You will get some latency no matter what build you choose.
To build a very low latency pc you will also need to invest into something like RME HDSPe madi, so you can connect your interface with adat directly to the the madi, pcie is still the fastest option.
None of the big boys use usb audio interfaces, all those big studios run madi based computers.

 

PCPartPicker is an incredible resource for hardware. If i need something for my computers thats the first place i go.

 

feel free to ask me around forums here, studio computers (and macs) are one of the things I do for a living, professionally

 

Yes, that's what I used in my OP. Unfortunately there are probably variables it doesn't really consider such as VRM on the Mainboards...

So what do you think about this following configuration?

 

Last edited: Apr 19, 2023

buying new, or having even better deals on the parts?

5900X is a great cpu, with official Windows 11 support it will be ok for years,
frankly today you can find something like (mid-tier) i5-13600K at slightly lower price yet slightly better overall performance,

that mobo is decent, do note one M.2 slot is 4.0, another is "only" 3.0 speed, if you use both you'll have no room for expansion later,
for a work PC you don't need some wild overclocking, so power delivery is alright, and connectivity features are matter of your needs,

KC3000 is great SSD, preferably get 2TB model as it offers better price/performance/lifespan, even if limited by 3.0 slot it still makes sense (unless you'd want as second SSD something like cheaper 2TB WD SN570 which has worse sustained speeds but also produces less heat), if you're limited on budget, one 2TB drive might be better, as you could buy any second drive later, without "throwing away" smaller drives in occupied slots,

cpu fan doesn't really matter much, unless you're obsessed with silence or looks, just make sure its mounting is compatible with your chosen cpu socket, motherboard (ram) clearance, and its height fits into PC case,

your current parts are fine to reuse, I do have 1080Ti Strix too and I got 750W 80+Gold psu just to make sure there's enough headroom (that gpu alone peaks at over 320W itself in load), and also if you want silence make sure its fans don't spin (by default below 60°C but you may set it even bit higher),
nVidia cards tend to negatively impact DPC latency (more than AMD of igpus), but I'd almost bet to blame GeForce Experience with its suspicious network activities - installing just proper drivers without GeForce experience should do well enough,

for music production on a PC, you want a good audio interface with reliable drivers, underestimating that may negatively impact overall PC performance even if all other components are fine

 

All the parts I don't already have I'd be buying new.

Do you think I'd be running risk of not having enough wattage? I'm assuming the only scenario in which this could happen would be while playing games.

Yea, I did hear about that. I have the 1080ti in my current PC at the moment and LatencyMon says my latencies are fine.

How much do I have to be wary of VRM anyway when picking MB/CPU combo? Do you have a better MB suggestion in a similar price range?
Honestly, it's really difficult to find a mainboard, because almost no review sites run tests on DPC latency...

I'm currently still running a 1st Gen Focusrite Scarlett 2i4

 

I'm talking about DPC latency, know about RME, been using their 9632 on my old desktop PC, amazing device.

 

Last edited: Apr 19, 2023

It seems that it's only Steinberg products that have this issue. For me, ableton is running fine on my notebook on 12th Gen. I would suggest you look into a i5 13600k that would be faster overall than a Ryzen 7 7700X.

Another thing to add: DPC latency is mainly caused by bad drivers or other parts of the configuration and is not tied to the power of the system. You also don't need it to be extremely low, you just don't want massive spikes as that causes dropouts. As an example the battery charging driver acpi.sys on my notebook can cause DPC latencys in the upper hundreds but i have no problems with dropouts at all.

The possible latency within your daw without dropouts on the other hand is determined by your processing power and your audio interface hardware and drivers. But AFAIK it's not a problem to get single digit ms times with focusright interfaces as long as there are no driver issues.

You can't say that higher core count is more important than clock frequency. That depends heavily on your use case. I linked abletons guide to hardware in an earlier post. High core count without high clock speeds is only beneficial if you are using large amounts of tracks with light processing. If you are using moderate amounts of tracks and heavy processing or CPU intensive plugins or oversampling you will be better off with clock speed because usually there is only one thread used per channel.

 

Last edited: Apr 19, 2023

How does that work exactly? I suppose it's only better provided I overclock all of its cores? The 13600K only has 3.50GHz base clock speed which seems quite low. It also only has 24MB L3 Cache vs. the 7700X's 32.

 

99% of the time "spikes" are an issue of the OS and related issues to not having properly "prepared" the OS for doing anything media related. Bad drivers can be an issue but with most reputable hardware these days this kind of thing is fewer and more far between. The last build I did was for both audio and video/image editing. Intel i9 9900k, Nvidia RTX 3070ti, 64gigs ram, RME HDSPe AIO pro, and a spacious case with plenty of truly QUIET cooling and room for additional storage. Latency is not an issue even though I did not have a strict audio-only requirement for the build.

 

I built my current computer in 2016:
i7 with 32 GB and some SSD.

It's still working like a charm even if I can feel here and there some slowness and overload on a few plugins.

Bottom line is it's still working great for music production after more than six years.

Of course, any rig I could buy today would be much faster but do I need it? The answer is a big No and unless something goes wrong (motherboard failure for ex), there's no way I will upgrade/change my computer before 2025.

