cost quite a bit more, so only worth doing if the benefit is really worthwhile. I understand the RM series I'm looking at shouldn't spin up under my load - is it really worth going for the AX?

Oh and Chimuelo - I actually dread getting a new DAW! I find it incredibly tiresome getting it all set up as I like it, and making sure all old projects are compatible with legacy plugs etc. The thing that's pushed me is getting 64gb of RAM - my current ceiling is 32 (now 24 cos a RAM slot has busted), so I just gotta bite the bullet. I'm not a tweaker by any means, I just want something well away from the bleeding edge that is rock solid.


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## rgames (Feb 10, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



Guy Rowland @ Mon Feb 10 said:


> Are you sure this is inherent in the mobo and not some combination of RAM / timings / lord knows what?


It's not a RAM issue - RAM issues generate blue screens and crashes, not stutters or pops. So I do think it is the mobo - all the hardware/software was exactly the same as what I ran on the P6T EXCEPT the firewire interface (I use a Fireface 800) - I used a PCI card on the P6T but the X79 Deluxe doesn't have PCI so I had to get a PCIe card. So that could be the problem but firewire is so mature that I seriously doubt it. Plus, go to the ASUS site and look at all the BIOS updates for the mobo - I think there are already four or five with two in the last month (I haven't tried the most recent one, by the way). I've had lots of ASUS mobos and never had to do a BIOS update before so I'm not sure if that's excessive, but it sure seems like it is.

I spent the better part of two weeks in Dec trying everything I could think of to get it working better: Cubase 6.0 vs. 7.5, Win 7.0 vs. 8.1, drivers, hardware config, BIOS config, etc. In the end it never quite matched the P6T - it was always slightly worse for real-time apps but, of course, much better from a CPU standpoint. Again, the real issue is that it's flaky - it'll boot up one day and be fine then have troubles on the next.

Like I said, give it a shot but make sure you can return it if you run in to issues. It might work fine for your setup.

The real problem is that it's really hard to come up with meaningful benchmarks for DAW use. There's the DAWBench stuff but who uses 200+ compressors in a project? There's also a DAWBench streaming benchmark but it's not representative of anything, so it's basically no use. So I created my own benchmark that represents writing for a full virtual orchestra and, based on that benchmark, the X79 Deluxe is not as good as the P6T. It's close, and the difference is not a practical concern but it is a little annoying, like the occasional reboot required for the stuttering problem.

@Peter: I have 64 GB running at 1866 but also tried it at 1600 and it made no difference that I could discern. Setting the memory timing is tricky because the BIOS is buggy - you have to manually set it but the interface is screwed up - can't remember exactly how, but I recall it took some figuring out.

rgames


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## EastWest Lurker (Feb 10, 2014)

Is it possible that MSI mobos are more reliable than Asus? Just asking.


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## jaeroe (Feb 10, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Is there no site where you can look up builds based on use? That is one of the many fantastic things about Tonymacx86. It's a hackintosh site, but you can quickly look up what hardware and software combinations are working well for people. They have good info on successful audio builds and people are good about updating. Makes doing a new build really easy. Last time I built a PC I had to trouble shoot for 2 weeks or so. The two hack builds i've done, thanks to that site, i had up and running in a day, and all was good.

Would be great if someone made a site like that for PC, or even if someone started a section for that on the forum here. (search engine would probably need some improvements to be of real help here, though).


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## rgames (Feb 10, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



jaeroe @ Mon Feb 10 said:


> Is there no site where you can look up builds based on use?


I doubt it because those types of discussions always wind up being "works great for me" or "doesn't work great for me" without any meaningful way to compare to what that means for your specific setup.

You need to know what, exactly, the system is being asked to do: how many voices, how many synths, how many EQ's, how many reverbs, etc. Without that info, it's impossible to compare.

In the example I gave above, I used the *exact same* projects on two different systems, so the comparison is meaningful.

Jay - I doubt MSI is more reliable. As I said, I've had really good luck with ASUS in the past. The X79 Deluxe, though, has not impressed me (again, it's not bad, just not as good as what I've experienced in the past).

I get the feeling ASUS rushed it into production to take advantage of the hype surrounding the release of Ivy-E. Ivy-E didn't even require a new mobo - it uses the same X79 chipset that's been around for a few years. I assume other mobo manufacturers released updated boards for Ivy-E but ASUS was the first. Maybe they concentrated too hard on being the first...

rgames


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 10, 2014)

Thanks for the info Richard. I just checked my current mobo - the p67 had 4 BIOS updates in the first two months, so doesn't look unusual for the x79 deluxe. I see the latest x79 (as a few others are) is for "system stability" - if you're still having issues, its gotta be worth checking each of these updates, surely?

Your experience is definitely concerning, but I have a lack of other viable alternatives at the moment. I guess the p9X79 LE with a PCIE sata card is an option - that would itself need researching for compatibility and reliability.


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## jaeroe (Feb 10, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



rgames @ Mon Feb 10 said:


> jaeroe @ Mon Feb 10 said:
> 
> 
> > Is there no site where you can look up builds based on use?
> ...



that's exactly the point of why a site like that would be useful. the site i mentioned is a community of people sharing their knowledge of building PCs, in this case, specifically to run various versions of the Mac OS. instead of repeating the same conversations (as often happens here), you look up what it is you want to do (say use Logic, the audio interface you have, and what processor and OS you're looking to run, and maybe VEP) and you see all the related threads. any successful builds (which have their own section in the forum) hop up quickly.

when there are problems, knowledgeable people often chime in pretty quickly and people get to the bottom of their issues quickly. as time goes on, people know what works well with what hardware/software, and what people have been having problems with.

if you're 'doing the exact same thing' and people are getting varying results, clearly not all of the related info is being provided. such as site could help isolate where the problem actually lies.


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## khollister (Feb 10, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

I cannot make a direct comparison to a similar build as Richard has done, so any comments about performance is strictly anecdotal. However, I have not experienced the stuttering or other glitchy behavior he has when using it as a VEP slave. Of course, there are no audio interfaces and no USB devices (other than eLicensor & iLok).

I do not doubt RIchard's problems for a minute, but I am a little skeptical of the MB necessarily being the problem for all of the issues. I could believe the USB problems might be the MB (there are 2 USB 3 controllers on the Deluxe - have you tried both RIchard?) and the stutters might be latencies due to something MB related, but the general lack of performance seems unlikely to be MB based unless there is something configured incorrectly in the BIOS.

Guy - while the Deluxe looked good on paper (2 ethernet ports, extra SATA3 ports, etc), my experience with the extra bells & whistles has been poor. A few observations:
* The wifi is unreliable with my Airport Extreme. I had intended to possibly use it for my internet connection with the VEP traffic routed over a separate ethernet subnet. 
* The ASMedia and Marvell add-on SATA3 controllers are single lane only - limited to 500 MBs. They are not much use for multiple SSD sample drives and the ASMedia one only manages 400 MBs anyway
* I am using the 2 ethernet ports (Intel for VEP, RealTek for general internet) but Intel ethernet PCIe cards are quite cheap.

In hindsight, one of the cheaper Asus X79 MB's would do fine. But I am happy so far wtih the Deluxe in my case.[/list]


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## rgames (Feb 10, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



khollister @ Mon Feb 10 said:


> I do not doubt RIchard's problems


Again - they're not significant problems, just annoyances. There's no practical impact on my productivity and workflow. The point is that the new system just isn't any better than the old when benchmarked in the manner I described. In fact, it's slightly worse, but it still runs most projects with no issues. If you're not stressing the system then you might never know (that's where the benchmarks would come in handy).

Unfortunately you have to just buy the stuff and see how it works in your specific setups for the specific types of music you write.

The X79 Deluxe / 4930k is not "bad", it's just not any better than an i7-920 / P6T for producing the types of music I write.

For reference, this video shows the benchmarks I use: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtBxZaUB8p8

rgames


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 10, 2014)

Hmm, perhaps I should start canvassing opinions on 6gb sata cards? I looked up a couple online and immediately found "doesn't work with my rig / terrible transfer speeds" kinds of posts.


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## rgames (Feb 10, 2014)

Guy Rowland @ Mon Feb 10 said:


> Hmm, perhaps I should start canvassing opinions on 6gb sata cards? I looked up a couple online and immediately found "doesn't work with my rig / terrible transfer speeds" kinds of posts.


Or wait for Haswell-E - that'll have 10x SATA 6 Gbps native on the Intel chipset!

As said above, the Asmedia controllers on the X79-Deluxe are crap. I use them for non-critical stuff (pictures, etc). You only get two decent SATA 6 Gbps on the X79-Deluxe. That was one of the biggest criticisms of Ivy-E - no new chipset, so you're stuck with the same two SATA ports from a few years ago.

rgames


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 10, 2014)

rgames @ Mon Feb 10 said:


> Guy Rowland @ Mon Feb 10 said:
> 
> 
> > Hmm, perhaps I should start canvassing opinions on 6gb sata cards? I looked up a couple online and immediately found "doesn't work with my rig / terrible transfer speeds" kinds of posts.
> ...



