Music production PC build

[wooda916]

Hi all,

I am building a PC primarily for music production. I am on quite a tight budget and would like to spend around £500-550 for all the components except the sound card. My main priorities are reasonably high RAM (8GB), an SSD for a boot drive, and quiet running for obvious reasons. After doing my research, the following is what I have come up with:

Case: Nexus Thrio 310 Acoustically Lined Case (already bought)
MOBO : Asus P8H77-V Intel H77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W)
PSU: Corsair Builder Series CX 500W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply
SSD: Crucial 64GB M4 SSD
HDD: Toshiba (7K1000.D) 1TB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache
CPU Cooling: Enermax ETS-T40-TB
RAM: Samsung Green (MV-3V4G3D/US) 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz 30nm Dual Channel Kit

Instead of an internal soundcard, I will be purchasing an external USB interface such as an Akai EIE Pro.

I would appreciate it if somebody could take a look over my proposed build, spot any flaws, and/or suggest some possible places that I could improve and/or save money.

Instead of the i5-3570, I was considering the 3570k, however from what I can tell there is little point due to getting the H77 chipset rather than the Z77 - is this correct?

Also, I was considering the Corsair tx650 PSU instead, however it's £30 more - is it worth the extra layout? Do I need the extra power?

Any help would be great, Thanks!

[Bonebreaker777]

Well.

You can find yourself Z77 chipset MoBos for the same price or cheaper that the one you wish to buy. I quickly compared prices on eBuyer (only),

If you choose a Z77 about £10 cheaper that your planned H77 was, you can afford the 3570k without even altering your budget,

The PSU is a overkill for your setup. You can easily get away with a 350-400W PSU. How about a XFX Core 450W? Should be still a overkill, but it is cheaper and better make.

The extra money you save on the PSU you could redirect to the SSD department and afford yourself a 120GB one. (64GB M4-£60, cheapest 120GB-£70).

Unfortunately due to lack of time I will have to cut short my post.

[wooda916]

Thanks for the reply Bonebreaker.

Would you recommend going for the Z77 then? I guess in terms of future proofing it would be advisable?

Thanks for the advice on PSU. I was told previously that a good / high powered PSU is very important, hence I went for more than I would maybe need, but if you think I can get away with ~400W that sounds good. I'm quite conscious of trying to make the system efficient as well, so a nice relatively low powered, high efficiency PSU would be nice, but obviously budget constrains me somewhat. I'll take a look into the XFX core.

Could you perhaps recommend a decent 120GB SSD? I've only really looked into ~60GB ones and the crucial M4 seemed to crop up a lot in recommendations.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I assume you are not gaming?? Also,only get the Core i5 3570K if you are actually overclocking. Even then I would consider an additional discrete card,after seeing this:

http://forums.hexus.net/software/272...enchmarks.html

[Phage]

Cat I had an enquiry from a friend on this subject as well. He has ~£1k to spend but not really my field, I thought that for him a 3770 with loads of RAM and a lovely IPS screen would be to go, but if you have a better idea I'm all ears.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Music production?? I would have a discrete card,just in case,but something like an HD7750 or HD7770 at most just to have the bases covered. However,it does make me think whether Haswell would be a better bet or not.

[Phage]

Yep. Music production.
What's your thoughts ?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Are they going to overclock?? I am thinking about stability. The IB Core i7 CPUs would be a safe choice.

Loads of RAM and a decent SSD would be good choices IMHO,

What about socket 2011?? The Core i7 3820 is a bit slower but OTH,I wonder if the six core Core i7 will be a useful upgrade choice. Haswell,does not look much quicker than IB,but does support newer extensions too.

[Pob255]

Well a 7750 would be fine for flac compression, if you acutely use it.
Other than that, it's more about the control interface and audio interface these days, everything going in and out digitally means sound cards are far less important

[Phage]

No overclocking, no gaming - a real work horse.

[wooda916]

I assume you are not gaming?? Also,only get the Core i5 3570K if you are actually overclocking. Even then I would consider an additional discrete card,after seeing this:

No I'm not gaming. This will be a studio PC only. I'm not intending to overclock - although I guess the opportunity to in the future would be nice if not too much more expensive. There doesn't seem to be a massive difference in price between the 3570 and 3570K, so thought I might as well go for the K? But maybe if I find somewhere I can get a 3570 for cheap then I will go with that.

