Help me build my PC 2017 Catch All

If your not limited to single core clock speed, then yeah by all means throw as many cores at the problem that you can, and go with Threadripper.

I have a system that will be right up your alley. Getting posted soon

TheGameguru wrote:

I have a system that will be right up your alley. Getting posted soon

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Podunk used Obsolescence. It was super effective.

Podunk, you may also want to check on compatibility issues with the system you choose. Back in the day some audio software didn't play nice with some chip sets.

I am seriously considering building a new system myself as well this year, and I am not sure which way I am going to go CPU wise because I also want use it for some gaming as well. I am leaning towards AMD for the price point right now.

Gaald wrote:

Podunk, you may also want to check on compatibility issues with the system you choose. Back in the day some audio software didn't play nice with some chip sets.

Yeah, that still crops up from time to time with particular hardware configurations, but it's way better now than it was in the past. If you're using a USB audio interface in Win 10, mostly things just work the way they're supposed to.

Podunk wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

People have brought up Ryzen, but I think we're looking at Threadripper territory here.

Ah yeah, this definitely sounds like a path worth exploring. I know a bunch of pro composers are using Xeon and Threadripper-based machines now, for exactly the reasons you're describing.

If you know them at all well, maybe tap their brains for what they think is good? And sharing it back with us, if you gather any info, would be useful, as I don't think we're working at anywhere near that level.

The fact that you're limited by 32 gigabytes of RAM when working with audio files is something I find rather astonishing, a teeny bit of future shock. If you'd asked me five years ago, I would have thought that a 32-gig machine would solve that particular problem forever, or at least as long as CD audio is the fundamental output standard.

Hell, if you asked me a week ago, my expectation would have been similar, that 32 gigs ought to cover any use case.

But now I'm thinking about layering dozens or even hundreds of tracks at 24-bit resolution, and realizing that, well, that's a lot of data....

Pondering upgrading to a 2080...

Can be had for as low as £600 - £650 now, and it looks like my current GTX 1070 would sell on ebay for at least £200, but more often £250. Coupled with a few hundred I made selling an old laptop, I'd be almost breaking even in doing so.

2080TI is £450 higher, for only ~2k high passmark score, my budget can't go that high.

Not that interested in Ray Tracing right now, but want to boost frames in AAA games at 1440p.

Think it's worth making that switch just now? Used 1080TIs are still going for £550 here, so I dont see the point in taking a risk on a used card for less than £100 different.

Or should I just bleed it out longer and upgrade later, when I have less 'trade in' for my 1070, but see what cards and card prices do next?

Why not go for a 2070 instead? Not quite as much oomph as the 2080, but $150 less... It rates about a third more gpu power than the 1070, where the 2080 is about 50% higher. Still a good uplift, but more budget friendly.

Here's a link to my newest build (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/m7hcpG) My current rig (https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Cartoo...) is only a year old, but my boys will be getting that one, since they are having to give up their laptops and I will build this one most likely this summer.

Anything you can spy that I may need to change/upgrade? I am currently 1080p, but will be going to 1440p, hence the 1660ti gpu.

Malor wrote:

The fact that you're limited by 32 gigabytes of RAM when working with audio files is something I find rather astonishing, a teeny bit of future shock. If you'd asked me five years ago, I would have thought that a 32-gig machine would solve that particular problem forever, or at least as long as CD audio is the fundamental output standard.

It's not so much about audio files in the traditional sense - even high resolution audio mostly streams from disk and doesn't consume much RAM. What really chews up memory are high quality orchestral sample libraries, or basically any detailed sample-based simulation of an acoustic instrument. That can involve loading thousands of fragments of audio files into RAM, which can get very resource intensive very quickly.

For instance, this is my primary orchestral string library: https://www.cinematicstudioseries.co...

A full string section with a single mic position loaded eats up about 6-8 GB of RAM. You can see how things could get dicey really quickly with a full orchestra and choir. On Praey for the Gods, a typical combat track will push 26-28 GB RAM in Cubase, and that's basically the point at which the system starts to become a little less stable than I'd like. The Cubase project for our Early Access trailer essentially maxed out both my RAM and disk bandwidth - close to 30GB of samples in RAM, plus around 25-30 audio tracks of live vocals and choir. It was the point at which I started seriously thinking about an upgrade.

Wow. That's workstation territory indeed... Of course, that's an endangered species.

Out of curiousity, have you found any clouds that might give you that kind of RAM (64GB-256GB) with a fast processor and a FastConnect or similar network pipe?

