# Cubase 2021 Build



## Fitz (Dec 7, 2020)

Can anyone comment on building a PC machine going into 2021 strictly used for Cubase? I'm looking to build a main machine before starting on a new project. A few questions are things like... locally loaded sample? AMD vs. Intel? Higher speed cores for Cubase vs. more cores? What's the latest thoughts on processing power on PC?


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## khollister (Dec 7, 2020)

The first thing to answer is Thunderbolt critical to you (UAD user, UFX+, Quantum, MOTU, etc)? If so, then I would personally stick to Intel. While there are some folks claiming success with UAD on AMD, it is a much harder road.

The other thing is RAM is trickier on AMD since it needs optimized timings for AMD due to the backplane fabric in their architecture.

As far as Intel, a Gigabyte Vision D MB (on-board TB3/USB-C), i9-10900K and a low end AMD GPU (not even necessary if going single monitor). The Z490 platform isn't flush with PCIe lanes to run multiple NVMe SSD's, but those won't really help you in sample playback except to burn through your money faster than SATA SSD's. The Vision D MB has a ton of good reviews in the PC build thread on Gearslutz in terms of latency and trouble-free TB. 

You can get a few more cores with the X299 HEDT parts, but it comes at a significant cost ($) and you loose a bit of clock speed per core.

Because I am heavily UAD dependent (Apollo X6, 2 x octo Satellites), I have not paid much attention to AMD. I'm currently running Cubase on an iMac Pro under MacOS, but I keep my eye on th ePC alternatives in case I need to go that route. My iMP falls out of AppleCare next month and while I don't expect a problem, if it does die, a current MP is out of the question for a number of reasons and Apple Silicon high-end iMac's (and the software to go with it including AS native Cubase) are probably not a next year thing.


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## Toecutter (Dec 7, 2020)

khollister said:


> The Z490 platform isn't flush with PCIe lanes to run multiple NVMe SSD's, but those won't really help you in sample playback except to burn through your money faster than SATA SSD's


So it's pointless to put samples on NVMe SSD? Why people do it? I'm ok with my regular SSDs?

That's only valid for Kontakt? I use Sine and Spitfire too


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## khollister (Dec 7, 2020)

There has been a lot of discussion here about this. No one that I recall has shown where using an NVMe sample drive has increased polyphony/voices/tracks, and it doesn't help loading times in most cases. I know Richard (@rgames) has posted about testing this several times.

When I got my iMP in 2018, I experimented with putting some of the larger sample libs (including the Spectrasonics STEAM folder for Omnisphere and Keyscape) on the internal SSD versus external SATA SSD's over TB3. Only one library loaded significantly faster - Garritan CFX. All the Kontakt, PLAY and Spectrasonics libs I tried were no different.

I suspect there may be some detectable difference with the new VSL Synchron Player but I haven't tested it.

People get fixated on NVMe drives because of the crazy fast throughput for sequential reads and large files (think video). It just doesn't translate to real-world improvements in an sample playback SW that I've tried.

You pay more for the drives and then you pay a lot more for the MB/CPU to get the PCIe lanes to really support the speeds. In return a few libraries might load faster, but I have never seen anything pointing to better playback performance with samples. You in theory might save some RAM (smaller preload buffers), but RAM is a lot more cost effective than NVME SSD's and X299 components at this point.

When it comes to Computer HW and SW, people do all kinds of crazy things that don't translate to real world improvements. But it does give them bragging rights and they feel like it helps I guess.


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## PaulieDC (Dec 7, 2020)

Toecutter said:


> So it's pointless to put samples on NVMe SSD? Why people do it? I'm ok with my regular SSDs?
> 
> That's only valid for Kontakt? I use Sine and Spitfire too


I built an i9-7940X rig on the X299 platform (MSI Gaming M7 ACK mobo) in 2018. I have a few SATA SSDs and I have 4 NVMe SSDs, 1 for the C: drive (mobo-mounted) and 3 for samples. One is Mobo mounted, the other two are running in my X8 PCIe slots as X4 speed. I use https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01798WOJ0 (this adapter) with also allows a SATA M.2 to be mounted and powered but you need a SATA cable, so the NVMe drive does not share bandwidth. I have a Samsung EVO Pro NVMe drive as C: drive because I wanted the faster write speeds, but the three holding samples are not the pro versions. Reason is, slower write speeds are not an issue when streaming in samples.

I did some extensive tests to see if load times would increase. Except for one specific library, the data load times were _remarkably faster_ than SATA SSDs. But, that's on the x299 platform. I don't have experience with the Z490 platform mentioned earlier.

Anyway, my spitfire and Berlin and VSL Piano libraries, without giving numbers that I don't remember anymore, load so quickly that I'm spoiled. I keep my Kontakt 11 instruments on DSATA SSDs because I don't really use them.

NOW, the one surprise was EastWest's Play. I picked a fat orchestra patch in HS to load, and it finished in 7 seconds on an SSD and 6 on an NVMe, very little speed increase. I repeated the tests a few times to verify, rebooting in between each one to clear any cache. Surprised me, I wondered what was going on inside Play that it didn't utilize the speed increase in the NVMe.

So I don't think there's a cut-n-dry answer, but I can't subscribe to NVMe being a waste of money, at least in my rig. I've copied a 1.5GB .MOV file from my Canon DSLR from one NVMe to another and it was so fast that the progress bar didn't even pop up. The file transferred like BAM, and done. I've relocated huge libraries that took minutes and the transfer rate was 2gbps or higher. Not getting THAT from SATA.

