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Advice on a new PC for Cubase/film work. i7, i9, AMD, Xeon...

alfred tapscott said:
Wow! Thanks very much
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You are welcome.

@Pictus !!. That was really useful. I am just a bit hesitant cause this would be a not super expensive build that seems pretty powerful, just so bad that I only get 4 slots for ram. I guess I can still use my i7 5820k with 8x8GB of ram as a VEP server, and 4x16 on this new machine will be fine till 4x32 become reeally cheap.
I guess it makes sense, since a similar performing machine on the 2066 architecture that allows 8 dimms of ram would be maybe a 7920 or 940, which are double the price, plus a more expensive board, etc.... Makes sense?
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I guess yes...

And by the way, the noctua you are talking about, is it not too noisy?. Would a liquid system be better in that case?.
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This is the king of air cooler...
If want something really silent and efficient, get a custom water kit
and put the pump/radiator/fans into another room... :dancer:
https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-kit-l360-r2-0



Or use a BIG radiator without fans(up to 200Watts ?) :dancedance:
 
I feel this whole discussion has escalated slightly to unreasonable levels.
Re 9900k vs 7960x: depending on workload, it might be well worth going for the 7960x but the 9900k will offer a very large part of the 7960x's performance for less money. Even more if overclocked.

Re Noctua vs. watercooling: I feel it is nonsensical to confront a non hardware enthusiast with a ton of videos and technicalities. I run Noctua coolers on all my systems except one and they are whisper quiet and extremely reliable. For the 9900k I would definitely suggest an NH-D15. We are primarily working professionals who need these machines to make a living. Tinkering around with a custom watercooling loop might be appealing to the computer enthusiast side of us, but I feel not advisable.
If you want to go for a "water cooled solution" because of some reason (and versus the NH-D15 there are not many), you need a 280mm or 360mm radiator (e.g. the Corsair H150i pro). They are easy to install and apparently reliable, but they are neither necessarily better performing nor quieter than a proper aircooled build.

I have built several systems for composer colleagues. I have found several times that they wanted "a beast" or some permutation on this subject when in fact a six-core with 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD was more than enough for all the work they ever did.
Therefore I advise you to critically analyze your workflow needs foremost and to gain insight and clarity about your needs as a professional composer and not your wishes as a hardware geek. I see the appeal of "the best system possible" but I also cannot stress enough that you have to think in terms of the business plan and the bottom line. If you happen to be Hans Zimmer this might be less of a concern but in a field where -even in the civilized world- we are not being inundated with cash, saving 1000 € or more because of good planning is just good business practice.
 
I usually get the "second best" CPU. The one that seems shiny and awesome today will be old news in a year, and I keep computers a lot longer than that.

RAM speed seems immaterial, but clock speed is not. I'd rather have four cores at 4.x or higher than 12 cores of 2.3 GHz. Yes, I've seen posts to the contrary but it appears that some of my libraries have a lot of scripting and they behave better with a fast clock.

Lots of RAM is nice, but sometimes I wonder if you can build two 64GB computers for a price comparable to a single "monster" of 128GB. Then you get two CPUs, two busses, etc. I realise you then have an extra computer to maintain and that some of the RAM is used for the second OS, but I like the idea of two horses pulling instead of one big one.
 
Concur with Sami and JohnG. You don't need a beast PC for DAW work. Any of the non-Xeon i7 chips is perfectly fine. Performance these days has a lot more to do with real-time performance than CPU performance.

Also I've tried liquid and air cooling on the same machine and found that air cooling can be made much quieter. The reason is that the pump "hums" in a freq range that is harder to kill. They might be near equivalent on a measurement mic but the pump noise is much more audible.

rgames
 
rgames said:
Also I've tried liquid and air cooling on the same machine and found that air cooling can be made much quieter. The reason is that the pump "hums" in a freq range that is harder to kill. They might be near equivalent on a measurement mic but the pump noise is much more audible.

rgames
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Well, it depends... We're running a water-cooled DAW that you practically don't hear.

Indeed, a typical pump hums in a low freq range that is hard to kill. BUT, that hum pretty much disappears when speeding down. If you run a custom set-up, e.g. with an oversized passive radiator and PWM controlled pump, noise becomes less of an issue. Take for example the popular Phobya DC12-400 PWM 12Volt pump. Terribly hummy at full speed, but it only needs to run at say 500-1000 RPM even with our overclocked i9 9900K. Passive radiator(s) are totally quiet, and so can be the motherboard if it uses decent components (VRM, heat sinks). Same story with an overdimensioned PSU that can run (almost) passive.

Just saying, water cooling can be an excellent solution for a DAW. But then to make it quiet, a cheap all in one solution with screaming fans might not cut it :)
 
Sami said:
I feel this whole discussion has escalated slightly to unreasonable levels.
Re 9900k vs 7960x: depending on workload, it might be well worth going for the 7960x but the 9900k will offer a very large part of the 7960x's performance for less money. Even more if overclocked.

Re Noctua vs. watercooling: I feel it is nonsensical to confront a non hardware enthusiast with a ton of videos and technicalities. I run Noctua coolers on all my systems except one and they are whisper quiet and extremely reliable. For the 9900k I would definitely suggest an NH-D15. We are primarily working professionals who need these machines to make a living. Tinkering around with a custom watercooling loop might be appealing to the computer enthusiast side of us, but I feel not advisable.
If you want to go for a "water cooled solution" because of some reason (and versus the NH-D15 there are not many), you need a 280mm or 360mm radiator (e.g. the Corsair H150i pro). They are easy to install and apparently reliable, but they are neither necessarily better performing nor quieter than a proper aircooled build.

I have built several systems for composer colleagues. I have found several times that they wanted "a beast" or some permutation on this subject when in fact a six-core with 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD was more than enough for all the work they ever did.
Therefore I advise you to critically analyze your workflow needs foremost and to gain insight and clarity about your needs as a professional composer and not your wishes as a hardware geek. I see the appeal of "the best system possible" but I also cannot stress enough that you have to think in terms of the business plan and the bottom line. If you happen to be Hans Zimmer this might be less of a concern but in a field where -even in the civilized world- we are not being inundated with cash, saving 1000 € or more because of good planning is just good business practice.
Click to expand...
Thanks again!. Really valuable info here. You are spot on, @Sami , I don't want a beast, and my years of geeg computer went past a decade ago. I want a machine that will be reliable, that won't limit me when I got a bi crazy on a cue with VIs, and that will last for a while.
With that in mind, I think I might go for the 9740x. I know I'd get a similar performance on the 9900k, but this one allows me to put 64GB of 2666 memory and then buy another 4x16gb in the future to get 128gb without trashing what I have. I know I'm paying an extra 500€ just to have this, but I'm ok with it. I won't pay the 1000€ extra for the 9760 for a little performance improvement.

What mobo do you guys recomment to be reliable, good, and not crazy expensive? Maybe some in the aorus line, same I was looking at for the 9900k?. Which do you think is the best choice for the price?.

I feel the noctua will be perfect, I have the machines actually in another room, but since I leave the door open usually it's nice if they are not suuper noisy.

Thanks again, hopefully with this I'll be clear on what to get :)
 
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