I9-12900k build advice
- Thread starter gstew
- Start date
I don't really know, but my guess is you're going to have so much overkill, that any issues should be easily resolved. If you are very unlucky, you may have to wait for a firmware update though, and I guess that's what you're asking, if there currently are any issues. Those 12th generation processors are quite the improvement over the 11th generation so I can totally see where you are coming from and wouldn't want to use an older version that has proven itself already.
Actually I'm going to build a new PC myself this coming week. In my case an i7-12970 128GB RAM Windows 11 samples server (VEPro server). Currently I'm using an i7-10875H 64GB RAM Windows 11 laptop on which I'm running both the samples and Cubase 11. When I load a full VSL Synchron template my memory is still fine, but my processor is going to 100%, which obviously is going to lead to pops and clicks. (I'm using many mic positions so that is also a factor.) When I disable half my template I'm doing fine.
The i9-12900K with 128GB RAM is so much more powerful than just my laptop that I don't see how it is not going to be a killer setup. It's a lot more powerful than what the majority of the folks around here have, and they mostly are appearing to do just fine.
Actually I'm going to build a new PC myself this coming week. In my case an i7-12970 128GB RAM Windows 11 samples server (VEPro server). Currently I'm using an i7-10875H 64GB RAM Windows 11 laptop on which I'm running both the samples and Cubase 11. When I load a full VSL Synchron template my memory is still fine, but my processor is going to 100%, which obviously is going to lead to pops and clicks. (I'm using many mic positions so that is also a factor.) When I disable half my template I'm doing fine.
The i9-12900K with 128GB RAM is so much more powerful than just my laptop that I don't see how it is not going to be a killer setup. It's a lot more powerful than what the majority of the folks around here have, and they mostly are appearing to do just fine.
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If you're planning to use DDR5 you would need to look into buying two 64GB sticks and I'm assuming that's not too common yet and obviously way overpriced.
It seems that Z690 boards with DDR5 have problems using 4 sticks of ram so to be safe, stick with two.
DDR5 memory is maybe about 4 times as expensive as DDR4, if you could even get 128GB. I didn't even know about the problems with 4 banks of RAM and the Z690 chipset. It seems to me it's not cost effective to get DDR5 for an audio rig at the moment, unless money is no object.
The DSP benchmark is only marginally better for DDR5. For the polyphony benchmark there's still a 15% to 20% increase between 11th generation and 12th generation with DDR4. That's still good and when you come from an older generation, then the improvement is even bigger. Of course not as spectecular as with the DDR5 RAM, but it seems to me that you could buy two DDR4 slave samples servers for the price of one DDR5 server. And then the two DDR4 servers would outperform the DDR5 server by a significant margin...
MarcMahler89
Active Member
Actually, id recommend building a System with a Ryzen 5 5950X instead. Its got twice the amount of cores/threads, for only ~1/6 more bucks. AMDs singlecore performance issues, which were quite relevant a few years ago for realtime-audio processing, basically disappeared with the 4x/5x generation. In some applications, they even surpassed intel here, though this will depend on the DAW/Plugins/Memory/etc, but on average youll have a 100% performance gain for orchestral templates with 15% more money spent compared to the 12900k.
Hope this might help!
Hope this might help!
How does the Ryzen give such a huge boost in comparison in this particular example? Just due to the core/thread count?but on average youll have a 100% performance gain for orchestral templates with 15% more money spent compared to the 12900k.
Hope this might help!
MarcMahler89
Active Member
Exactly, its basically twice the "raw" processing power, minus the atrocious pricing policy of Intel.
Edit: On top of this, the 5x Ryzens actually have superior performance for equal clockrates. So ,simply put, a 4 GHZ 4 Core Ryzen 5 will perform better than a 4 GHZ 4 Core Intel i7 of their latest generation. Though, this depends on the specific DAW etc. In some applications, intel is slightly ahead, in some amd. But the margin were talking about here is ~5%, but you would pay nearly twice the amount for an equivalent intel processor. For instance, specific games still heavily favour intel here, gaining up to about 30% here, but this doesnt apply to application performance. For me, that makes for an easy choice
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Studio E
Eric Watkins
That is exactly what my last PC was that I upgraded from. You are going to love your new build.
For what it's worth, my current rig is built with the 12700k and 128GB DDR4 ram, using Cubase and the libraries you mentioned.
It's hard to see where the 12900k would bring benefits, as I haven't needed more power than what the 12700k has given me so far.
And it's clearly a big upgrade over the 5820k that I was using previously.
Oh and your PCIe card should work no problems
Just curious how many tracks you’re able to run on that one machine?
cool, thanks.