I'm kinda committed to now, really. And (as someone already posted) the new chips will be v expensive for a while.

Performance wise, I've no doubt the 4930 will be all I need - my current system does extremely well. It's just an issue of SATA ports really, which the right card will solve.


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## rgames (Feb 10, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



rgames @ Mon Feb 10 said:


> For reference, this video shows the benchmarks I use: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtBxZaUB8p8


Also FYI - that video shows how many samples you can stream from an i5 2500k for a variety of libraries. The 4930k / X79-Deluxe gives the same performance.

So if you just want to stream samples, Ivy-E is overkill.

rgames


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## rgames (Feb 10, 2014)

Guy Rowland @ Mon Feb 10 said:


> Performance wise, I've no doubt the 4930 will be all I need - my current system does extremely well. It's just an issue of SATA ports really, which the right card will solve.


Let us know what card you come up with - I'll probably add one at some point.


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## midi_controller (Feb 10, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



rgames @ Mon Feb 10 said:


> rgames @ Mon Feb 10 said:
> 
> 
> > For reference, this video shows the benchmarks I use: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtBxZaUB8p8
> ...



As a slave computer, I'll probably agree with you. Why anyone would use a 4930k for a slave... I'm not entirely sure. But for a stand alone system, the extra horsepower is great, especially if you use a lot of reverb instances like I do. I moved away from the multi-computer setup a few builds ago and I'm much happier, everything is just so much more simple, and my current build didn't seem to struggle much even using a ~40GB template of the Hollywood series (I've since moved to only Kontakt libraries). So that is a good point, if you are thinking about building a slave computer, a 4930k is a bit much. :D


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 10, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

How does this look for a controller?

http://www.adaptec.com/nr/pdfs/ds_series_7h.pdf

8x 6gb connectors (might need some mini sas to sata connectors?) - just over £200 here, not exactly cheap but looks more promising than the cheap cards I've seen reviews of. Review here (I think...)

http://www.storagereview.com/adaptec_se ... ers_review

Richard, you're the master of this stuff, I've no idea really... what do you think?


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## khollister (Feb 10, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Guy - performance wise, the Adaptec card will be fine, but be aware that it has SAS connectors so you will need SAS - SATA breakout cables (Monoprice sells them cheap here in the US).

OWC sells a SAS RAID card that is fairly inexpensive that I believe has drivers for Windows.

Unless you are planning on running a file server from this thing, I doubt you need more than 1 or 2 more SATA3 ports. HDD's will run at full speed on SATA2 and your boot/app drive will not really benefit too much from SATA3 vs SATA2.

I ended up using a spare Sonnet Tempo PCIe SSD card. Apricot makes similar cards that accept a standard 2.5" SSD and perform quite well. Assuming you have the spare slots, this is the most cost effective way to add another SATA3 SSD. The only thing you really need on a SATA3 port are your sample SSD's.

I'm not even sure how critical SATA3 is for sample SSD's - the huge advantage that SSD's have for sample streaming is the random seek performance, and I'm not convinced that SATA2 vs SATA3 makes too much difference there. The 2:1 speed difference everyone talks about is for sequential reads/writes. This is a big deal if you are talking about video, but for our purposes ...

If you just need a 3rd SATA3 port for a sample drive, just use one of the Marvell ports. You will get 500 MBs versus maybe 550 MBs on an Intel port or Sonnet/Apricot PCIe card, but I can't imagine you would ever tell the difference.

It's like the RAM speed thing - you will never be able to tell the difference in real life. 

Keith


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 11, 2014)

@rgames Try some other USB drivers. That helped me a lot a year ago. I always thought the newest certified driver by the original developer (Intel) must be the best. In this particular instance, it wasn't. It bumped up the workable buffer settings for my USB soundcard and I still had glitches, and roughly every twenty minutes my USB3 harddrive disconnected. Look up "WD Passport disconnects randomly" in Google and you will be amazed how many people fell victim to this. Now, the moment I chose a stable driver from my laptop manufacturer that was intended to be used with my specific BIOS version, all problems went away.

CPU is the bottleneck in my setup. I am using 4 SSDs in my laptop that has an i7-3820QM overclocked to 4.1kHz and 32GB ram. It's about 130% the cpu performance of my i7-2600k desktop slave system. I must say that is including the use of reverb plug-ins, such as MIR, SPAT, ValhallaRoom, B2, Altiverb. When I only use the laptop for sample streaming in VE-Pro, I think I can run 3 or 4 full orchestras, maybe even more, at least much more than I need.


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 11, 2014)

For anyone that is looking for extra Sata3 ports, whether or not in Raid setup. I have nothing but good things to say about the cheap Highpoint RocketRaid 2720SGL card.

2.5 years ago I posted this: http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtop ... 54#3591054

The card runs perfectly fine in my 2600k system for two years already. I can definitely say that Tomshardware was wrong. My assumption in that post was correct, luckily.

This might also be interesting: http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtop ... 44#3744544


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Ah the perils of canvassing opinions! Keith, Richard has just posted pretty much opposite views in this thread - http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3770441 



> You definitely want your samples on the 6 Gbps ports, so fill those up first with your sample drives. The 6 Gbps port will also help your OS (and things like swap files and scratch drives) but for DAW use the effect on OS is secondary to the effect on samples. So if you have two SSD's for samples, I'd put those on the 6 Gbps ports then put the OS on a 3 Gbps port.



All we care about is real world performance, not benchmarks, and I'll confess I'm still confused over what matters where, at least in part because people seem to quite confidently be suggesting different things. While it seems the prevailing wisdom is that RAM speed doesn't matter, I've got no real sense of whether 6gbs really matters. I get the logic that the seek time is all-important (and 3 or 6 gb/s doesn't matter there), but Richard suggests voice count will be affected too.

Scrianinoff - that looks like a great solution. I have 5x SSDs (including a boot drive), and I want to run JBOD. All the mobos have 2x true 6gbs ports and a number of other sata ports (I have 4x conventional drives it would be useful to have in there). The real problem I can see is that it's only available in the US, so it'll be import duties to pay and a whole loada fuss if something doesn't work with it.


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

http://www.scan.co.uk/search.aspx?q=2720sgl


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



Scrianinoff @ Tue Feb 11 said:


> http://www.scan.co.uk/products/high...-pci-e-20-x8-to-sas-sata-iii-raid-controller-



Oh well found! That link didn't work but this does

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/highpoin ... sgl(rr2720)-8-channel-internal-pci-e-20-x8-to-sas-sata-iii-raid-controller-

That looks dirt cheap too. You might have found my answer here - so now potentially looking at the p9X79 LE and this as a combo.


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_sacat ... _PrefLoc=1


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



Guy Rowland @ Tue 11 Feb said:


> [...] All we care about is real world performance, not benchmarks, and I'll confess I'm still confused over what matters where, at least in part because people seem to quite confidently be suggesting different things. While it seems the prevailing wisdom is that RAM speed doesn't matter, I've got no real sense of whether 6gbs really matters. I get the logic that the seek time is all-important (and 3 or 6 gb/s doesn't matter there), but Richard suggests voice count will be affected too.
> 
> Scrianinoff - that looks like a great solution. I have 5x SSDs (including a boot drive), and I want to run JBOD. All the mobos have 2x true 6gbs ports and a number of other sata ports (I have 4x conventional drives it would be useful to have in there). The real problem I can see is that it's only available in the US, so it'll be import duties to pay and a whole loada fuss if something doesn't work with it.


Indeed, we only care about real world DAW performance. Unfortunately, due to the lack of meaningful comapartive DAW performance results, we have to find other ways to assess the performance of system components and their combinations. That's where benchmarks come in. As some people here like to portray fellow forum members as benchmark fanatics, I think nobody here in their right mind runs benchmark for the sake of benckmarks or just for the fun of it. Benchmarks are mostly interesting when they are done by others that you can trust and that can help you make a proper assessment. The tricky part is in properly assessing an interpreting the values and what they mean for DAW application. For SSDs it's NOT the Sata6 throughput figure of 500+ MB/s. It's the 4K-64Thrd performance shown by AS-SSD. I have 3 types of SSDs that are all above 500 MB/s, yet they vary a factor 3x in sample streaming performance, as can be assessed by looking at the 4K-64Thrd performance before buying any of them. The devil is in the details. 

