Hi I have a ten year old i5 PC running a legit version of Studio One 6,and win 11, with all my stuff on three SSD drives, the case is good, as is the power supply. I would like to update the motherboard, CPU and memory up to i7 with poss 32gig memory. Any good sugestions price wise?
Depends what your budget is, obviously! I recently did a similar thing and went for a Ryzen 9 5950X 16C/32T, Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master, and 128GB 3600MHz RAM, which totalled me about £600, which is a good price for what I got.
That's cheap! I paid 3x that amount for my 7950x system! I only did it cos I wanted a new generation motherboard to upgrade later.
It actually cost me £550 and came with 32GB G.Skill NeoZ 3600MHz RGB RAM, but I managed to sell the RAM for £100 and then for £150 I managed to find 128GB Patriot Viper 4 3600MHz RAM, making it £600 all in I did consider that 7950X for AM5 based future proofing, but the price difference was so much (as you say) I couldn't really justify it to myself as AM4 should go for at least another 10 years I imagine.
Being a senior member of the community, in the dark old days, AMD cpu's were deemed a bad choice for music production, due to floating point discrepancies...I think. So Any advice regarding Intel, processors would be preferable, but I'm open to suggestions
13700K with GDDR5 and Z790 motherboard is current generation system, if you want anything older, you can for sure, I wouldn't hesitate to pick second-hand hardware, but at least 6-core processor and 32GB ram
Most modern CPUs should do fine, unless you are doing a shitload of FX and instruments IMO. 6-8 cores (not counting Intel's Efficienty Cores is fine for most use. Memory is important, having the fastest RAM helps, though unless you're very sample library heavy the actual amount needed might vary. Let's say 16GB absolute minimum, 32GB is very comfortable and anything more than that is luxury or you already know you need that much. But whatever CPU you are looking at, compare the wattage between the potential new and old. Also remember to factor in the GPU, as in if you've a suitable on, that will still work. Or if you're using an iGPU then either get a new one with an integrated one as well, or add in the cost for a new one (and compare the power usage again!) If you've got spare cash after that (right ) then consider getting a nice M.2 drive. But this is a bonus in my opinion seeing you've already got 3x SSDs for your stuff. And while we're at it, always always consider a good backup solution. 3-2-1 is a good target and it doesn't cost that much unless you've got multiple TBs of stuff.
Future proofing is a good point! AMD tends to be slightly better at this, Intel is (and sometimes for a reason) slightly faster to move with their sockets and chipsets. I started with AM4 in the original Zen CPU (Ryzen 7), then Zen+ and finally I'm at Zen3, bumping memory along the way (16GB to 32GB to 64GB). Same ol' B450 chipset, so not high-end, but not the cheapest either. But as far as longevity goes, this system has been trucking along for 5+ years and can still probably do a few more.
my PC is an overkill for music production Lian Li O11 Mini Snow Edition Corsair SF600 600w Gold rated PSU Gigabyte B550 Vision D with Thunderbolt 3 Ryzen 5 5600X 4.6GHz Lian Li Galahad 240 AIO ARGB Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) 3600Mhz DDR4 Gigabyte RTX 3060 Vision OC 12GB WD SN850 1TB SSD 7GB/s read 5.3GB/s write (system drive) Crucial MX500 2 TB 500 MB/s r/w (storage & game capture) Royal Kludge 61 with RED switches (non RGB), APEX 3 TKL (for gaming I prefer the RK it's much faster-lower latency) Logitech G305 HeroSensor DisplayPort1: ACER KG251QD 1080p 240Hz (TN panel) Gaming DisplayPort2: DELL u2515h 1440p @ 60 Hz (IPS panel 99% sRGB) Music Production, Video & Photo editing Trust me you don't need anything better Today my setup worth about $1800 when I bought this setup about 2 years ago it was around $3000 I bet for the next 5-8 years my PC still will be a very good music production machine you don't need i9 I don't know thos e high end CPUs doesn't worth the money I don't even have an audio interface just with ASIO4ALL I can run most of my projects with like 16-20 ms latency if they are really plugin heavy but in most cases I can live jam with Ableton Live with my controller, behringer MODEL D, FX plugins, Plugins on Master channel I can jam without any crackles or issues with 8-10 ms of latency
You might want to add that the single core performance is higher on Intel than AMD which matters also.
I'm in a simular boat. My desktop is still rocking a third generation i5. I mainly used my desktop to play World of Warcraft but I bought a new Samsung laptop and even though it does not have a separate graphics card it is good enough to play Wow so long as I stay away from crowded cities. However, the time has come to upgrade and it's going to cost me as I will need to also buy some good SSDs as my old sata hard drives will not rock with a new motherboard. So I'm now at the research stage and will not pull the trigger on parts until I bring myself up to speed on what's available. My advice would be to buy the best CPU that you can afford and never ever ever skimp on a good power supply. A good site to check and compare hardware. Just an example of a two cpu comparison. https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-7-7800X3D-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-7950X/m2081998vs4133 Last edited: Jul 1, 2023
Decided on this specification, can anyone point out any negatives for running win 11 and Studio One: Intel Core i7-10700 Desktop Processor 8 Cores up to 4.8 GHz LGA 1200 (Intel 400 Series Chipset) 65W, BX8070110700 £235.00 Crucial Ballistix RGB BL2K16G32C16U4BL 3200 MHz, DDR4, DRAM, Desktop Gaming Memory Kit, 32GB (16GB x2), CL16, Black £199.98 ASUS TUF Gaming B560M-PLUS (Socket 1200/B560/DDR4/S-ATA 600/Micro ATX), Black, B560 £124.24 Noctua NH-L9i chromax.black, Premium Low-Profile CPU Cooler for Intel LGA1200 & LGA115x (Black) £49.95 T.I.A Last edited: Jul 10, 2023
That vendor is surely happy to get rid of the antiquated CPU and Board. However, win11 and Studio One will execute flawlessly !
older parts, but they're fully supported by Windows 11 and Windows 10, that NH-L9i cooler isn't that great, despite reputable brand it's very basic low profile cooler, I'd much prefer NH-U12S, NH-U12A or NH-U14S (assuming it fits in your PC case, those coolers are fairly tall) what graphics card you'll use? can have noticeable impact on DAW performance too