Another thing I'm not clear on is if I should use the RME internal sound card or my external Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 3rd gen? When I did my first build 10 years ago internal was the way to go supposedly but now I've been reading that it's less buggy to have the sound card out of the PC. Only planning on recording midi/VSTs w it.
thnx
G
Another thing I'm not clear on is if I should use the RME internal sound card or my external Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 3rd gen? When I did my first build 10 years ago internal was the way to go supposedly but now I've been reading that it's less buggy to have the sound card out of the PC. Only planning on recording midi/VSTs w it.
thnx
G
OHjorth
Active Member
AMD improved the latency of the cache dramatically compared to earlier generations. I have a 5800x and it works like a charm but I rarely go over 60 active MIDI tracks and my main libraries are no CPU-hogs. The 5800 is a bit on the hot side aswell so good cooling is needed. 5900 or 5950 are probably the better choice, and they are very very good. My days of ignoring the AMD shelf of products are definitely over.
I haven't pushed it yet to see any kind of limits, but I'd think track counts would be largely meaningless unless they are all the same? All systems will be able to run more pizzicato tracks than Performance Legato tracks, for example.
Regardless of whether it's internal or not, RME will always get you better results than Focusrite.
Use the 18i20 if it provides more convenience for you, or you need the I/O it offers, but the RME will result in better ASIO performance and lower latencies.
Are the new intel and apple CPU's a boon for music production? I haven't researched it enough yet but I know how my main DAW, Ableton, lays down one track per core and if some cores have slower speeds it seems to me that it could get into strange problems with trying to put tracks onto specific cores, etc. The fact that you have cores running at different capacities is not favorable for a DAW environment I suspect, but hopefully someone more knowledgeable about this can chime in because I'm very curious about this myself.
I went with a 10980XE system that I can overclock to 4-5 GHz with a water cooler in a server rack case, which sits nicely in my 19" audio rack. 18 cores with higher overall base frequencies on average, can be had used on EBay for the same price as a 12900k, and uses the HEDT x299/x299x mobo's. I picked up a Gigabyte x299 Designare EX for under $500 (again similar pricing to what you're suggesting) which has 2 onboard thunderbolt ports (I'm connecting a Motu 8A to this which goes out to an AVB network) and 5 PCIe card slots which seem to be seriously lacking on the consumer market boards these days) This looks like the best overall system to me right now and is a kind of hidden gem it seems (so far) because most information out there about these CPU's assumes a gaming or server market.
I went with a 10980XE system that I can overclock to 4-5 GHz with a water cooler in a server rack case, which sits nicely in my 19" audio rack. 18 cores with higher overall base frequencies on average, can be had used on EBay for the same price as a 12900k, and uses the HEDT x299/x299x mobo's. I picked up a Gigabyte x299 Designare EX for under $500 (again similar pricing to what you're suggesting) which has 2 onboard thunderbolt ports (I'm connecting a Motu 8A to this which goes out to an AVB network) and 5 PCIe card slots which seem to be seriously lacking on the consumer market boards these days) This looks like the best overall system to me right now and is a kind of hidden gem it seems (so far) because most information out there about these CPU's assumes a gaming or server market.
Just a heads up, there are ZERO 128gb DDR5 ram kits. So on a DDR5 board if you want 128gb of RAM, you will have to slap two 64gb kits (4x32gb sticks) together.
Now the problem is that those 32gb sticks are all dual rank. In a normal 64gb kit, where you populate two DIMM slots on the board, this is fine— you get the full dual channel speed and you can enable XMP to OC the RAM to it's full potential. (The DDR5 standard is only 4800mhz— so any RAM kit that is labeled higher than 4800mhz means you need to have XMP enabled or overclock the RAM manually to hit those speeds.)
However, when you populate 4 DIMM slots with 32gb dual rank modules, the memory controller cannot handle this setup and so the RAM is going to run at MUCH lower clock speeds— with 128gb, it could be 2666mhz or so. You cannot enable XMP. In fact, it might not run at all or be extremely unstable because: 1) all the new DDR5 motherboards are proving to be very temperamental about what RAM they run and 2) you are technically not supposed to combine RAM kits due to timing inconsistencies between kits— this has apparently been such a common problem that there is a sticky on the ASUS ROG forum explaining how this is not supported usage. Previously, you might be able to get away with it but because the boards are already a bit sensitive to the RAM used it is even more likely to cause stability issues.
I just built a new 12900k system (a Hackintosh actually) and it is running great. I went with 64gb of DDR5 as lately my workflow has moved away from keeping large quantities of samples in RAM and I wanted to future proof. In the future when 64gb DIMMs are released I'll probably upgrade to 128gb, but for now I'm happy.
TLDR: If you want 128gb in the system today, you absolutely want to buy a DDR4 board.