Concerning JBOD, I will always choose RAID-0 over JBOD for sample streaming; and Microsoft Raid-0 over Intel Raid-0.
Here I write why I think so (It's the same thread I linked to in my earlier post, the 'might be interesting' link): http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtop ... 44#3744544 The interesting part between Richard and me starts below the performance screenshots, where the meaning of benchmarks, interpretation of their values, Raid en JBOD are discussed.


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Thank you Scrianinoff - I think something weird happened to my last post. Thanks v much for the Scan tip off, this is terrific news - it looks dirt cheap too. You might have found my answer here - so now potentially looking at the p9X79 LE and this as a combo.

As for RAID 0, the thing that's always put me off is if one drive fails, you've lost the lot (if I understand correctly). I guess the answer - such as it is - is to back up the whole lot to a conventional drive, then in case of failure you replace the duff drive and reload the media. Its a biiiit bleeding edge for my liking, but I may have understood wrong.

Thanks for the links - the Windows Disk Managed figures are amazing. Do you run the same kind of voice count tests as Richard?


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## khollister (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



Guy Rowland @ Tue Feb 11 said:


> Ah the perils of canvassing opinions! Keith, Richard has just posted pretty much opposite views in this thread - http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3770441
> 
> 
> 
> > You definitely want your samples on the 6 Gbps ports, so fill those up first with your sample drives. The 6 Gbps port will also help your OS (and things like swap files and scratch drives) but for DAW use the effect on OS is secondary to the effect on samples. So if you have two SSD's for samples, I'd put those on the 6 Gbps ports then put the OS on a 3 Gbps port.



I don't think Richard and I are completely opposite - we both advocate using your SATA3 ports for sample drives as a priority. I just feel that the effect on the OS drive is very minimal. With 64GB of RAM and our specific use, virtual memory is of no concern as far as performance. Unless you use a stopwatch to time how fast your computer boots up, I just don't think using a SATA3 port for the OS drive makes any difference.

The Highpoint card is a virtual clone of the OWC card I believe. It is a dual mini-SAS 8 lane card (also like the Adaptec you linked to). All are a huge improvement over the inexpensive Marvell based 1 and 2 lane cards you usually see.

As to Scrianinoff's benchmarks and assertions to run RAID 0 using Windows Disk Manager, I am going to "No Comment" as I am not familiar with the specific benchmarking app he is using and have not extensively played with stripped sets for this particular application. I will only say I am extremely dubious that the Windows software RAID doubles performance compared to Intel's hardware implementation.


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## khollister (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

One additional general comment about RAID in this application. Given we are concerned with large numbers of concurrent read operations (any one of which is well below the limits of the drive or interface), a RAID 0 implementation cannot exceed the performance of the same number of independent drives (JBOD). In fact, the real world performance will always be less (e.g. the Windows RAID 0 benchmark numbers referenced are not 2X the individual performance).

The only advantage a RAID 0 implementation might have is in the case where the sample libraries were not properly distributed across the JBOD array, thus concentrating the I/O load on one or two devices. The RAID approach does have a convenience advantage in that no attention needs to be paid to load balancing the libraries across the devices, but the parallel concurrent random I/O performance of an optimally configured JBOD array will always be better. Of course a different use case will lead to completely different conclusions.


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



khollister @ Tue 11 Feb said:


> I just feel that the effect on the OS drive is very minimal. With 64GB of RAM and our specific use, virtual memory is of no concern as far as performance. Unless you use a stopwatch to time how fast your computer boots up, I just don't think using a SATA3 port for the OS drive makes any difference.


+1



khollister @ Tue 11 Feb said:


> The Highpoint card is a virtual clone of the OWC card I believe.


Or is it the other way around, the Highpoint 2720 has been around for almost 3 years, I believe it was the first of it's kind in providing 8xSAS/Sata6 with 4 GByte/s PCIe x8 for an entry-level price.



khollister @ Tue 11 Feb said:


> As to Scrianinoff's benchmarks and assertions to run RAID 0 using Windows Disk Manager, I am going to "No Comment" as I am not familiar with the specific benchmarking app he is using and have not extensively played with stripped sets for this particular application. I will only say I am extremely dubious that the Windows software RAID doubles performance compared to Intel's hardware implementation.


AS-SSD was the pioneering SSD benchmark app that gives values that truly assess the performance of SSDs. All major hardware review sites list AS-SSD benchmarks. Anandtech.com and Tomshardware.com have charts comparing SSDs based on AS-SSD results, http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd-charts-2013/AS-SSD-4K-Q64-Random-Read,2786.html (http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd- ... ,2786.html) . AS-SSD measures the maximum throughput and the maximum iops using meaningfull data chunks, i.e. 4K-64Thrd. And, most important, while using incompressible data, which almost all sample libs are made of nowadays, due to encryption and compression.

I was also extremely hesitant to believe the assertion I read somewhere that Windows RAID can be faster than Intel Raid. As I explained in the other threads I linked to, Intel is NOT using HARDWARE RAID in its chipsets, unless you count the driver software to be part of the hardware. All Intel Raid operations take place in the driver, in software. In Windows they also take place in software, just above the driver in the file system stack. One assumption that shows up in some places as an explanation is that Intel's Raid driver is agnostic to what happens in the file system and cannot take advantage of, while Windows Raid can. I have no information that can back up that assumption. 

BACK UP you samples, don't rely on your streaming drive to survive your music making. Just buy a USB3 external drive to store all your samples in.

Another advantage of using 8 x 256GB instead of 2 x 1TB of SSDs, is that if one drive fails, you can reconfigure your Raid to 7 x 256 GB and copy over 1.75TB from your external USB3 drive. You only loose 12.5% of your SSD storage. With the 2x1TB you loose 50%. The main advantages are of course the pre-load times and the maximum number of streaming voices.


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

All fascinating stuff, keep it coming...



Scrianinoff @ Tue Feb 11 said:


> BACK UP you samples, don't rely on your streaming drive to survive your music making. Just buy a USB3 external drive to store all your samples in.



Everything is backed up fine - the issue is about getting up and running quickly really if you have a major failure. There's another whole thread in that I guess. In theory I could have the whole sample set on one USB3 drive, then if the RAID fails, just plug in the USB3 and rename the drive letter and I'm good to go. In practice, I don't know how it would be for performance, and what I'd have to tweak to make it work. Worth thinking about, anyway.


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## rgames (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



Guy Rowland @ Tue Feb 11 said:


> I've got no real sense of whether 6gbs really matters. I get the logic that the seek time is all-important (and 3 or 6 gb/s doesn't matter there), but Richard suggests voice count will be affected too.


I agree that 6 Gbps doesn't matter as much as the seek time. My logic is as follows: you can use the 6 Gbps ports for OS or for samples. The value for OS is pretty minimal even if it is faster, so even if it's not that much of a difference, you might as well use them for the samples.

rgames


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Don't put all your eggs in one basket, they say. I have two 32GB i7 systems, one is a laptop and normally the DAW, one is a desktop and normally the VE Pro slave. I configured and setup both as a self-contained DAW with all essential samples and plug-ins. So if one of them electrically burns out completely, I can still work on the other system.

There are way too many Single Points Of Failure (SPOFs) in a single system to protect yourself from. Make sure you have a separate fully functional system handy.

Working from a USB3 harddrive, while you're accustomed to work from 8xSSD, will drive you crazy. A template that will load in 2 minutes will probably take 2 hours to load from the harddrive, if it doesn't break down before that


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## rgames (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



khollister @ Tue Feb 11 said:


> > You definitely want your samples on the 6 Gbps ports, so fill those up first with your sample drives. The 6 Gbps port will also help your OS (and things like swap files and scratch drives) but for DAW use the effect on OS is secondary to the effect on samples. So if you have two SSD's for samples, I'd put those on the 6 Gbps ports then put the OS on a 3 Gbps port.
> 
> 
> I don't think Richard and I are completely opposite - we both advocate using your SATA3 ports for sample drives as a priority. I just feel that the effect on the OS drive is very minimal.



I guess I'm confused because I think that's what I'm saying, except I think you meant SATA6 ports, not SATA3 ports. I feel the effect on the OS drive is minimal, so you might as well use the SATA6 ports for samples.

rgames


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

No, I think he meant Sata 3.0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA ... 600_MB.2Fs

I agree that it's less confusing to write Sata6 instead.


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## rgames (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Regarding SATA 6 Gbps vs. 3 Gbps, here's another point of reference:

The max voice count I have been able to achieve on any system is about 1500 stereo 24 bit voices (using VSL libraries in VI Pro). That's about 380 MB/s or so.

Given that the max *theoretical* speed of SATA 3 Gbps is a bit under that, it must be the case that the max *practical* speed is actually even a bit less.

Therefore, there must be some advantage of the 6 Gbps port because you're exceeding what you can do on SATA 3 Gbps.

Make sense?


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



rgames @ Tue 11 Feb said:


> [...] That's about 380 MB/s or so. [...]
> 
> Make sense?


