time to upgrade the PC

[mrc]

I've had good luck with Asus mobos as well, am running a 990 fx sabertooth at the moment. Running a 250 gig ssd for C:, 32 gigs of ram. I like the WD Black drives for audio, they have bearings on both ends of the spindle vs the bottom only on others. Ram is cheap, now get the fastest you can. I'm using an Antec EA 750 watt ps thats quiet and an Asus HD 7700/2 gig of ram video card that plays battlefield 3 on all max and I can record within 3 feet of the rackmount it's all in. I'm running an AMD 980 quad core that I expect replace with an 8 core 8350 as needed. I also run a Uad duo. I think the I7's are mighty fine systems, too. My laptop is intel.

[Bro Shark]

My stock intel CPU fan is kinda noisy. Anyone ever replace a CPU cooler? Advisable/not advisable?

[mrc]

Yeah, go to new egg and compare the noise levels of various aftermarket coolers.

[Snarl 12/8]

At the risk of participating in a threadjack.

I've replaced a cpu cooler or two. You can get much quieter ones than stock. Read the reviews and specs. There's a site called "quiet pc" or something that might have recommendations.

Has your cooler gotten louder? Or was it too loud to begin with? You might try blasting some air into the fins of the existing heat sink. Some (all/most??) stock coolers blow the air into the fins of the heat sink and this can create a surprisingly well stuck on insulating blanket pretty quickly. Since most coolers are told to spin faster as the cpu gets hotter it can get noisier over time because of that dust. Blast it out of there and things get much quieter.

My other piece of advice is to make sure you get really good thermal paste. Clean the old shit off with 99% pure alcohol and let it dry really good. A cooler is only as good as the thermal conduction between the cooler and the frying pan, er, cpu, it's sitting on.

Oh, triple check that whatever cooler you get will fit in your case. I didn't think about this at all when I bought the first one and it was sheer luck that it worked. They generally achieve quietness by using bigger heat sinks and bigger, slower spinning fans. That shit takes up space. The one I bought was a pain to install because I had to take the power supply out, put the cooler on and then put the power supply back in.

Some of them also require you to remove the whole motherboard, because they put a metal plate on the underside of the cpu as well as the heat sink and fan over it. If you don't want to deal with that, make sure you don't get that type. But, if you're not removing the motherboard to install the cooler, make sure you don't crack the motherboard when you push the cooler down onto the cpu. Some coolers require a bit of pressure to install, some don't.

If you don't want a potentially big hassle, try the air first.

[Bro Shark]

THANK YOU. This is great advice. Definitely going to try the air first. I'm kind of hesitant to be monkey arming the mobo and dealing with thermal paste, etc.

Thanks.

[joninc]

starting to get closer to making this happen and wondering a few dets...

1. what constitutes a large power supply? 750 watts?

2. is a fan cooled CPU enough cooling?

these are the specs of one i am looking at for about $800:

Intel I7-3820 / 500 GB SATA HD / DVD RW / 16 GB Ram / GTX 260 NVidia 896 MB Video Card / ASUS Rampage IV Gene Motherboard / 750 watts psu

[Snarl 12/8]

I'd call 750W a large supply. Depends obviously, but unless you're running a monster GPU or a zillion hard drives, 750 ought to give you some reserves. Not all 750's are created equal though.

Fan cooled is almost always adequate unless you're overclocking. Some CPU's seem to have pretty notorious stock coolers, but most are pretty solid, IMO. I'm pretty sure not very many people overclock their systems for audio. Not too many pros want to sacrifice stability for speed. Maybe if you start bumping up against plugin limits or something you'd want to OC for mixdown. I dunno. I've never seen OC'ing discussed in terms of an audio computer before.

[Randyman...]

A good 750W PSU is almost certainly overkill for most DAW's unless you are running dual SLI/CrossFire graphics (in a DAW, why would you?), but that's not necessarily a bad thing

The "Superflower" OEM PSU's are generally FANTASTIC! I found the Kingwin LZP-650 was made by Superflower, and received rave reviews. Powers my monster Sandy-Bridge E (LGA2011) DAW and 6 hard drives, and I barely get the fan spinning. I also run the LZP-550 in another i5 Sandy Bridge VSTi slave DAW (still completely overkill, but the next model down was passive / no fan and i wanted a fan).

Here is a Superflower OEM cross-reference chart for most of the re-branded models - Many to choose from:
http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page330.htm

The PC Power & Cooling PSU's also score high on my short list, but I replaced my PC P&C 750 "Silencer" with the Kingwin LZP-650, and like it better...

RE Overclocking: I generally agree with Snarl, but I've been a HUGE proponent of overclocking since I began building PC DAW's over 10 years ago.

The key is being familiar with overclocking, and KNOWING your overclock is stable under ANY condition. You have to balance stability with heat and voltage - and this assumes you have a beefy CPU cooler to start with (still stay quiet under load unlike the stock Intel heatsink/fan).

My SB-E i7-3820 has happily run @ 4.7GHz from day one and is as stable as stock. I also have the FSB running faster than stock, so the busses are also running faster than stock (omitting the PCI/PCIe bus - you DON'T want to overclock that as it will impact stability greatly). Overall, it helps quite a bit - but there is a steep learning curve (I've had 10 years to work out the kinks ).

I never budge from 32-Samples on my RME MADI ASIO driver while tracking (I monitor solely through the DAW), so having as much CPU power as possible on-tap is always welcomed...

Food for thought - but don't expect a jaw dropping STABLE overclock if this is new to you. You will need to do lots of research and testing on your own. A high-quality Motherboard is a MUST!!! The x79 model you listed looks pretty good to me...

[digitaldrummer]

a couple weeks ago I picked up a new Dell Inspiron 660 when they had them for $399 (the price is up higher today).

