Hello,
i have an i7 2600k, 16gb ram and 240 SSD that served me well since i got it but now i have a project at hands and i'll soon have the cash to upgrade so i need to know if it's gonna make a difference i checked all the graphs on the net with numbers that hardly make any sense to me so i need a musician advice
so in short i7 2600k vs i7 9700K
will it make much difference for music ( Studio one 4.51, kontakt, reaktor etc)will i need 32 GB Ram or is 16 good enough ?
i must mention i am not upgrading solely for music cause i make a living working in 3d Vis (3d Max, vray, illustrator, Photoshop etc)
and also i will be getting a 4k screen (i've always like fancy screens lol)
anyone using 4k with Studio one and kontakt ? thoughts ?
thank you in advance

 

i7 4790k should be fine...save some cash for RAM 32GB is plenty, Multiple SSD's for VSTi Library's, Samples, HDD for Rec. Peace!

 

if it's gonna make a difference in what ? your cpu hit ? you know the answer. will your songs be better ? same. what's your question?

 

Going from i7 2600k to i7 9600k is a big step. Depending on your budget you could save a lot of dosh just by going with i7 4790k or 6700k, or 5620k or something. The difference between them is miniscule. The difference between intel processors is really miniscule as they tried to milk people as much as they can while they were at the top of the game. i7 2600k is a bit underwhelming these days, though.

Regarding the amount of RAM, it depends on what you're doing, and what you prefer doing it with. I many cases 8GB will cut it even these days, but 16GB is a sure bet. 32GB? If your religion is Kontakt with orchestral libraries... you can throw in a couple of more RAM sticks, I guess. All of the people I know have a hard time using 16GB of RAM. If all the developers took the Arturia and Native Instruments approach and made their VSTs use so much memory for GUI, more memory might be needed. But if you use good and sensible plugins like Tokyo Dawn Labs, ToneBoosters, Voxengo, Valhalla, Lexicon etc. You will have no problem with 16GB or even 8GB, I can guarantee you that.

Cheers!

 

I went 4K a couple of years ago and will never go back. I spend a lot of my time in front of my PC, often up to 16 hours a day, and eye strain was a big problem, hence the move to 4K. Originally I had to find workarounds for nearly every program, including Live and Photoshop, as they didn't fully support high resolution screen sizes but Windows, Ableton and Adobe have pretty much got their act together now.
VST's were also a major pain bit all I now use support high res screens
I run 3 4Kscreens, 2x28inch for Live, Kontakt, Photoshop etc. (productivity) with a 65inch for gaming. They're driven by a Radeon64

 

Those kit specs will certainly give you more grunt, though (as @SineWave has already mentioned) most of the time you'll hardly notice it - unless you really do develop full-strength arturia plugin fever... if you're planning on lot of large kontakt libs, NVMe SSDs really smooths things out, though regular SSDs are plenty good enough really. However, if you're also planning to do a lot of 4K graphics / 3D work, don't forget to adequately budget for a solid GPU to balance the rig properly - at least nvidia 1070 Ti or the AMD equivalent. I use Nvidia myself and although the DPC relationship is far from perfect, it's not for me been any problem at all, once tweaked. I've not owned an AMD card for a few years now, so i'm not able to say how they compare tbh.

My best advice: Spend a bit of time researching potential compatibility issues between your intended motherboard, CPU, OS, GPU & primary software tools before committing to the final build!

 

I went from an old i870 to an well overclocked 4770k, 32gb and SSD for Windows.
The CPU is still very fast, I have never used all of my 32gb ram and I do wish sometimes I would have more ssds for my libraries.

So my advice:
- More ssds (really makes a difference)
- 32gb ram if possible or buy in a way you can easily double your 16 if needed
- get a fast CPU, but not the latest and dont spend too much on it

 

i7 8700k is more than enough with 32gb ram

 

Last edited: Jun 14, 2019

Last gen Ryzen might be a good option too.

 

sweet. i'm rocking an i5-2500 w/8gb ram on ssd+hdd, internal gpu. this old system slices through everything i throw at it. one day i might update to an i7, but really don't feel fir it to be honest. can handle 15 vsti's and 100 vst's easily

s1 4.5.1 , live 10.1, reaper.

arturia,plugin alliance,swam. no kontakt.