That makes a lot of sense. Look at Tomshardware 4K-Q64 chart: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd-charts-2013/AS-SSD-4K-Q64-Random-Read,2786.html (http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd- ... ,2786.html)

Maximum results around? What a coincidence? 380!

Sample streaming is not really 4K, that would be worst case, although Kontakt might probably be tortured close to such small block sizes. What I saw using Windows Perfmon is that most sample libs fetch data using block sizes between 64kB and 256kB. So the real world sample read throughput should be somewhere between 350ish 4k and 520ish 2MB throughput. So 380, sounds right.


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



Scrianinoff @ Tue Feb 11 said:


> Don't put all your eggs in one basket, they say. I have two 32GB i7 systems, one is a laptop and normally the DAW, one is a desktop and normally the VE Pro slave. I configured and setup both as a self-contained DAW with all essential samples and plug-ins. So if one of them electrically burns out completely, I can still work on the other system.
> 
> There are way too many Single Points Of Failure (SPOFs) in a single system to protect yourself from. Make sure you have a separate fully functional system handy.
> 
> Working from a USB3 harddrive, while you're accustomed to work from 8xSSD, will drive you crazy. A template that will load in 2 minutes will probably take 2 hours to load from the harddrive, if it doesn't break down before that



Yes - but for 1 or 2 emergency days, it could well be useful.

Unless you have literally a duplicate rig, constantly backed up, I think switching will always be an issue in practice. I have a 24gb laptop that can run a Pro Tools session or a decent Cubase 7 / VEP session, but once my template starts to get over 20gb (which it assuredly will) then I can forget that for a like-for-like swap. And it won't be much longer before a 32gb system won't be enough either. I really think a duplicate rig is the only way to go to be truly bomb proof, but I don't think I'll be doing that in the short-medium term.

But what you suggest I think points a more reasonable cost-effective way forward, which is to have a subbed down template whose settings match the main one (same VEP channels etc). My template is only getting huge cos I like having every option ready to go, and if I had to shift a few instruments around in an emergency to get (say) LASS rather than CineStrngs in a lite template, it wouldn't be a disaster.

So... back to speeds.... you guys are saying that 380 mb/s is a reasonable maximum to expect? If so (and correct me if I'm wrong) that's exactly the 4k figure of the Samsung just plugged in to a 6 GB/S port as JBOD?


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## chimuelo (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

You could always wait for Asus to match the Thunderbolt 2 ports that ASRock just released, and get a Lacie RAID 0 palm sized external storage device.

As mentioned above we access more than 4k chunks of data, we actually access 4k all the way up through 8092 ( 1MB ) since we access small amounts, then stream sequentially and randomly (during realtime use, i.e. MIDI tracks to VI's).

Below is the RAID 0 benchmarks of the 2 x Samsung XP941 M2 SATA PCI-e SSDs.

If a DAW takes a crap on you, simply having another Slave with TBolt 2 would be a great advantage. Esecially since they are hot pluggable.

Not trying to avert you from your immediate needs, but just showing you the tech I saw at CES 2014, as it's already available and growing by the month.


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Well the 380 coincidence, it is a wild guess, partly a joke, it could be true though, but we would need more information about Richard's setup. What I can say with certainty is that I get more than 380MB/s from my 2 x 1TB Samsung EVOs in Windows Raid0. Of course you could also get more than 380 when you setup the SSDs as JBOD, but then you would have to manually spread the libs across the two SSDs in such a way that in general you use both efficiently when you stream a lot of voices. Using Raid0 the file system is doing that for you. In Windows it's as easy to setup JBOD (spanned volume) as Raid0 (striped volume), Raid1 (mirrored volume), or Raid5 (raid-5 volume). It's your choice.


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



chimuelo @ Tue 11 Feb said:


> You could always wait for Asus to match the Thunderbolt 2 ports that ASRock just released, and get a Lacie RAID 0 palm sized external storage device. [...]
> Below is the RAID 0 benchmarks of the 2 x Samsung XP941 M2 SATA PCI-e SSDs.
> [...]



Nice, looking at the 128kB performance, it's almost half as fast as the more than two year old 2720 Raid-0 solution using tired old Crucial M4's  Look at the Atto screenshot below. More info here: http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews ... 00-ssds/3/

Note that ATTO uses uncompressed (so compressible) data in sequential reads. Samples are randomly accessed and incompressible. AS-SSD gives more realistic results. Atto was initially intended for testing interfaces.

More info on the LaCie Raid0 M2:
http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/ ... 14-update/


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

I'll be honest, I'm getting lost in a blizzard of impenetrable numbers...

I'm a little wary of forever waiting for next tech. Something around the corner will always be bigger, better, faster (except when it arrives when its sometimes disappointing / bug-ridden / incompatible / phenomenally expensive). I try to view things more along the lines of "will something do what I need it to do?"

So my most demanding technical needs are - run a large template (up to, say, 40gb which is 3x the size of my current one which ain't too shabby anyway) and handle a bunch of plugins and VSTs. My current system can do all that, except the size of the template. So I figure doubling the RAM from 32 to 64, swapping a processor for 50% more cores and 50% higher benchmarking and adding a slew of 6gbs ports for more SSDs really ought to do me for the next couple of years work.

I think - relatively - I'm not too demanding on systems like Richard seems to be. The only practical limit I've ever encountered (beyond adding more options in the ever-expanding template) is when using LASS 2's convolution reverbs on all the LASS instances - I was getting a lot of glitching then. Solution - disable the Kontakt reverbs and use my own, a compromise I'm perfectly happy with and won't really try to go back even with more resources. I'm running fully purged now, essentially glitch free, so that's even more reason for me to feel I won't be pushing the new system to any kind of limit - I don't feel I'm anywhere near a practical limit on voice counts, in my case it's been CPU that has been a bigger issue (but no so big that I've even dipped a toe into the overclocked water).

So I don't see a strong practical reason to wait, given the way I work and use the DAW. I don't see an imminent killer feature enabling me to do something I can't yet do. And no doubt 2-3 years down the line I'll buy a new DAW then - probably with non-bleeding edge tech for 2017!

Unless I've missed something?


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 11, 2014)

No Killer Features for Haswell-E. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_%2 ... erformance

Wow! A whopping 6% performance increase! For only 8 to 23% more electrical power drawn so you can overclock less? In that case let's wait for a year! And of course we gladly forgive Intel for all the early adopter problems we face having to install new drivers every other day hoping to get rid of the many glitches of a new chipset (X99), internal (DDR4) memory controller and CPU architecture. Then what about the 8 cores? It's only 1000 euros? That's a steal. A deal catcher indeed! Acting now would be the dumbest thing to do. :roll: 

No killer features for the chipset either. Even the oh so anticipated 10xSata3.0 ports is not a killer feature for our usage, if you think about it. Remember that all chipset data including Sata data needs to go through the DMI port to the CPU, which is only 2Gbytes/s on Sandy Bridge. Will it be much much higher on Haswell-E? I strongly doubt it. 99.999% of the users don't need it. Orchestral DAW geeks fall in the remaining 0.001%. Tough luck. If you don't know about the 2720SGL and its many siblings, that is.

I would say go for it. Buy Ivy-E now.

One little thing about what you wrote earlier. You absolutely are not obliged to buy 64GB in one package. You can perfectly buy 8 times a single 8GB stick, or 4 times a double package, etc. Just make sure it's the same type. And even that is not absolutely necessary, according to some dare devils.

If you go for the 2720SGL, make absolutely sure you insert it in a PCIe port connected directly to the CPU and NOT to the chipset, that is, connect to a PCIe port intended for a graphics card. Also, don't forget to order two cables for the 2720SGL. Each cable connects 4 Sata drives. Under 10 pounds each. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3ware-mu ... ngle-cable They also sell 1 meter long cables for a few pounds more, if 0.5 meter is too cramped.


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Thanks Scrianinoff. So in my case, if I went for the p9x79 LE, that has:

2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (dual x16) *1
1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x8 mode) *1
2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 (low profile)
1 x PCI

I'd have 2x fanless GT 610s... it might get a little crowded in there, but since the 2720SGL is low profile it'll help. I'm not sure which slots go to a chipset, how do I find that out?

(I might go for the Sabertooth... it has a few more USB sockets... the PCI layout looks the same though).


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## LFO (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Guy, you are absolutely correct. No matter when you purchase a system it will be overtaken by newer tech right away. Moore's Law has seen to that! So, know your requirements, purchase to specs that fulfill them, along with some growth, (that you've done, as you described), move on and be happy with your system!