EDIT: Also, if you want to run a shitload of samples from RAM, the 10980xe on the x299 platform as suggested above is still a super viable and affordable option. I went with the 12900k as my workflow has shifted heavily to soft synths/DSP plugins and I wanted the single core headroom.
EDIT2: Also, if you go for the 12900k— make sure to give some thought to your cooling solution and case ventilation. These things get extremely hot under full load. I'm running mine using a Noctua D15 to keep the noise down, and I have a small undervolt going to keep temps in line. This is in a Fractal Define 7, which is not a great choice for airflow. For audio work, even when I push the CPU to the max in Cubase I'm rarely going over 75-80 degrees, so for my purposes it works fine. But running Cinebench multicore for 10 minutes will get temps up much higher, and if I was putting the CPU under load for longer periods of time I would definitely go for a more powerful liquid cooling solution.
Now the problem is that those 32gb sticks are all dual rank. In a normal 64gb kit, where you populate two DIMM slots on the board, this is fine— you get the full dual channel speed and you can enable XMP to OC the RAM to it's full potential. (The DDR5 standard is only 4800mhz— so any RAM kit that is labeled higher than 4800mhz means you need to have XMP enabled or overclock the RAM manually to hit those speeds.)
However, when you populate 4 DIMM slots with 32gb dual rank modules, the memory controller cannot handle this setup and so the RAM is going to run at MUCH lower clock speeds— with 128gb, it could be 2666mhz or so. You cannot enable XMP. In fact, it might not run at all or be extremely unstable because: 1) all the new DDR5 motherboards are proving to be very temperamental about what RAM they run and 2) you are technically not supposed to combine RAM kits due to timing inconsistencies between kits— this has apparently been such a common problem that there is a sticky on the ASUS ROG forum explaining how this is not supported usage. Previously, you might be able to get away with it but because the boards are already a bit sensitive to the RAM used it is even more likely to cause stability issues.
I just built a new 12900k system (a Hackintosh actually) and it is running great. I went with 64gb of DDR5 as lately my workflow has moved away from keeping large quantities of samples in RAM and I wanted to future proof. In the future when 64gb DIMMs are released I'll probably upgrade to 128gb, but for now I'm happy.
TLDR: If you want 128gb in the system today, you absolutely want to buy a DDR4 board.
EDIT: Also, if you want to run a shitload of samples from RAM, the 10980xe on the x299 platform as suggested above is still a super viable and affordable option. I went with the 12900k as my workflow has shifted heavily to soft synths/DSP plugins and I wanted the single core headroom.
EDIT2: Also, if you go for the 12900k— make sure to give some thought to your cooling solution and case ventilation. These things get extremely hot under full load. I'm running mine using a Noctua D15 to keep the noise down, and I have a small undervolt going to keep temps in line. This is in a Fractal Define 7, which is not a great choice for airflow. For audio work, even when I push the CPU to the max in Cubase I'm rarely going over 75-80 degrees, so for my purposes it works fine. But running Cinebench multicore for 10 minutes will get temps up much higher, and if I was putting the CPU under load for longer periods of time I would definitely go for a more powerful liquid cooling solution.
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Hi,
If you're planning on running a lot of Spitfire player libraries then definitely host them in VE Pro. My experience with Spitfire player libraries in Cubase is that they initially take up oodles of RAM when loading projects which settles down over time, but unloading a mix for one cue and loading it all back up again for the next cue takes an age if hosted in Cubase vs seconds if you have persistent Instances in VE Pro. HOOpus is fine in Cubase as it has a "never preload" option. There's also IMO a fantastic Cubase template from PoundSound for HOOpus.
With regard to your system build, if you have a reasonable existing DAW machine you could consider a refurb'ed workstation class PC to use as a VE Pro slave. I recently bought a HP Z640 with 256GB RAM and 2 x 18 core Xeon CPUs with a 12 month warranty for less than my i9 9900k 64GB system cost me 3 years ago. It's not going to win any prizes for single core performance, but here it's specific purpose is to host large orchestral templates which the power per core can easily support.
davidnaroth
Naroth Audio
I have an i9 9900k and run a very large template. Its been getting annoying lately as I add more libraries so I think I might do an upgrade in a couple months to this processor as well. BUT I guess my point is, if my little 8 core can run a very large session, this bad boy will be more than enough.
Thanks for all the help everyone.
How does this build look? Anyone see any potential problems? I know people are having clearance issues sometimes w the RAM and the Nocturna , the Ram in the build is 31mm so should be ok I think.
Thanks,
G
How does this build look? Anyone see any potential problems? I know people are having clearance issues sometimes w the RAM and the Nocturna , the Ram in the build is 31mm so should be ok I think.
Thanks,
G
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