Ryzen 3800X for a DAW?

Discussion in 'Computer Hardware' started by Bunford, Nov 17, 2019.

  1. Bunford

    Bunford Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jan 17, 2012
    Messages:
    2,170
    Likes Received:
    837
    Just wondering what people's experiences are like using Ryzen CPUs for DAWs? Any experience particular to Cubase would be fab!

    I've always used Intel, and I currently have a Core i7 4960X Extreme Edition processor, which is a 6 core/12 thread CPU. Therefore, my question is from that angle as someone with zero experience of AMD processors.

    I'm toying with the idea of an upgrade and would be going from:

    CPU: Intel Core i7 4960X
    Cooler: Corsair H150i Pro 360mm Liquid Cooler
    Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth X79
    RAM: 64GB (8 x 8GB_ Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1600MHz
    GPU: MSI GTX 1070 Armor 8GB OC
    HDD: 2 x 500GB Crucial MX500 SSDs
    PSU: Corsair RM850

    and I am considering upgrading to:

    CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
    Cooler: Corsair H150i Pro 360mm Liquid Cooler
    Motherboard: Asus TUF Gaming X570-PLUS
    RAM: 64GB (4 x 16GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3200MHz
    GPU: MSI GTX 1070 Armor 8GB OC
    HDD: 2 x 500GB Crucial MX500 SSDs
    PSU: Corsair RM850

    For the upgrade I will only be needing to buy the CPU, RAM and motherboard. However, I'm just wondering if the upgrade from a Intel Core i7 4960X and DDR3 RAM to an AMD Ryzen 7 2800X with DDR4 RAM will give me a decent performance upgrade for a DAW machine?

    I would also keep the previous processor, RAM and motherboard and likely patch together a solution to maybe use as a slave machine to use with Vienna Ensemble Pro or to use as an overkill UnRAID system or something.

    I'd be grateful if anybody with computing know-how could give their advice on the above, and in particular about using Ryzen processors with Cubase if possible!

    Cheers in advance!
     
    • Useful Useful x 3
    • Interesting Interesting x 2
    • List
  2.  
  3. quadcore64

    quadcore64 Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2011
    Messages:
    1,753
    Likes Received:
    961
    Black Friday or after holiday deals???

    CPU: The Ryzen 3800X puts you right at the recommended limit for Cubase 10. Any modern, well coded DAW should handle multithread operations smoothly.

    RAM: Personally would not go beyond 32GB for memory unless, you are also doing video rendering/high end graphics/CAD/etc... By going with a different brand, you may be able to squeeze DDR4-3600 into your build.
    There are currently only three sources for high end RAM that companies can draw from so, do look at different
    brands. Low profile non-RGB.

    Motherboard: Your choice is probably the the best entry level. If you can push it, look at the ASRock X570 Taichi. This currently the best all-round X570 motherboard.

    Graphics: Unless you are gaming or doing graphics intensive work, 2GB to 4GB video cards are fine for handling DAW & plugin graphics smoothly.

    Storage: NVMe in place of one the 500GB if they are 2.5" SATA.

    Cooling: Personally would go with a large dual fan CPU tower. Good modern cases come with front & rear fans with more than enough air flow. when added to the dual fan tower, you should never experience CPU throttling.
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2019
    • Useful Useful x 2
    • Like Like x 1
    • List
  4. naitguy

    naitguy Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jan 9, 2017
    Messages:
    732
    Likes Received:
    512
    Location:
    Canada
    That CPU is more than enough, IMO. It will be great, if that's in your price range. The video card, looks like Bunford already owns the 1070, otherwise I'd say save money on that and put it elsewhere (unless you're gaming / video rendering).

    +1 on the NVMes. I have two. A Samsung 960 Evo, which is very fast (and highly recommend 970 if you can afford it in a decent size). I also have a 1TB Crucial, which isn't as fast, but it still blows the doors off older Samsung 840 SSD and it was very cheap.
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2019
  5. taskforce