Robear wrote:

Wow. That's workstation territory indeed... Of course, that's an endangered species.

Out of curiousity, have you found any clouds that might give you that kind of RAM (64GB-256GB) with a fast processor and a FastConnect or similar network pipe?

That's an interesting idea. I don't know of anyone using a setup like that, but some composers do use slave PCs to load up a bunch of samples and stream audio over LAN using apps like Vienna Ensemble Pro - that doesn't seem too far removed from a cloud-based solution. The big roadblock there would be latency.

If I'm remembering correctly, latency on a typical hardware synth is around 5-10 ms. Max input/output latency on my machine is somewhere around 22 ms, which is not perfect but low enough that I mostly don't notice it. I don't know what kind of latency you could achieve with a FastConnect, but anything much higher than 20-25 ms would be a deal breaker. Add in the fact that I'm on sketchy rural cable internet and the whole thing begins to seem fairly anxiety-inducing

Yeah I would not trust my livelihood to always on sketchy rural cable internet.

Huh, I went to look at both Dell and HP, and neither seems to have, anymore, the old monster machines they used to sell. It used to be easily possible to build machines that could take 256 gigs or more, but I don't see anything that looks like that on either's website. Mind, back when I was last looking, it was obscenely expensive, but you could definitely do it at the time, and I figured things would have gotten much cheaper by now. Instead, the biggest machines I see that are configurable on the Dell.com site are 64 gigs.

So I went and looked at Newegg, and it does look like you can still buy server motherboards that take oodles of memory. It looks like the sTR4 socket boards, for Threadripper, can take up to 128 gigs, spread across 8 RAM sockets. Some of the Intel LGA 2011 boards can drive 256G on dual CPU boards (and some can apparently go even higher; one claims to support a terabyte), also spread across 8 sticks, but they seem to need ECC. With that much RAM, though, you probably want ECC anyway. That is just an awful, awful lot of memory cells that could develop an error.

I haven't taken the time to price out full builds or anything, but at least historically, the dual-CPU rated Xeons weren't usually priced that badly, and the lower-end Threadrippers aren't too awful. And you probably wouldn't want to fully populate the memory right away, but having the expandability might be nice for when we transition to DDR5 or whatever comes next. (note that DDR4 RAM will be cheapest when the replacement first really starts to get going, and will get more expensive after that, so that will be the cheapest point to fill out whatever board you choose.)

If you want to stay down at more standard desktop-class pricing, at least to a quick scan, it seems like 64 gigs is as far as you can go on AM4 and LGA 1151. If you want more, it looks like you have to go up to machines that will cost quite a lot more. I'd need to actually try to make a build to be sure, but I suspect you'd probably have a real easy time hitting $5K.

A TR machine doesn't *have* to cost all that much more. It's only been a little over a week or so since the TR 1920X , which is the 12 core 24 thread part, was on sale for $280.

That's 12 cores 24 threads and Threadripper platform for around the cost you'd normally pay for a 2700X.

Though even if you catch a good sale on the processor, there will be some added cost in the motherboard.

On the positive side, RAM is cheaper now than it's been in ages.

Robear wrote:

Why not go for a 2070 instead? Not quite as much oomph as the 2080, but $150 less... It rates about a third more gpu power than the 1070, where the 2080 is about 50% higher. Still a good uplift, but more budget friendly.

I thought about that for a bit, but I think I want to make the step up to xx80 level of cards... just not willing to spend almost double the price to go for the TI variant.

Malor wrote:

Huh, I went to look at both Dell and HP, and neither seems to have, anymore, the old monster machines they used to sell.

You can go for a Dell Precision 7920 Tower with 3TB of RAM if you like... it'll cost you over $100k just for the RAM alone, mind you.. Up to Dual Intel Xeon Gold 6154 18C per CPU, with an Nvidia Quadro P6000 GPU (over $3.5k on its own)...

So yep, they definitely still do monster desktop workstations

Aha, okay, I see it now. I didn't look in the right spot. Had to dig deeper. That's exactly what I was thinking about, very much like the old systems were.

Doesn't look like the prices have come down much, either. Looks like a dual CPU 128 gig system will run at least $8K.

Dell still sells monster workstation machines. You want to look at the Precision line. They offer them with duel Xeon processors and up to 3 TB of RAM. We got one for the video editor at my old job shortly before I left after the Optiplex they tried to replace his Mac Pro with proved to be unable to handle his work load.