I realized this afternoon that I've practically agonized over what to purchase for my new DAW. I was sold on hexacore until I read useful posts here and realized that I don't need it! So, I can purchase less expensive hardware and still have great performance and capacity and happiness. :lol: 

I sell what you all would consider mainframe computers, (though they aren't, they are zEnterprise and much, much more than a mainframe) and one of the reasons the platform performs so well is because it has lots of large cache, an unmatched amount of parallelism, and what we call system assist processors. System assist processors offload all of the I/O and memory instructions from the main CPU and process the instructions using both out of order execution and (again) parallelism. Why am I bringing this up? Because CPU frequency is no longer as important as it used to be. CPUs are no longer the bottleneck in most cases, what is built around them is.

Wouldn't it be cool if you had 4 large levels of cache around the CPU? What if processes like sample buffering could be off loaded to system assist processors that ran in parallel? If the bus architecture was wider and faster? We would benefit from these kinds of things much more than simply increasing the frequency of the CPU. The benefit of this is seen all the time on zEnterprise. Oracle batch jobs that take 45 minutes to run on an 8 way 3.0 GHz Intel box run in less than 5 minutes on two CPUs on zEnterprise. I see this kind of stuff every day. (And running on Linux on the zEnterprise to boot!) Imagine what effect such high performance I/0 and memory could do for sample libs.

So...a bit off topic...sorry, but interesting, at least to me. 8)


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## rgames (Feb 11, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



Guy Rowland @ Tue Feb 11 said:


> I don't see an imminent killer feature enabling me to do something I can't yet do.


Absolutely correct. Any i7 system is plenty capable for 99% of DAW activities. Any i5 is plenty capable for 99% of slave activities.

Don't fret it.

In terms of making good use of money for DAW use, SSD's are better money spent than CPU but if money is not a concern or you want to do something other than DAW work, then get the most powerful CPU you can afford.

I do think Haswell-E will be the better buy this year in terms of raw performance but, again, I doubt you'll feel limited by Ivy-E for DAW work.

Better is the enemy of good enough...

rgames


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## khollister (Feb 12, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

So all of this discussion prompted me to dig out the OWC SAS controller I have (haven't used it in a while). I installed it in the 4930 slave and compared the AS-SSD performance on my older M4's on it versus the Intel MB ports. Pretty big difference - the MB Intel ports are significantly faster (and yes, the SAS card is in a x16 PCIe slot).

The 4k-64thd numbers in particular were horrible compared to the Intel controller.

I also got to thinking about the discussion on RAID 0 as I realized that with my library proliferation and template expansion lately, I no longer have the confidence in my ability to load balance the sample drives. Given the scalability on the random reads with high queue depth that Scrianinoff pointed out with the AS-SSD tests, I am thinking about using a RAID 0 implementation just to eliminate the headache of load balancing. Having 85% of the best case optimum performance in JBOD versus something possibly quite a bit worse due to manual error sounds pretty practical.

I also need to replace my M4 SSD's apparently, comparing the Evo benchmarks on random reads as well as access latency.

While the 2720 is interesting @ $150 since I have the SAS->SATA cables already, I am somewhat concerned whether it performs as well as the Intel controller on the MB. Also curious if Scrianinoff has tested the HW RAID on the 2720 versus the Windows SW RAID?


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## khollister (Feb 12, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



Guy Rowland @ Tue Feb 11 said:


> Thanks Scrianinoff. So in my case, if I went for the p9x79 LE, that has:
> 
> 2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (dual x16) *1
> 1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x8 mode) *1
> ...



LGA 2011 has 40 PCIe lanes directly from the CPU and 8 more (if I recall correctly) through the chipset. If you check the MB manual, it will describe which PCIe-16 slots to use for up to 3 graphics cards. Since 3 X 16 > 40, one will run at 16 and the other two will step down to 8 lanes each. On the LE, the 3 PCIe 3.0 x16 slots are connected directly to the CPU, but only the first one will always run x16. With 2 video cards and the Highpoint 2720 (an 8 lane card) you will use all 3 x16 slots but one of the video cards and the 2720 will run at 8 lanes. 

Keith


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 12, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Thanks to Richard, Keith and LFO for your posts once again, it's invaluable.

Keith - is there any issue running 8 lanes rather than 16?


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## khollister (Feb 12, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



Guy Rowland @ Wed Feb 12 said:


> Keith - is there any issue running 8 lanes rather than 16?



Not for your purposes. If you were trying to use the second video card for 3D/gaming or video editing/compositing, there would be a performance hit, but for just running multiple DAW windows I wouldn't expect any discernible difference. I'm not even sure if the Nvidia cards you are planning on using will saturate 8 lanes.

The host adapters with dual SAS ports are 8 lane cards anyway. The larger ATTO and Areca cards with 4 SAS ports are 16 lane (big bucks).


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 12, 2014)

Gotya, thanks Keith.


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## rgames (Feb 12, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



khollister @ Wed Feb 12 said:


> So all of this discussion prompted me to dig out the OWC SAS controller I have (haven't used it in a while). I installed it in the 4930 slave and compared the AS-SSD performance on my older M4's on it versus the Intel MB ports. Pretty big difference - the MB Intel ports are significantly faster (and yes, the SAS card is in a x16 PCIe slot).


That's consistent with my experience from a couple years ago - I tested a couple different SATA cards against the built-in Intel controllers and the Intel controllers performed better in terms of max read speeds from ATTO disk benchmark and another I can't recall..

I've wondered if that still holds true. It makes sense - a controller integrated directly into the chipset would, you'd think, be highly optimized to work with that chipset.

That's also part of the reason why I think a Haswell-E setup might be really good - it has 10x Intel SATA III ports.

But, again, better is the enemy of good enough...!

rgames


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## khollister (Feb 12, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

This review of the 2720SGL isn't very encouraging either

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sas ... 028-6.html

It uses a Marvell chip, so I'm not surprised.


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 12, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



khollister @ Thu 13 Feb said:


> This review of the 2720SGL isn't very encouraging either
> 
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sas ... 028-6.html
> 
> It uses a Marvell chip, so I'm not surprised.


Keith, I pointed you all to that with the first link in my first post in this thread. Here it is again: http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtop ... 54#3591054

It's a big statement to make, but it might very well be that the review was bought, and suffice to say not by Highpoint. I've thought this before of Tomshardware, but never had anything for myself to back that up. It could also be that there was something flawed in their testing. Look at the info in my link. Anyway, my personal experience is in line with the other tests. You can imagine I was very disappointed in Tomshardware. It still didn't wear off either. Also, scroll to the bottom of the Tomshardware page I linked to, and you'll find a comment posted by me 2.5 years ago. Of course, they never reacted. A few months later I bought it anyway, and could see in my own tests they were wrong, as I wrote earlier in this thread.

Everybody that has read a few Sata controller reviews, knows that Intel has the highest single Sata channel throughput, both the (for our usage insignificant) total bandwidth (the 500+ MB figures), and the 4k-64Thrd bandwidth. So this shouldn't come as a surprise. However, Intel does not offer a 8xSata6 solution that is faster than the 2720SGL, perhaps a $1000+ server solution, I didn't even bother to check that. So if you want to have insane 4k-64Thrd performance making your Ivy-E CPU the bottleneck, then that's the way to go. Or you can go Richard's way and pretend the storage sub-system will always be the bottleneck. You can also complain all day about the few percent lower performance per channel compared to Intel, but that's the reality right now, with the 2720SGL you have insane 4k-64Thrd Windows Raid0 performance right NOW. Further, it's a gamble whether X99 will be finally delivering this, and even more important whether the chipset itself, and its meager DMI connection to the CPU will support such high multichannel bandwidths. Heck, Intel promised 10 sata lanes for Z68 if I remember correctly.

Keith, a second thing, before you throw your OWC card in the bin. Have a look, again, at a link I posted later on in this thread: http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews ... 00-ssds/3/

It compares an old driver for the 2720SGL to a new one, that new one is now two years old. It might just be that OWC also released an update with similar dramatic improvements.

For the rest, read my posts throughout this thread, the info is all there. I have nothing but positive things to say about the 2720SGL. I've enjoyed the blisteringly fast template loads, that are CPU bound too. The only worry I had, really, was the reliability, bit errors, burn outs, poor quality assurance, reports here and there it's running a bit hot. None of these worries materialized. I didn't find a lot of complaints about poor performing 2720SGLs either, at the time I bought it, two years ago.

When it looks too good to be true, it often is, but not always.


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 12, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

From the tone in my previous post you can see that this whole thing bothers me, at least a bit. I thought a bit about what exactly bothers me. I think it's the lack of initiative that a lot of forum participants here show in fully researching system building options. Mind you, I simply started posting in this thread that I have nothing but good things to say about a storage controller that I bought two years ago, backing it up with lots of links to reviews, previous threads, benchmarks, and extra supporting information. I never said it's the best controller you can find now. *Why is nobody that's thinking of building a new DAW or slave investigating all storage options, when storage performance is the most important factor for sample streaming?* I find that puzzling. Perhaps the scientist part in me is bothered by this. I have earned my living in both music and science and this behaviour is more prevalent amongst musicians than scientists, no surprise really.