    taskforce Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jan 27, 2016
    Messages:
    1,957
    Likes Received:
    2,066
    Location:
    Studio 54
    Hey mate. I see no real advantage in going for 3800x when there's 3700x for ~50 dlrs less. That 0.3 ghz for 50 dlrs will not make much of a difference in performance. Especially when you have a very good AIO liquid cooler such as the H150i pro, which means you can "push" a mild constant all-core-boost to 3.9-4ghz without much effort and most importantly without a noticeable rise in fan noise levels.
    I have to say that at the price range you are looking at mobos, the Asus TUF Gaming (the one with the WiFi) at around 200 dlrs is great. The few things it misses, is Bios Flashback and has Realtek LAN instead of the better Intel LAN. The equivalent of the TUF mobo should be the Gigabyte X570 Elite which has an equally capable VRM, Intel LAN, Bios Flashback but lacks the WiFi. And actually those two mobos, the Asus TUF and the Gigabyte Elite are so far the best choices for an x570 up to even 250-270 dlrs.
    You can also save about 70-100 bucks (depnding where you buy from) going for G.Skill Aegis 4x16gb @ 3200mghz instead of the Corsair LPX sticks.
    May i suggest, spend that precious money that you can save from cpu and ram by spoiling yourself with a 500gb Pci-e gen.4 nvme ssd like the Gigabyte Aorus or the Corsair MP600 or Seagate FireCuda 520. These new ssds hit 5gb/sec sequential read & 2.5gb/sec write and go for about 130 dlrs.
    I just installed a similar system the previous week with a Ryzen 5 3600x on a Gigabyte x570 Elite with a H100i cooler and the aforementioned GSkill ram sticks with Cubase 10 Pro and it rocks. I was a bit concerned at first because it was the first time i used these ram sticks in a 64gb config, but the config worked flawlessly out of the box. We even flashed the mobo to the latest bios with np. OS was Win10 pro which takes some time to tweak but it's ok, clients want the latest. This particular client of mine does heavy Kontakt use but not much fx plugs. So he's almost never cpu bound, but with his previous second gen i5/16gb and no nvme ssd whatsoever was both hdd and ram bound. A quick test showed the 3600x ran 32 Kontakt orchestral channels and few plugins like Altiverb on a send config at 40-45% cpu load and about 30gb of ram usage. Client was happy, end of story.
    Hope this helps.
    Cheers :)
    PS: The Vienna Ensemble Pro 7 is something i personally use on almost a daily basis. Highly recommended, it is worth every penny.
    EDIT: And the Taichi @quadcore64 said ? It is surely the winner in the 300dlr category, but ..well, it's 100 dlrs more than the TUF and Elite and you get practically a slightly beefier VRM, one more nvme and 2 more sata slots for 100 dlrs... Kinda steep imho. I would personally recommend the Taichi if you were going for a 3900x, but np, it's still a winner board atm.
    Oh and 3200mghz is the sweetspot for Ryzen 3000 series, with 3600mghz giving a 0.1 - 0.2% gain. I'd rather spend more money for faster cas latency than max frequency. Note that beyond 3600mghz all you get is diminishing returns and no real gain whatsoever unless you do hard cpu OC, which you probably won't.
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2019
    • Useful Useful x 2
    • Like Like x 1
    • List
  6. quadcore64

    quadcore64 Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2011
    Messages:
    1,753
    Likes Received:
    961
    Do not overclock.. DAWs & plugins tend to run more stable at normal loads. This is why one recommended tweak is to disable turbo boosting. And, 300MHz in a heavy workload does make a difference (64+ orchestration tracks).

    On a 4 core/8 thread E5-1620-V2, Pro Tools 12 & Samplitude Pro X4 can be pushed to short CPU spikes %100 without crashing, popping or glitching using the Magix ASIO driver & built-in sound device with the buffer set at 64 (for mixing).

    The whole idea of using Vienna Ensemble Pro is to off-load processing to conserve/share resources.
    If your plan is to use two computers in this manner, than 64GB of RAM would not be needed.

    By the time you get to mix stage, your decisions should be final enough to commit tracks/subs to stems in any situation thus further negating the need for a large resource pool. Further to that, you now have freed up resources to use where needed during the mix stage (automation & bus FX).
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2019
    • Like Like x 2
    • Agree Agree x 1
    • Useful Useful x 1
    • List
  7. Tob

    Tob Platinum Record

    Joined:
    Jun 4, 2019
    Messages:
    305
    Likes Received:
    200


    The 3800 has an 8% higher base frequency and a 2% higher turbo frequency. Which resulted in multicore benchmarks in 2-3% better performance per core. Which means 3800 is at least around 2% per core faster => ~16%. (Probably a bit more)

    If I'm not mistaken depends on the deal and where u live the 50 dollars more are 15% higher price.
    So the 3800 is basically cheaper, if you compare performance per dollar than the 3700.
     