It has 8GB of RAM, an i3-3240, 1TB hard disk, USB 3.0 ports and enough PCIe slots for what I needed. I also moved a dual-port video card (Nvidia NVS 295 - not a power house but perfectly acceptable for looking at WAV forms...), a second hard disk, CD/DVD, firewire card, etc from my old system.

I previously had another Dell - the Inspiron 560 and it had a Q8300 with 6GB RAM and USB 2 ports. it was pretty good but the new one has more CPU power (although I really never run out) and I really wanted the USB 3 ports for an external SATA dock and some external drives.

btw, both of those systems run very quiet. I was very happy with the first one and so far am very happy with the new one as well. The only issue I had with the new one was that I had to disable Hyper-threading (otherwise Pro Tools kept throwing an error when I adjusted plugins). But the two cores on the i3 still outrun the 4 cores of the Q8300.

Mike

[Electricide]

I've been kicking around a $700 system. I currently move my PC into the closet when recording, it's loud and generally right under the recording desk

Antec SOLO II case

Core i5 haswell, ASUS 1150 MB

fanless 500W psu

WD velociraptor 150 GB hd (10k rpm drive, but only 2.5 inch drive in a 3.5 case, so it's actually quiet. though many are saying that 7200 rpm is enough for 32 tracks of audio....) - could also use a samsung 880 SSD to go silent

8 gig RAM



this is just over 600. Haven't worked out the best system drive/recording drive setup

I still have XP, so I'd need another $125 or so for a system builder windows 8.

Plus, tweaking case fans and CPU heatsinks.

[Electricide]

I've also thought about getting an all-in-one with USB 3 ports that I could conceivably carry to different locations, like the walk-in-closet, to track. Best compromise between a tower and a laptop. a touch all-in-one would be great. but.....$$$$

[sfsonarboy]

Some great advice here. One other thought...for my last workstation I was running short on time and brains so instead of building it myself (as I had the last few), I purchased a system from a gentleman/company that specializes in DAW's. http://www.studiocat.com/ (Jim R. is the gentleman who runs that). It was a few $$ more than DIY, but Jim was super-helpful both before and after the purchase, and the system has been extremely stable.

[getreel]

I have worked on PCs for a living as well as being an audio engineer..

I second the recommendation for Seagate hard drives. At least 7200rpm SATA II drives. I've had fair success with Hitachi drive as well. The SSD idea is a great one and they do speed up PCs when used as a system drive for Windows and software. Gigabyte motherboards are still pretty good. I've had good luck with my current MB which is a Jetway and wasn't terribly expensive. It's had 3 different CPUs in it as I've upgraded. Most recent chip is AMD X2 6000+ 3.01GHz. I've only got 4 gigs of DDR 667MHz RAM and as off this week, Windows 8 Pro!

A big thing with building a good DAW is the power supplyEspecially if you're going to load firewire card, Possibly dual header Video card(for dual monitors) etc.

In upgrading from an AMD 4800+ to the 6000+, I also replaced my system drive but kept my 650 watt Inter-Max power supply which was of good quality. Well, the system refused to spin the new Seagate 7200rpm system drive well enough. So in went an 850 watt power supply, new CPU cooling system(a very large heatsink with large sow fan for less noise). Stable system with Windows 7 and now Windows 8.

Also make sure to watch out for what kind of slots the motherboard has versus what you need. A lot of them don't come with any PCI slots anymore. Only PCIe which is really only a problem if you have certain PCI cards you need to use. There are PCIe equivalents for most things like FW, USB 3, etc. Some new boards come with a just a single PCI slot and a single PCIe slot. I'd want a couple of each ideally.

Then just make sure you have the right CPU for your board and the correct type of RAM. Building a custom PC is fairly straightforward and is easily the best way to get a great DAW system for less.

Also, Windows 8 so far is really working great with Reaper which is my DAW of choice. I did not move my older Sonar over when I wen to 8 but Reaper 4 sure works well. Faster than 7 and more stable if you can believe it.

[Electricide]

I went for it. totally overkill for the 2 tracks at a time I record, but future proof, video editing yada yada justify.

Intel core i5 4670k + Asus z87-A MB
$349 newegg combo
- this does come with one old skool PCI slot, I can move my FW card over for the Onyx.
-although sandy bridge is easier to cool, the haswell means I don't really need a GPU even if I want dual monitor.

Antec Solo II midATx case
$51 -open box item at Frys.
-The external/optical 5.25 brackets were missing, but I called antec, spoke to an American! and they are sending me 4 brackets for free.

Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD
$228 at b&h
- This will be the only drive. See the SSD thread for my updated thoughts.

Corsair 16GB 1600 memory (8x2)
$119 at amazon. Could have gotten cheaper, but wanted something on the QVL.

Windows 8 OEM 64 bit
$89 at amazon

Rosewill SilentNight 500W fanless PSU
$139 at New Egg (rebranded flower power or whatever)

Xigmatek Gaia heatsink+fan
$21 newegg

so that's.... $993. I had gift money at amazon which helped. If stupid bestbuy had kept the samsung 840 in stock I could have used gift card money there too.

The case has one fan on the cpu heatsink with one case exhaust fan right behind it. PSU passively vents out the top vent of the antec case. So two fans. No spinny discs.

Other thoughts:
I can see the wisdom in just getting a laptop with 2 USB3 ports and getting an external drive and a USB interface. But a new interface is at least a few hundred.

also, with just a processor, SSD, and one pci card, I'd think I could probably fit all I need into a PC the size of tissue box.

[Electricide]

also, in case anyone is UTFSF later, I installed the last driver for the Onyx satellite, win7 driver, and it works fine so far in 8. Just did a sound test, not ASIO recording yet.