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 13, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

In relation to my previous post. If I would be looking for a storage controller now. I would start to research the options on this list:
http://tweakers.net/categorie/630/harde ... L9a6ES3lAQ

The 2720SGL is still there, and the much pricier 2720 that includes two SAS cables that we have no use for, since they are not the 8087 SATA6 breakout type that we need. There are also some entries of the big guns, IBM no less, and of course the usual suspects, Adaptec, Areca, LSI. Perhaps one of them is even faster than the 2720SGL. Who knows? Investigate, if you want. Or go for 'the enemy of better', as Richard said, and go for 'good enough'. For me the 2720SGL is still good enough. If one of you shows me that another controller in the list is faster, then I'll thankfully take that into consideration for my next build.


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## khollister (Feb 13, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Well this thread has ended up getting me to rethink a couple of things relative to storage and probably costing me some more money  Here's what I am reasonably sure of at this point ;

1) I am going to use RAID 0 instead of JBOD because I have grown increasingly frustrated with trying to load balance my libraries across multiple SSD's as things get more complex. The missing bit of info for me was the scalability of random reads with larger queue depths.

2) My old OWC SAS card sucks. I did in fact download the latest Windows drivers (I had previously used it under OS X on my MP). 

3) I need new SSD's :( My older Crucial SSD's have considerably worse random read performance than the latest Samsung EVO's (or Pro's)

The big question at this point is whether to go to 3 or 4 250 GB drives on the 2720 or just get 2 500 GB ones, put them on the Intel ports and RAID them via Windows Disk Manager? Eventually I will need to come to grips with a SAS HBA, but right now I have about 600 GB of samples, so 2 x 500 GB EVO's would be fine. The upside is that a 2 disk stripe of EVO's will probably perform a lot better than my current JBOD set of 3 M4's, especially considering I am not optimally configured to load balance the voices across the 3 drives.

The other downside to 4 vs 2 is reliability - the MTBF will certainly be worse.

A question for Scrianinoff - do you advocate using the RAID 0 functionality of the 2720 ROC or using Windows Disk Manager if I go with 3 or 4 drives on a 2720? 

Keith


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## Scrianinoff (Feb 13, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

ad 1) Look at how 4k-64Thrd scales here, on the Intel HM77 laptop chipset , look also at the post just below the screenshots: http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtop ... 44#3744544 
Indeed, the Samsung 1TB EVO by itself has a healthy 380MByte/s 4k64 throughput. Intel Raid0 brings that up to a disappointing lackluster 383 and 443, Windows Raid brings it up to a worthwhile 727. That was on empty drives. I just tested it again and the sequential throughput has decreased after 3 months to 904, whereas the much more important 4k64 has increased to 750. The EVOs are aging like wine, cheese and other good things  I didn't notice any difference in daily DAW use though.

ad 2) No firmware update for the OWC? I remember that both the firmware and driver updates were responsible for the performance increase. Also make sure that when you install controller (or chipset dirvers for that matter), the drivers version listed in device manager is actually the right version. 

ad 3) If you have 3 M4's, why not try out Windows Raid0? They don't have to be on the same controller, that's another advantage of Windows Raid. They won't give you the 4k64 performance of 2 EVO's but they will come close.

As to your question, this is what I thought 2.5 years ago, (6.4GByte/s): http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtop ... 40#3586740
In the end I did not go for that. I was thinking of expandability, but in the end went for 8 drives, for my desktop slave. If I would want to expand beyond that I would buy a second controller. 2TB is enough however for the meantime. I don't have screenshots of the 2720SGL built-in Raid vs. Windows Raid, Windows Raid is faster but not by the huge margin I posted for my laptop.

Good luck!


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## nickhmusic (Feb 16, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Would just like to take a moment to thank you Guy for this thread, it has proved very helpful in researching my new DAW. I absolutely have to have 1xPCI slot for my audio card (Lynx 2) and can't even contemplate replacing that at this stage - so it looks like I'll be trading plenty of SATA3 6Gbps ports for a PCI slot - something I'll have to go with. 

But thanks for all the thoughts, incredibly helpful.

Now, if 64GB of Ram wasn't so damn expensive...


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 18, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Well, this is ordering week. I'm still fussing over two things.

1 - Mobo. My options are P9X79LE, X79 Sabertooth and X79 Deluxe. We've established here that the bells and whistles on the Deluxe don't amount to much, and it might have some BIOS reliability issues (though only Richard has reported this - could be a hardware combo?). The Sabertooth has a small chipset fan - this could be a dealbreaker. The P9X79 apparently runs quite hot, and has only 2x rear USB3s which is a little poor. So all in all I'm gravitating back to the Deluxe - any thoughts on that logic, folks?

2. Installing the Noctua fan. I was hoping PC Specialist would do it but they won't. It shouldn't be too hard, right? Right?!

Thanks again all, this thread has been great - glad others have found it useful too.


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## chimuelo (Feb 18, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Installing the fan is a walk in the park, I wonder why they won't do it...?
I had a DAW builder shy away from a large CPU HSF once as the Chassis wasn't in a shockrack case, and would most likely have been flipped over a couple of times, and that's not comforting to a DAW builder having to rely on the handling of something that could shake loose with a bump in the upside dwon position. That would be my guess.
I think the latest X79 Deluxe is a very mature design, and should last for years.
If it's a BIOS update, Asus usually responds with new ones within weeks.
The top 3 Tier 1 manufacturers have a reputation for release and fix later on anything new, but these chips have been in many designs before, not like it's a new chipset.
I take a deep breath and go for it, then put the fan in yourself and watch the beast come to life.

Congrats, very strong build, and those 8 DIMMs using the Asus Toplogy has to be helpful with pre fectching data. Before a single trace was how DIMMs were connected in serial, this 8 way parallel access has to be an improvement for targetting buffers.


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 18, 2014)

Thanks Chimuelo, sounds encouraging - I'll endeavour not to completely screw up the fan


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 18, 2014)

...and I just realised, 2 of my SSDs are old OCZ Vertex 3s, which only manage 198mb/s in the Tom's Hardware 4k Q64 benchmarks ( http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd-charts-2013/AS-SSD-4K-Q64-Random-Read,2786.html (http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd- ... ,2786.html) )
... so unless I upgrade those too, not too much point in getting a 6gb SATA card just yet, may as well use the Marvell 6gb ports for those drives which can handle 279 mb/s ( http://techreport.com/review/25310/asus ... reviewed/5 )


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## rgames (Feb 18, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

As Chim said, installing the fan is a breeze (HA!) and the reason they don't do it is because it's not sturdy enough for shipping and could rip the CPU off the mobo if it gets a good bump in transport. When I sold my i7-920 I took the fan off before shipping for the same reason. If you can turn a screwdriver then you can install the fan. Plus, there probably are a bunch of YouTube videos that show how to do it.

Regarding extra USB ports, you can always get a card. Same thing with SATA ports. The on-board SATA and USB controllers (except the Intel native) on any motherboard tend not to be super-great so if you're really concerned about maximum performance then you're not going to use them, anyway.

I installed the latest BIOS on the X79 Deluxe over the weekend and it still locks up with my external Blu-Ray drive (the P6T did not). Otherwise performance seems about the same but I haven't used it much, so hard to say. The problems I'm having are intermittent so I can't really say they're gone until I've used it for a few weeks.

Again, the X79-Deluxe is not horrible, it's just finicky and not quite as good as the P6T. It doesn't affect my productivity but I do curse at it every now and then...

rgames


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## khollister (Feb 19, 2014)

Guy Rowland @ Tue Feb 18 said:


> ...and I just realised, 2 of my SSDs are old OCZ Vertex 3s, which only manage 198mb/s in the Tom's Hardware 4k Q64 benchmarks ( http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd-charts-2013/AS-SSD-4K-Q64-Random-Read,2786.html (http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd- ... ,2786.html) )
> ... so unless I upgrade those too, not too much point in getting a 6gb SATA card just yet, may as well use the Marvell 6gb ports for those drives which can handle 279 mb/s ( http://techreport.com/review/25310/asus ... reviewed/5 )



Don't forget the Marvell and ASMedia controllers are connected via a single PCIe lane each, so put one SSD on the Marvell and one on the ASMedia if you go with the Deluxe.

As far as the Deluxe, it is the only way to get 4 SATA III devices connected without a PCIe card. The aux controllers are connected with one lane (500 MBs), so putting 2 SSD's on the Marvell (or ASMedia) will kill your performance (especially if you RAID them all).I have had no issues with my Deluxe, but my experience is just as anecdotal as Richard's problems.