  8. taskforce

    taskforce Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jan 27, 2016
    Messages:
    1,957
    Likes Received:
    2,066
    Location:
    Studio 54
    All core boost is not OC. It is nominal and well under the cpu's boundaries. I run several cpus mildly pushed since the dawn of ages, for instance a 7700k @ 4.5 ghz for 2 years daily and never experienced system instability.
    What ? for real ? I strongly disagree. This is advice from the 20th century. I 'd like to know who gives such advice officially. Any vendor that builds pcs for DAW use like for instance scan.UK will probably tell you that: Anything that can slow a cpu, like C-states & power saving options is a no no. Anything that can speed up the cpu like turbo boost is always recommended. Even oc is ok, if you have a beefy cooler & VRM to maintain stability.
    Cheers
     
  9. taskforce

    taskforce Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jan 27, 2016
    Messages:
    1,957
    Likes Received:
    2,066
    Location:
    Studio 54
    You will be hard pressed to find a Ryzen 3000 cpu that can hit 4.3 ghz with max boost (except perhaps the new 3950x, which is their best binning so far). Most of them max out at 4.2 ghz. AMD's mentioning 4.4 ghz max boost of the 3800x is quite unreachable without overclocking it for real. And this 4.4ghz even if it was a real out of the box max boost, it refers to only ONE core not all 8 of them.
    Cheers
    Ps: you can buy the 3800x for 380 @ 3.9 ghz. I will buy the 3700x @ 3.6 and push it to 3.9-4 ghz with any 50-80 dlrs cooler which you need anyway for either cpu. Since they practically can max boost to the same 4.2 ghz you just wasted 50 dlrs mate :D
    And that is why the 3800x is the less popular among the new Ryzen 3000 series and look around if am lying hehehe.
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2019
  10. quadcore64

    quadcore64 Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2011
    Messages:
    1,753
    Likes Received:
    961
    The idea is to let the processor & software work as naturally as possible. Boosting & over-clocking with processors these days even for gaming is not needed unless you are trying to make a Pinto perform like a Mustang (so to speak).

    Was considering upgrading to a V4 E5 Xeon until AMD released the 3700X. With CPUs like the 3800X, 3900X & 3950X (more PCIe 4.0 lanes ), the E5 Xeon platform no longer makes sense to me.

    Proper motherboard, fast CPU, fast memory, fast NVMe SSD = no need to over-clock.
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
    • Like Like x 1
    • List
  11. quadcore64

    quadcore64 Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2011
    Messages:
    1,753
    Likes Received:
    961
    The 3950X is able to sustain 3.7ghz on all cores @ stock. More than enough.
     
  12. Andrew

    Andrew AudioSEX Maestro Staff Member

    Joined:
    Oct 24, 2011
    Messages:
    1,981
    Likes Received:
    1,201
    Location:
    Between worlds
    3950X indeed looks promising, in 2-3 years..
     
  13. taskforce

    taskforce Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jan 27, 2016
    Messages:
    1,957
    Likes Received:
    2,066
    Location:
    Studio 54
    I will agree there is no need to oc if your performance needs are catered for. No one can dictate though exactly what those needs are, every user is different.
    So, where you find me on the arguing side is the "naturally as possible" remark. If max & turbo boost was not natural, Intel and AMD wouldn't provide consumers with unlocked cpus. Most of Z370/Z390 mobos come with a default BIOS setting at turbo and some with quite agressive all core turbo settings. I reckon half the users who have such a mobo never bothered to understand what this means or even noticed, nor did it ever mattered to them that their system was mildly oc'd from the get go. I can even imagine they 're having a great time with it.
    To put it in perspective, the idea here, at least for smart users, was never to make Pinto perform like a Mustang. The idea is to get the best performance per dollar from your cpu without resolving in two things:
    1. Pushing it beyond its physical thermal limits so you risk system instability, temporary subsystems' malfunction and/or potential permanent damage.
    2. Ending up with more power consumption than what you 'd pay for a faster cpu in the first place.
    Therefore, to sum it, a good question for you would be, how "natural" is a 9900KS. This is rhetorical of course because there's nothing natural about it out of the box. It is exactly the same last year's 9900K/8core @ 3.6ghz but pushed from mama Intel to 5ghz all cores. So really, Intel does what enthusiasts had been doing almost a year now with that particular cpu, but because they 're Intel, it's natural ? An almost 40% OC? And of course they won't tell public that it's actually a factory OC'd cpu with the exactly same silicon as the plain 9900k but perhaps a bit more carefully selected, hence Intel ask for a hefty premium over the current 9900k cpu's price.
    Cheers :)
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2019
  14. metaller

    metaller Audiosexual

    Joined:
    May 28, 2016
    Messages:
    760
    Likes Received:
    524
    Location:
    Persia
    Get Ryzen 3950X, it is better among AMDs. It has 16 cores/32 threads, a 3.5 Ghz base clock with up to 4.7 GHz boost (on two cores), and costs $749.