I never really use FLAC so that's not really important to me. A discrete card would probably go to waste to be honest, I'm not intending to do anything visual on it, but could always upgrade later anyway.

I'm now thinking that I will go with the Z77 chipset as suggested, and I may go for Corsair Vengeance 8GB dual channel RAM instead of the Samsung Green. Do you have any suggestions for ~120GB SSDs, Cat?

Also what are your thoughts on PSU?

[Pob255]

the samsung 840 is an often recommended 120gb ssd http://www.scan.co.uk/products/120gb...56mb-cache-85k
the plextor are supposed to be very good too http://www.scan.co.uk/products/128gb...71000-iops-max
or just go for the 128gb m4 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/128gb...5mb-s-35000-io

There's nothing wrong with the CX 500w so to speak, esp the CP-9020047 which is the 80+bronze 3rd version of this psu, the 1st version of it wasn't great mainly because it was no better than the 430w CX, 1st version, on the 12v rail and both where lower quality and more expensive than the older seasonic made 400w CX, which was their big failing

I think the CX 430w, 80+bronze 3rd version, would be a better option and can be got in a modular format.

For other non-modular the seasonic 360w gold would be a good one to look at http://www.scan.co.uk/products/360w-...lent-fan-dc-dc review here http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php...Story&reid=313
As would the BeQuiet E9 400w http://www.scan.co.uk/products/400w-...an-atx-v23-psu made by FSP based off their Aurum psu with an excellent BeQuite fan but some Capxon capacitors thrown into the mix, unlike the normal Aurum's all Chemicon capacitors (still good capaciors just not as highly thought of as Chemicon)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

No I'm not gaming. This will be a studio PC only. I'm not intending to overclock - although I guess the opportunity to in the future would be nice if not too much more expensive. There doesn't seem to be a massive difference in price between the 3570 and 3570K, so thought I might as well go for the K? But maybe if I find somewhere I can get a 3570 for cheap then I will go with that.

I never really use FLAC so that's not really important to me. A discrete card would probably go to waste to be honest, I'm not intending to do anything visual on it, but could always upgrade later anyway.

I'm now thinking that I will go with the Z77 chipset as suggested, and I may go for Corsair Vengeance 8GB dual channel RAM instead of the Samsung Green. Do you have any suggestions for ~120GB SSDs, Cat?

Also what are your thoughts on PSU?

Its more a case of an example where GPU acceleration is starting to happen,not necessarily whether you use FLAC or not.

Have you considered this CPU:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...tio-69w-retail

Its basically a Core i7 3770 without an IGP.

I would get this SSD:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/128gb...71000-iops-max

The Seasonic 360W PSU would do the job.

[wooda916]

Thanks for the SSD suggestions. The Plextor looks good, think I may go for that!

The Seasonic 360W looks really really good, isn't 360W excessively low powered though? Are you sure it would be sufficient for the job?

Had a look at the Intel Xeon E3, do you know when it's being released? (its on pre order at the moment and can't see when its out?) Would it offer a large benefit over the 3570 / 3570K?

[DanceswithUnix]

I can't see why an i5 is needed for this, and do you really need a terabyte of storage?

Not run the numbers, but an FM2 motherboard and processor (A10-5700 seems obvious choice) should be quite a cost saving and give you some OpenCL grunt with the onboard graphics if/when that becomes useful. Add an aftermarket heatsink, the AMD one is pants.

If you also scrap the 1TB spinning rust disc (a source of noise? not used a Toshiba drive so don't know how good/bad they are), the money should pay for a 256GB SSD.

[Pob255]

Raw audio esp at high bit rates normally used for production tends to be big, not sure a 256gb SSD on it's own would be enough, will depend on what exactly is being done.

Not sure about the A10 as processing audio is one of those things that is very cpu intensive, you don't have to have a super fast cpu but it will mean you spend less time waiting for stuff to process.
The A10 could be a very good root to go, just not sure how good it is at audio processing and encoding.