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 19, 2014)

Thank you again Richard and Keith, invaluable as always.


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## skasinos (Feb 26, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

This is a great thread, thanks Guy! 
@ Peter, just a clarification regarding the RAM timings. On the Asus website (http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/X79 ... ifications) it is mentioned: 

"Due to CPU behavior, DDR3 2200/2000/1800 MHz memory module will run at DDR3 2133/1866/1600 MHz frequency as default."

This statement I believe refers to non-standard specification RAM modules at timings such as 2200mhz defaulting to the next lower standard (2133mhz). Where if you install RAM already at one of the standard specs, it will not down-clock. So installing 1866mhz RAM will be just fine and run at 1866mhz. There is no need to purchase more expensive memory. At least this is how I interpret it.


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## LFO (Feb 26, 2014)

Don't forget the Marvell and ASMedia controllers are connected via a single PCIe lane each, so put one SSD on the Marvell and one on the ASMedia if you go with the Deluxe.

As far as the Deluxe, it is the only way to get 4 SATA III devices connected without a PCIe card. The aux controllers are connected with one lane (500 MBs), so putting 2 SSD's on the Marvell (or ASMedia) will kill your performance (especially if you RAID them all).I have had no issues with my Deluxe, but my experience is just as anecdotal as Richard's problems.[/quote]

I just purchased and built an x79 Deluxe board with a 3940 Intel CPU. I have 4 Samsung EVO SSD drives, a250 GB for OS and plugins, a 500 GB for libs, and two more 250 GB for libs. How would you recommend I attach them to the motherboard? currently I have a 500 and 250on the Intel 600 GBs connectors and the OS SSD on a Marvell 300Gbs connector. What should I do with the others? I am totally unsure, and I am not running a RAID. Also, I have a 7200RPM hard disk on a Marvell 300 GBs connector.

Kevin

P.S. I have the Noctua heat sink with the low noise connectors attached in a Fractal Design R4 case. The thing is dead silent. No data on heat or when/if fans kick in when things get hot as I've been out of town, but I will post my findings. Installation of the Noctua was easy, though given there is no support for it outside of screwing it into the installation plates I would never transport or ship the computer without detaching it.


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## Guy Rowland (Feb 27, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Hello Skasinos and welcome to the forum! Glad this discussion has been of use to so many people. And thanks LFO, sounds encouraging re your build. My current system is an R3 and a Noctua - it's nice and quiet, a pretty unobtrusive gentle sound but not silent. It'll be interesting to compare - I'm not expecting huge miracles, but a few db less always helps. I'm actually using an external esata 4 drive enclosure at the moment for terrabytes of storage, and I think I can make all this internal in the new build which will help too (that enclosure has its own fan - again, not too loud, but it all builds up).

So after all the back and forth, I got a UK company SolidHawk to do my build, who specialise in audio systems. They were happy with all the component choices and could build the lot. Should be due in the next few days, of course I'll report back with findings. The first few days I'll just be installing stuff in the background with my current rig intact as I finish a show, then it'll be a few days to migrate everything over and get everything up and running properly on the new system.


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## Guy Rowland (Mar 4, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Just an update here on the build, got it delivered today but it got off to a spectacularly bad start. C drive installed physically in the wrong place (it was agreed to place it behind the mobo but it didn't happen), wrong size D drive, CPU fan wonky (they say damaged in transit, I'm not quite so sure - in either regard I wish they'd packed some material around it to protect it) and cable disconnected, PSU fan whining.

It's going back tomorrow. With packaging around the fan.

I'm hoping Solid Hawk come good with the second build attempt.


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## maestro2be (Mar 4, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Sorry to hear that Guy. It's always a bit disappointing and kind of punches you in the gut when you are all excited and ready to go and these things happen. It always kind of deflates my whole positive experience a bit.

Hopefully they will excel in customer service take great care of you and get you up and running soon!

Maestro2be


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## DenisT (Mar 4, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

I'm building a similar computer at the moment ! Same case, same mobo, same CPU, same fan  Ordered all the components today, now I have to wait.

Good luck with your rig! :wink:


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## chimuelo (Mar 4, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Everyone deserves a 2nd chance, but if this doesn't get their attention, you might join the DIY crowd that selects the parts, then pays for assembly locally.

Better luck on build 2 GR.


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## Guy Rowland (Mar 5, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Thanks all - yes, its a disappointing start for sure. Practically it's such a bore - I'd set aside time to get everything up and running, but that has to move now.

I'll behave and not give other thoughts on Solid Hawk for now. Let's be charitable and say that this one slipped through the cracks. They do have a good reputation, and maybe I was unlucky. If it comes back next Tuesday shiny, gleaming and everything as agreed, I'll have forgotten about it before long.

Chimuelo - yes, it's made me wonder about something like this next time. I did have a someone I know build one for me once and it was a disaster - with the benefit of hindsight, it was my error, he was very young (if a computing prodigy). The fact is, I can't really remember a system that has worked for me first time - this current rig had to go back for a replacement motherboard. Again - good old hindsight - I should have odered this two weeks earlier, and that would have allowed time for the seemingly inevitable teething problems to get sorted out.

Its a slight tangent, but no matter what I did with this new rig yesterday, I couldn't make it join the homegroup, which has the laptop and old rig on it. Put in the password, on the same workgroup, it just kept saying it was "not possible". Good old Windows, eh? You never really get a honeymoon period with a new windows PC, it seems to me....


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## Guy Rowland (Mar 23, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

Wrapping up this thread for future searchers now its all up and running.

The final specs were as the OP, except I had a noisy Corsair PSU which I replaced for a Seasonic 650w. As mentioned above the first build by Solid Hawk was a disaster - CPU fan cable unplugged and fan itself misaligned and pointing away from the outlet fan; D drive half capacity; C drive mounted in the wrong place (should have been behind the mobo as agreed) and the aforementioned noisy PSU. It went back, they installed a new PSU which is renowned for being noisy and cost under half of the Corsair without my authorisation, then demanded more labour costs to switch it back out for something appropriate. (which of course I didn't pay).

The software config was little better - a pointless 64gb pagesys file and 44gb hibernation file meaning the C drive arrived two thirds full before a single program was installed.

Needless to say, words were exchanged and when the rebuild came through things were vastly improved. I did still have one issue - it turned out the Pioneer BDR 208 EBK was causing merry hell and causing huge spikes in latency performance. As discussed elsewhere, this was resolved by, er, putting a disc in the drive, at which point the machine now performs like a champ.

Current stats - my 23gb template (and rising) loads into VE Pro in 3.5 minutes. Latency is Cubase 7.5.1 is 7ms each way with the buffer set at 256. VE Pro currently set to 3/6 cores per instance (probably overkill). VST performance meter registers 20% on a template session, maxes at 50% on a very full electronic project in Cubase. A PT 10 dubbing session full of plugins hovers around 20%. All feels very comfortable.

Noise level is very good - it was virtually silent with just the boot SSD. It now has 8 HDDs (including 4 conventional ones) and you can just hear a quiet fan noise and the seeking of the conventional drives. I measured it at 22db at my chair, the old rig was I think about 28db - 4 times as loud.

It's been much less hassle getting the sample libraries up and running than my previous build (mostly due to Play and VSL being a doddle to transfer now), and more hassle getting the hardware and software configured. I wouldn't recommend Solid Hawk, but would recommend the components with the exception of the Corsair PSU and Pioneer Blu Ray drive.

Thanks to everyone who has helped with wise advice, here's hoping this keeps me going for the next few years before I enter the fray again.


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## Guy Rowland (Aug 14, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*

An interesting coda to my tale of eventual triumph over adversity...

As discussed in this thread - http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40111 - I decided to build a spare rig, based on my main one but scaled back (less RAM, a 4820k not 4930k, Gigabyte X79 UP4 mobo not Asus X79 deluxe, same case, PSU, graphics cards, system drive). Initially it's just to run pro tools and plugins in case of emergency, eventually I hope to have full backup of my entire rig, except for HDDs which I plan to switch out when needed (the HDDs themselves get backed up anyway). Also I decided it was a perfect opportunity to see if building a PC really is as easy as they say.

So far, the answer is an almost unqualified YES. I'd guess I've spent 5-6 hours on it, and its fully assembled with Windows 7 and graphics drivers loaded. It is much, much easier than my earlier experiences many years ago with jumpers and dip switches everywhere and awful cramped cases swamped by massive cables. Only a couple of minor moments of confusion which google searches resolved.