Important point: NVMe's slow down a lot when they get hot, and they get hot QUICK. I do have heat sinks attached to each drive and I put a loose extra fan in my case pointing right at them. That has helped tremendously. I use CrystalDisk which was showing the NVMe's in the red danger zone when they were bare. The heat sink alone doesn;t help much unless you have a fan blowing at them. Once I added the fan, all of them now cruise under 40C. And NOW, I get consistent fadst speeds when copying libraries, etc, and certainly when streaming in samples.

Just some info to ponder.


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## PaulieDC (Dec 7, 2020)

khollister said:


> People get fixated on NVMe drives because of the crazy fast throughput for sequential reads and large files (think video). It just doesn't translate to real-world improvements in an sample playback SW that I've tried.


I got much better results in Windows when I added heat sinks mounted and dedicated case fans. Heat kills the speed, they throttle down a lot. But TBH a similar rig to mine may NOT see speed increase, the jury is out... I see so many reviews where one says the increase was huge like I got, others not so much. It'd be nice to uncover the mystery, lol.


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## Toecutter (Dec 7, 2020)

PaulieDC said:


> I built an i9-7940X rig on the X299 platform (MSI Gaming M7 ACK mobo) in 2018. I have a few SATA SSDs and I have 4 NVMe SSDs, 1 for the C: drive (mobo-mounted) and 3 for samples. One is Mobo mounted, the other two are running in my X8 PCIe slots as X4 speed. I use https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01798WOJ0 (this adapter) with also allows a SATA M.2 to be mounted and powered but you need a SATA cable, so the NVMe drive does not share bandwidth. I have a Samsung EVO Pro NVMe drive as C: drive because I wanted the faster write speeds, but the three holding samples are not the pro versions. Reason is, slower write speeds are not an issue when streaming in samples.
> 
> I did some extensive tests to see if load times would increase. Except for one specific library, the data load times were _remarkably faster_ than SATA SSDs. But, that's on the x299 platform. I don't have experience with the Z490 platform mentioned earlier.
> 
> ...


Thanks, learned a lot! Do NVME SSDs have the same rules as SATA? Do you still need to avoid filling the drive?


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## PaulieDC (Dec 7, 2020)

The old rule used to be to leave 10% open but that's because we all had one drive and the Paging file and other temp stuff would get written. Oh, and the big one, Hibernation which eats 3GB of space. But for separate drives that just hold what is essentially read-only data, you can probably leave 5-10GB available and be fine. I'm talking Windows of course. My EWHO drive is like that, 35GB free so the bar icon is always red, but I never have any issues.


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## PaulieDC (Dec 7, 2020)

BTW, and easy way to get 3GB back and help performance a tiny bit is to eliminate the Hibernation paging file. Windows continually writes your current status to this 3GB file in order to restore itself should the PC go into Hibernation mode. Who needs hibernation mode? Let the screen go black and just idle. To turn it off AND give you back the 3GB it steals on your C Drive, you open either a Command Prompt or PowerShell As Administrator. Do that by right-clicking the Start button and selecting whatever shows in the menu, either Command or PowerShell *as admin*, hugely important. PowerShell is just a way better command prompt on steroids but for this simple task either works. Microsoft has been changing people's default with updates, like everyone will know what PowerShell is. Microsoft, oy vey.

Type this and hit ENTER:

*powercfg -h off*

That's it! Hibernation is totally gone from your PC. Refresh Windows Explorer and you'll have a bit more room now. I do that on all PCs I work on. It's better anyway, sometimes Windows doesn't play nice coming out of Hibernation. Here's what the Command will look like right before you hit Enter:


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## Fitz (Dec 7, 2020)

khollister said:


> The first thing to answer is Thunderbolt critical to you (UAD user, UFX+, Quantum, MOTU, etc)? If so, then I would personally stick to Intel. While there are some folks claiming success with UAD on AMD, it is a much harder road.
> 
> The other thing is RAM is trickier on AMD since it needs optimized timings for AMD due to the backplane fabric in their architecture.
> 
> ...


Can you comment on Xeon vs i9 chip? How does Cubase handle faster cores vs more cores if money was no option?


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## khollister (Dec 7, 2020)

Fitz said:


> Can you comment on Xeon vs i9 chip? How does Cubase handle faster cores vs more cores if money was no option?



The speed vs cores thing is very dependent on your particular project. If you use a bunch of tracks with known CPU hogs like Diva, Repro, Dune3, etc, having a bunch of low speed cores won't work too well. However if you have lots of tracks with Kontakt running low overhead samples, then more cores work. 

Cubase seems to make very good use of the 10 cores in my iMP. I have no idea how it behaves on 14 or 18 cores with the HEDT CPU's. I haven't run across someone using Cubase on one of the 28 core Mac Pro's.

In intel-land, the 10900K, 10920X and 10940X are the sweet spots for cores vs speed. You do take a good hit on core speed to pick up the extra 4 cores in the 10980XE.


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## khollister (Dec 8, 2020)

I just remembered seeing a Guy Michelmore video where he mentioned he is using a 14 core PC for Cubase in his "shed" studio (presumably an i9-10940X). It seems to run as expected based on all of the videos I have seen.


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