In the end, it's a bit similar to the gaming world where you have a new GPU generation almost each and every year:
The question is if you really need a 4090 to play the latest games?

 

I arrived late but I'll mention some points, from my view (I work and live from music production myself)

DPC Latency: this is almost always caused by 2 things:


1 - Bad user management of system (as introducing unnecessary apps will increase the things that each core of the computer has to deal while you're producing) and this can be solved by:

1: As soon as you install your OS, get rid of anything you don't actually need, as an example: most people probabilly will not be using microsoft store apps that comes installed with windows, except from email and calculator, so you should unninstall them

Spoiler: Unninstalling Microsoft Store Apps

1- Open Powershell as an administrator

2- Run the command bellow:
Get-AppxPackage -Name "Microsoft.todos" | Remove-AppxPackage
run it again, after it completes, so you're sure that you're getting rid from everything

3- Run the command bellow to reinstall only Microsoft Store:

Get-AppxPackage -allusers Microsoft.WindowsStore | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

4- Download calculator and any other apps that you may actually want to use
Done.

2:

Spoiler: Disable services that you don't need in msconfig

1- On the start menu, write msconfig and press enter

2- In msconfig, go to the "services tab" and check the "Hide all microsoft services" box at the bottom left

3- Unmark every service and restart, if you notice that something isn't working as usual, try checking again the boxes you suspect that you may need, (example: if you play CS:GO you'll notice that you can't play it anymore because of the Steam Service that got disabled)

2- GPU: nVidia GPUs are know in the music production scene to have this high dpc problem and they don't seen to really care about that, since this is reported by the users since 2015 and still not fixed at all.

In the other hand, AMD gpus are know from their buggy drivers so you'll have a hard choice here, but people affirm that AMD dpc latency is lower, and I can agree with that, also: Their drivers arent that bad

Hardware Requierments:

This depends heavilly on your workflow, but the best system I can think to build right now in AM4 without spending all your savings would be based on:



-Ryzen 7 5800x3D: If you REALLY wanna have the best possible performance without spending all the money that memory and motherboards needs in AM5 that's your best choice, the extra cache will certainly give you more reponse from your system, and it's better than the other ones in almost every aspect

-Ryzen 7 5800x: If you don't have the extra money to spend on the 5800x3D for the extra cache, this may be your choice

-Ryzen 7 5700x: If you don't have enough to buy either the 5800x or 5800x3D, that's the best choice

-Ryzen 7 5700g: This one is weaker than every single processor that I mentioned before, but it comes with an AMAZING benefit: It has a built in graphics! Which mean that you'll be facing the best scenario in DPC Latency, and it's priced on a really affordable range, I use this one since it's been launched and I have no problems at all with my projects, this can handle all of them easily



Now, you should consider looking at the 7000 series, cause they all have built in graphics and their IPC is way higher than the 5000 series, you may spend even less buying the 7000 series because you don't actually need to get a GPU at all when you're with an APU

 

Is anyone here, except Sinus Well, actually building pro audio machines for a living?

 

The MS "apps" are just the tip of the iceberg as well as useless cpu consuming services. There are many file and system security issues to be dealt with as well as task scheduler events that need to be disabled. The machine should NOT be run on the internet and updates and AV should be disabled as well.

I have had Nvidia GPU's in my last 2 production builds (I use these machines to edit and render video productions as well as audio) and had no issues with latency (both built with RME cards for the audio systems). I will say however I have NEVER installed anything other than the actual drivers for the nvidia devices which may have something to do with that. If installed using "defaults", nvidia driver packages will install a heap of useless junk that doesn't apply to media production.

 

Yeah, it varies by whatever the user installs, the OS, depends too much on the user so that was the most "general" example I could do

Well, the thing is that whenever I install a nvidia graphics card + drivers on a system, I notice some spikes on DPC latency, it doesn't actually interfers my workflow, since it's rare to see any spike that would cause underruns or pops/clicks but they happen sometimes... But this never happens when I'm running only with 5700g integrated graphics, even with the amd driver + amd adrenalin software

 

Check DAWBench
http://www.scanproaudio.info/2023/03/03/4841/

Tweaks
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...th-gen-intel-build.307606/page-2#post-4998930
https://www.bluecataudio.com/Blog/t...atency-issues-with-nvidia-drivers-on-windows/

 

Some great articles there!

Just for giggles decided to see what that resplendent latency monitor detected on my latest build (the one with the Nvidia RTX 3070ti).




I guess all the hard work prepping the system (win10 pro 21H2) paid off...

 

try running it for like 5min

 

Truth be told I have noticed certain things when looking at task man regarding nvidia drivers as well. But, I have been building with nvidia products for 20+ years and have never encountered anything that was show stopping about them re: audio production. I do however scrape the systems clean of all garbage pretty well before I put a shred of production software on them and they are NEVER allowed internet access which accounts for a lot. On board chipsets may be a great compromise for audio-only builds but they are junk when it comes to video/image editing so that's the main reason for using nvidia devices in the first place.

A lot of it comes down to personal preference too I guess - some like AMD for hybrid production builds - my preference is nvidia due to some bad experiences with AMD cards.

 

Last edited: Apr 24, 2023