Just before powering up for the first time, I rechecked the PSU manual (as in the main rig, it's an excellent Seasonic X-650). By accident, I discovered that I installed the thing upside down - the fan should face out into the case (doh!). It's a design with plugin cables on the PSU itself, so it took all of 10 minutes to unplug, unscrew, flip, rescrew, replug. Then I got to thinking - "hmm, I put it in wrong probably cos that's how my main rig looks". I checked - sure enough, Solid Hawk - who built my main rig - indeed installed the PSU (which had to be changed three times if you remember) upside down, with the fan vents pointed straight into solid metal. It's some testimony to the Seasonic that it's been not only uncomplaining but almost completely silent the entire time - also probably demonstrating that it's a very undemanding rig, power-wise. Which is just how I like it.

So the decision is made - from here on, I build my own rigs. When you're a composer (or dubbing mixer for that matter) working with no assistant with your own equipment, you have to be the IT department - the cavalry never comes running through the door if you get a problem. Like it or not, it pays to know the workings of computers. They do make it about as easy as you can get now - as someone already said, the hard bit is speccing it in the first place and making sure everything plays nice together. So far the easy bit has been banging it all together, which is a bit like playing Lego with the kids to be honest.


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## jamwerks (Aug 14, 2014)

6 hours isn't that bad! Were you able to calculate the difference in price between what you paid for the individual parts (through Amazon?), and that same machine (same parts) delivered assembled by a custom shop?


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## Guy Rowland (Aug 14, 2014)

jamwerks @ Thu Aug 14 said:


> 6 hours isn't that bad! Were you able to calculate the difference in price between what you paid for the individual parts (through Amazon?), and that same machine (same parts) delivered assembled by a custom shop?



I haven't done a like-for-like, but my sense is that there's not a massive amount in it. In the UK, on the small business rate scheme you get to keep a part of VAT on your income, but have to pay vat on all purchases under £2k. So weirdly if you pay more than £2k on a computer, you save a packet. I reckon that amount is roughly the difference between buying parts and a full build.

But honestly... I'd just rather do it myself now. The endless back and forth for getting stuff wrong takes longer than just plugging in the bits yourself, it turns out.

EDIT - mobo drivers all installed now, successfully on the network and home group. After 3 days from ordering, I'm roughly where I was after 4 weeks with Solid Hawk, and my blood pressure is amazingly low.


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## marclawsonmusic (Aug 14, 2014)

*Re: Comments please on upcoming i7 build*



Guy Rowland @ Thu Aug 14 said:


> Then I got to thinking - "hmm, I put it in wrong probably cos that's how my main rig looks". I checked - sure enough, Solid Hawk - who built my main rig - indeed installed the PSU (which had to be changed three times if you remember) upside down, with the fan vents pointed straight into solid metal.



Wow, dude. Unbelievable.

But, the truth is that no one cares more about your rig and getting it right than YOU. So, kudos for teching up and figuring it out. Sometimes there is no other choice.


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## Peter Costa (Aug 14, 2014)

for any future PC builders I would recommend

www.pcpartpicker.com

This site save you a couple hours from searching for the best price (though they don't always have the cheapest). However they will automatically filter out components that wouldn't be compatible with whatever you've already chosen and calculates power consumption, includes discounts on rebates, gives you price history charts etc.

However it didn't tell me where to buy the Samsung 840 EVO 1TB for $411 with free shipping  (www.atdcomputers.com)


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## Guy Rowland (Aug 15, 2014)

Peter Costa @ Fri Aug 15 said:


> for any future PC builders I would recommend
> 
> www.pcpartpicker.com
> 
> ...



That looks like a useful if broad strokes tool - are prices all USA Amazon? I also like googling important components together, like 4820k and x79-up4. It's usually hair-raising, but after reading around for a while you get a sense if its generally a happy combo or not. In that specific case, there was a post near the top of the search results from a real computer expert who had spent weeks failing to make them work together, but reading between the lines a) he was trying to use it in some esoteric mode I didn't understand and b) it was soon after release on an old version of the bios. In my event, I just plugged it in and it worked.

But there's nothing worse than finding a problem, going to google to see if anyone else has had it, then finding 10,000 results that all say "never put X and Y together"...


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## Peter Costa (Aug 15, 2014)

yea not sure about the Amazon UK or shipping prices out there. Though, you're right about the research before buying something. The great thing about not having an abundance of money is that you end up spending way too much time figuring out all those little details. It's great that building PCs now is a whole lot easier than it was 10-15 years ago. 

Thanks for this entire thread. I'm looking at adding a slave pretty soon and realizing that I can get what I need with not going over 1500 as well as room for upgrades down the road.


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## Guy Rowland (Aug 15, 2014)

Peter Costa @ Fri Aug 15 said:


> yea not sure about the Amazon UK or shipping prices out there. Though, you're right about the research before buying something. The great thing about not having an abundance of money is that you end up spending way too much time figuring out all those little details. It's great that building PCs now is a whole lot easier than it was 10-15 years ago.
> 
> Thanks for this entire thread. I'm looking at adding a slave pretty soon and realizing that I can get what I need with not going over 1500 as well as room for upgrades down the road.



Yes, agree with all that, and £1500 USD should buy a good workhorse, similar to my spare I reckon (for once, UK prices seem fairly equivalent to US, and mine was a shade under £1k). Right now I'd definitely go with the 2011 socket format, just cos its the only one that can do 64gb RAM. Around $2000 would get the system with 64gb of RAM ready to go.

Tickled pink with my spare. Day 4 after placing the order for all the components and Pro Tools and all plugs working, playing existing projects with ease though the Babyface. All that's left really for now is to test out the 4 monitor configuration which I'll do tomorrow, then I can put it on a shelf and forget about it. Seems a shame really, but damned if I'm letting the kids anywhere near it....


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## rpaillot (Aug 15, 2014)

Just one point ( maybe OT ) regarding CPU, the more cores the better ? Hmm, not always.

I just did some tests today by exporting cues ( offline export) on 2 exact same configurations, except one has a 4930K ( overclocked to 4 ghz ) and the second has a 4820K ( 3.7 ghz stock speed) .
Everything is the same, softwares etc... same hackintosh as I basically cloned the first configuration to the second.
Another difference is the first one (4930K) has hard disk and SSDs, and the second one only has standard 7200 rpm hard disks, for now.

What surprised me is even if the 4820K build is 4 cores (4930K is 6 ) , and even if the 4820K has standard 7200 rpm hard disks, it exported the tracks significantly quicker .
For instance a big cue ( with many kontakt/omnisphere, insert FX, master FX ) was exported in 1m40s with the 4820K build, while it was exported in 2:05 with the 4930K build.
I'm on Mavericks, and used Cubase.

I guess it's due to Cubase, probably not optimized for 6 cores CPU... or maybe just the fact that Audio is a real-time thing and the >6 cores CPU suffer from that ?

I need to do some other tests to confirm 4 cores CPU is better than 6 cores.


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## Guy Rowland (Aug 15, 2014)

I'd be extremely wary of jumping to conclusions there. It makes no sense that not only are there 2 more cores, the clock speed is higher (and Cubase sure should be making use of those cores if its set up right). The 4930 consistently benches above the 4820 regardless.

It's very hard to get 2 identical systems it seems to me, any setting buried away anywhere could be playing a part. All that said, fascinated to see what your investigations turn up.


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## jaeroe (Aug 15, 2014)

rpaillot @ Fri Aug 15 said:


> Just one point ( maybe OT ) regarding CPU, the more cores the better ? Hmm, not always.
> 
> I just did some tests today by exporting cues ( offline export) on 2 exact same configurations, except one has a 4930K ( overclocked to 4 ghz ) and the second has a 4820K ( 3.7 ghz stock speed) .
> Everything is the same, softwares etc... same hackintosh as I basically cloned the first configuration to the second.
> ...



having built several hacks, and swapped CPUs out on some - you have to be really really careful that you have everything configured correctly in the bios for each respective CPU. i would look there extra long to see if something is not setup most efficiently. i would also try without overclocking the 6 core. that can also wreak havoc if the starts aren't all aligned - epsecially for some hacks.

i usually go with existing builds so i don't have to monkey with stuff to avoid dealing with too many variables.


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## rpaillot (Aug 15, 2014)

You're right, still the original hackintosh I used as a clone, has been specifically made and tailored (by a really good hackintosher ) for the 4930K CPU.

So if something isn't configured correctly, it should impact performance of the 4820K, and it's not , 4820K performs better on offline export than the 4930K.

The 2 cpus performs well, I used geekbench and I get 22000 pts for the 4930K which's in the norm, 14000 for the 4820K, which's what you would expect.


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## jaeroe (Aug 15, 2014)

bench marking for stand computer power isn't the only factor. i'd try not overclocking the 4930 and see if that improves things.

have you had any luck finding anyone on tonymac or the like using the same build with cubase? same audio interface etc?

i can see how sometime more cores won't necessarily lead to better performance, but worse performance is weird unless there isn't some sort of incompatibility somewhere.


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