Building new studio computers

My partner and I are in the process of putting together builds for 2 identical studio computers for our respective work rooms.

We’ve reached a bit of a block though. We’re debating between the Skylake 6700K on a Z170 mobo, or the Haswell-E 5820K on a X99 mobo.

While the Skylake has faster cores, the Haswell has more of them, which I’ve been told is better for audio production. It also seems that the X99 architecture has more upgrade paths in the future with Xeon and the upcoming Broadwell-E processors.

We run FLStudio with loads of samples and plugins. We will def. be doing some hardware recording, but rarely will we record more than 4 channels at at a time (and even then, that’s rare).

Here are links to our 2 builds via PCPartPicker
Hawell: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/yKN3qs
Skylake: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gdf6TW

Any advice is much appreciated!

Not a specialist in this area, but you HAVE to get a SSD drive, that’s for sure.
Some USB3 obviously…

Well of course! The boot/OS/program drive is SSD. The sample and track drives are HDD as we can’t afford SSDs for those in the 1Tb side.

The mobos all have USB 3 already and some even have Thunderbolt headers.

I’m toying around with this notion and was wondering if anybody has any thoughts on this?

What are the best specs I should shoot for and what would be superfluous? I’ve heard that you can max out on processing cores and most programs can’t even run them?

I just want plentifulness when it comes to music/video making.

Cant really say what the best way is, but this is how i always went about things to end up with a well specced system with room to grow. I started by setting myself a rough budget ($2k) and kept track of costs using a spreadsheet and read alot of reviews. Also, there’s a lot of sites performing benchmark testing that’ll show whether or not it’s worth the $$ to level up on any component - I did alot of massaging to try and find the best value for money.

CPU: ive always gone with minimum i7, not much point going top tier - i usually go 2nd best. I tend to look for on board graphics to save on the need for GPU since I’m not using a ton of fancy VSTs. i9 is pretty rad, but youre prolly better off spending the extra money elsewhere plus I’ve heard they run bloody hot. Can’t really say anything about core usage apart from check the software specs - ev I’ve had (water modelling) software specify quad core.

Cooling: read reviews and buy the best you can afford - stock standard fans and heatsinks are pissweak when it comes to i7 and above if you’re doing audio processing. It’s not overly expensive but has made a huge difference in performance in Australian summers with no aircon.

Case: read reviews and look for something highly rated for airflow. If you’re getting a big ass cooling system, make sure it physically fits. Oversized cases are way easier to work with - my latest build uses a Corsair Carbide 540 (crazy ass cube style) and has been an absolute joy to work on (google it and you’ll see what i mean). Before that was a Cooler master HAF932 that never ran out of room and looked fkn badass.

Hard Drive: main drive has to be SSD, faster bus speeds better, stick with well known manufacturers (read reviews on failure rates etc). I like Samsung drives - have never had a problem. Don’t need to fork out for the biggest drive, can always add more later and backup storage is cheap.

RAM: faster speed is better. When it comes to how much, check your software to see what they recommend. My rule of thumb is to try and double the required amount but its better to use the initial budget on the other components first and upgrade later.

Motherboard: look for one that matches specs in terms of speeds etc. Some cpu chipsets may be better than others for audio performance- google is your friend here. Shouldn’t need to max out ram but it’s good to have the capability to add more later. I’ve always been satisfied with Gigabyte boards. If you’re not using a gpu, make sure it can support on board graphics. Back when i had a firewire interface, options were kinda limited so this was the most important component but with usb audio, not so much.

GPU: cant advise here, but check your software specs. Sometimes a cheap GPU will be plenty of power if you’re not gaming - no idea what video making would require (rendering animation could be a lot, video editing a lot less)

Power: use an online calculator and give yourself some headroom for upgrades. You can always upgrade if necessary. Ive always been happy with thermaltake.

Don’t forget to include the price of the OS in your budget. Some people are happy with Windows Home, but i prefer having greater control over the update process so I’d rather use Pro. Linux is a bit of a fuck around so I’m running a dual boot system with windows for the DAW side of things.

Lastly, dont stress. If you’ve got a decent budget, remember to check your software requirements and give yourself some headroom then it’ll be fine.

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@rex_mundii thank you so much for taking the time and effort to provide that elaborate answer.

You’re the best! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Don’t you sleep ? (lol)

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@Ryan No worries, hadn’t expected to write such a detailed post but kept thinking of things to add! Also, could be worth having a stickybeak at the music computers forum on gearslutz for specific technical info

@J_C_SelectorV2 Sadly not so much these these days, any semblance of sleep patterns seems to have gone out the window

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One day in the future I prolly want to build a DAW, I’ll hit you up, or even catch up.

Not sure if that was directed at me, but if so I’d be down for that

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I just read an article in German computer magazine c‘t about a custom AMD Ryzen build and it‘s ability to run macOS (supposedly even surviving OS updates without much hassle). Sounded quite compelling to me. I can post the specs if you‘re interested. It seemed quite well researched.

Here’s what they used, came in at around 1500€.

https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/?cat=WL-1340580&hocid=ct

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