    https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9-3950x-review
    https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x

    Consider price when seeing these charts:
    Intel 9960X : 1600 $
    Intel 9940X : 1350 $
    Intel 9900X: 790$
    AMD 3950X: 750$ - To be released
    Intel 9900 KS: 580$
    AMD 3900X: 580$
    Intel 9900K: 480$
    Intel i7-9700K: 400$
    AMD-3700X: 330$
    AMD-3600X: 235$
    Intel i5-9600K: 220$
    (Amazon.com prices)

    [​IMG]


    In Vst Instrument Kontakt test they are still a bit behind (but again consider price too)

    [​IMG]

    http://www.scanproaudio.info/2019/0...00x-dawbench-tested-3-is-it-the-magic-number/

    I wasn't a fan of AMD, but this recent Ryzen 3950X seems very powerful, specially by considering the performance to price ratio. I am waiting for DAW bench of it, once it gets released

    You can see some DAW benchmarks here:
    http://www.scanproaudio.info/
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2019
  15. quadcore64

    quadcore64 Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2011
    Messages:
    1,753
    Likes Received:
    961
    What I can is this. If I were buying a 9900, it would be the 9900K. My preference though would still be a Xeon over the 9900K & KS.
    Just straight up performance out of the gate. The problem currently is that technology is aging. That is where AMD comes in.
    Reasonable cost, PCIe Gen 4, high thread count, ECC memory support, genrous PCI lane count, decent thermals using stock tower coolers.
     
  16. quadcore64

    quadcore64 Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2011
    Messages:
    1,753
    Likes Received:
    961
  17. Andrew

    Andrew AudioSEX Maestro Staff Member

    Joined:
    Oct 24, 2011
    Messages:
    1,981
    Likes Received:
    1,201
    Location:
    Between worlds
    $749 is still quite steep, considering prices for PC components always go down in time. That's why I said in 2-3 years. Expect 0day issues with all new features. It's best to wait
     
    • Agree Agree x 3
    • Interesting Interesting x 1
    • Useful Useful x 1
    • List
  18. Synclavier

    Synclavier Rock Star

    Joined:
    Nov 28, 2014
    Messages:
    467
    Likes Received:
    315
    $749 it's just the start price, 3950X is literally weeks old
     
  19. Tob

    Tob Platinum Record

    Joined:
    Jun 4, 2019
    Messages:
    305
    Likes Received:
    200
    That's right, my calculation is based on stock clock speed not overclocked. But keep in mind that the ryzen 3000 is the first generation where AMD changed their "clocking behavior" completely. Every generation until now Amd clocked their CPUs on a really conservative level stock. So overclock enthusiasts could benefit a lot from overclocking. the 3000 series, however, is clocked really aggressively by AMD stock. There is not much you can achieve. If you are not really into overclocking. So it is probably better to pick a stock guaranteed clock speed, than hoping to achieve the same results with overclocking.
    Especially on a (daily used) workstation.
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2019
  20. The Dude

    The Dude Rock Star

    Joined:
    Aug 13, 2012
    Messages:
    343
    Likes Received:
    427
  21. Aileron

    Aileron Audiosexual

    Joined:
    Jan 5, 2017
    Messages:
    523
    Likes Received:
    545
    Location:
    Merseyside
    Wow, nice thread! Very informative and indeed rather thought-provoking. :guru:

    I wonder if I could sensibly upgrade from:

    Old IBM.jpg
     
    • Funny Funny x 3
    • Interesting Interesting x 1
    • List
Loading...
Similar Threads - Ryzen 3800X Forum Date
AMD Ryzen5800 3d Kühlung DE Dec 28, 2023
Amd ryzen 9 and uad2 pcie compatibility PC Sep 24, 2023
Intel or Ryzen for a new build? Computer Hardware Apr 18, 2023
Suggestions for the best motherboard for ryzen 7 5800X? Computer Hardware Feb 6, 2023
~3000€ Laptop for Music and Video production (quiet fans, Ryzen-based?, NVidia or AMD GPU?) Computer Hardware Jul 10, 2022
Loading...