Hi all

Have upgraded my GPU since i bought my PC in 2014, but I think the CPU is starting to be a bottle neck in some games.

At the moment I have:

Fractal Design ARC Midi R2 mid tower case
Intel Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-4820K (3.7GHz) 10MB Cache
ASUS P9X79 LE: INTEL® SOCKET LG2011

I guess my simple questions are a) would you upgrade the CPU and to what; and b) how tricky is that to do for someone who has managed a GPU and SSD install but never done anything else to the inside of a PC?

Thanks in advance

I *did* say "endangered", not "extinct" lol. We still sell some, but demand in the Federal government is way down, what with VDI and Cloud and fast virtual networks. Laptops really crossed into the old workstation space for many use cases years ago, and since most workloads don't bloat *that* much, that's what customers use these days. Again, outside of VDI and Cloud.

I think that kind of high speed, high RAM, low latency cloud would be at business prices anyway.

LondonLoo wrote:

Hi all

Have upgraded my GPU since i bought my PC in 2014, but I think the CPU is starting to be a bottle neck in some games.

At the moment I have:

Fractal Design ARC Midi R2 mid tower case
Intel Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-4820K (3.7GHz) 10MB Cache
ASUS P9X79 LE: INTEL® SOCKET LG2011

I guess my simple questions are a) would you upgrade the CPU and to what; and b) how tricky is that to do for someone who has managed a GPU and SSD install but never done anything else to the inside of a PC?

Thanks in advance

You have already got the highest end quad-core processor of that generation (they did make some six core models though, but they are clocked lower so game performance would probably be worse in most titles) so you would probably need to swap your motherboard as well as the CPU as your X79 chipset is going to limit what you can swap into that motherboard. You can probably make use of a lot of your components, but you are looking at needing new motherboard, RAM (your motherboard uses DDR3 while newer motherboards use DDR4), and CPU to get more than a slight improvement.

Rykin wrote:

You can probably make use of a lot of your components, but you are looking at needing new motherboard, RAM (your motherboard uses DDR3 while newer motherboards use DDR4), and CPU to get more than a slight improvement.

Ahhhh thanks.

That probably puts me firmly into the paying someone to build it territory I think!

What makes you think the 4820K is bottlenecking you?

*Legion* wrote:

What makes you think the 4820K is bottlenecking you?

In Xplane the CPU is running fairly constantly at 90%+ while the GPU (1080ti) cruises along fairly quietly

Well that's pretty much how your numbers are going to look in X-Plane regardless of what you have. Excessively single-thread bottlenecked. So yeah you might get a boost in performance by jumping to the latest high-end Intel CPU, if that's worth the upgrade for you. But your CPU will still be the bottleneck even after that.

@Legion, thanks. You have saved me some money!

Sorry for the cross post (apologies to LeapingGnome) but there is more traffic here and I'm looking to benefit from the collective wisdom. To recap:

My rig is an Alienware X51 R3 with a NVIDIA GTX 960 6 gb (details below). I think I have power limits (320 w) and cooling issues due to small case). I'm zeroing in on the GTX 1660 TI as the last GPU for this rig to extend its useful lifespan. From what I've read this necessitates a dual slot card with a single blower fan. Only one has been announced Manli GTX 1660 TI but not yet available:(https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-spec...)

Maybe I should just purchase a readily available small form single(no blower>?) and hope it keeps its cool?
e.g ASUS Phoenix GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...) ?

comments?

tia, Jaya

Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Alienware 1.2.13, 8/13/2018
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB

You probably already use a cooling fan setup underneath it, right? My son's Alienware will throttle down during graphics intensive games without that extra airflow. Just a thought. If it's overheating with one of those already in play, I'd hesitate to put a card with a higher heat output into the case.

With a quick look, the 1660 TI should be a bit higher in power consumption (up to 32w more under load), but just a hair less in heat output - call it the same. But - big but - the consensus I have seen is that it takes a 400W power supply to drive it.

So, if it were me, I would not try to put it in that system.

I'm not made any modifications to my rig since purchasing it so it only has cooling system that came with the original Alienware setup. According to my research max dimensions for my gpu space are:
Height: 4.736 inches
Length: 9.5 inches
Width: Dual Slot

That means that the Manli GTX 1660 Ti with single blower will not fit as it is just over 10". Damn, back to the drawing board.
http://www.manli.com/en/products/NVI...

Probably just as well because I don't know if I was going to be able to locate a Manli card anyway.