 

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-9700K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-2600K/4030vs621

 

I reckon that the amount of ram makes the most difference so get something that suits your pocket and top it up with as much ram as you can afford!

 

The secret to buying gear is to buy on the knuckle. Look at those CPUs. Aren't they wonderfull? But the really state of the art kick your ass right off CPUs you could spend a thousand on. At the other end of the rainbow are the last gasp about to go out of production CPUs that can be had for ten a penny. Thing is, time was most of them once upon a time also cost a thousand, only time has passed, and today they're not worth thinking twice about.

The price of new, hot as you like CPUs drops very rapidly as the power decreases marginally. There'll be a huge up there 500 CPU and a 350 lesser relative, but the difference will be a few cores, or infinitesinal difference in the Gigaherz or what ever. And as the price drops you get to a point where the price/power curve inflects, where the power drops rapidly but the price is dropping slowly. That's the knukle, thats the point at which today's CPU offering maximises the bang for the buck. Higher price than this, you're buying maybe six or twelve months of being the fastest guy. Beow this you're buying yesterday's model. On the knuckle you get the best bang for your buck.

 

Sweetwater builds PCs called Creation Station. Set up for music with quality cards, 2 hard drives, etc. Mine is about 5 years old now and I will get another when this one is more obsolete or craps out. Mine is rack mount. My new laptop has SSD. I am going to upgrade to solid state drive because it is amazingly fast. I have 4K monitors. Doesn't make a lot of difference from HD for DAWs. It is nice for relaxing with psychedelic videos.

 

Last edited: Jun 14, 2019

Yeah. Way to go. I got my box from UK specialists SPAN. It's completely silent. Like the Atari's used to be. You can tell when the backup outboard drives are on from all the noise they make. That's the other thing you can use money for - build it my man. Guess it depends on how much your time's worth.

 

at first, I'd like to say there is no reason to NOT do complete upgrade, you can always keep your current rig as backup or render slave;

I was in similar situation when I fell in love with RME audio interfaces - that time I had i7-3770K (@4.5GHz) with 16GB ram, ASUS Z77 ITX mobo, EVGA GTX770 SuperClocked, got my hands on RME Fireface 802 and HDSPe AIO that time...
I upgraded primarily to be able to have more PCIexpress lanes available from cpu, to fit PCIex gpu and PCIex audio interface into one PC,
that time, i7-5820K was clear choice for me, providing x16 for gpu and plenty left for other devices, quad channel RAM support, so I went for 32GB kit (4x8GB), and DDR4 which was new; ASUS X99-S was my choice for mobo, later I got EVGA GTX980Ti Classified (zero noise when not running gpu-intensive tasks), and could finally fit RME HDSPe AIO (PCIexpress audio interface) along, not to mention the plenty of SATA-III ports on the motherboard, right now I have 6 drives and still enough ports left to expand), also with help of Noctua NH-U14S air cooler I can run the i7-5820K @4.3GHz (not so shabby from stock 3.3GHz) as fully reliable hackintosh,
my latest update now in 2019 is DELL AW3418DW monitor - 34" 3440x1440 100Hz IPS with G-Sync support - I realized my previous 27" 2560x1440 was not providing workspace big/dense enough for my needs, but 4K would be uncomfortable to work with (43" at same DPI) or useless (at 27" 4K I would need to zoom so it would be literally back at 2560x1440, just more crisp), honestly I love that 21:9 aspect ratio, it even fits the sweetspot between my 8" studio monitors and the image quality and anti-glare coating is superb, and the 100Hz refresh rate really becomes handy with overall system response;
now I'm evaluating usefulness of potentially upgrading to NVME SSD (as surprisingly my rig shall support it), but so far I haven't seen any worthy reasons to do so;

I'm familiar with all the softwares you mentioned, and I'm afraid to say any GUI scaling is just hassle as it's usually tied to operating system itself, so you can save money going for lower resolution or THE FANCY ultrawide 21:9 screen instead, eventually higher refresh rate as well;

9700K will give you 2x more cpu cores (8 vs 4) but NOT threads (8 still 8), I'd suggest 9900KF instead (do note, 9900K does have integrated graphics, which you probably won't need), as offering 16 threads (vs 8) proves worthy for rendering and batch image processing jobs;
speaking of rendering though, it truly depends on what exact renderer you use - some are CPU-only, some do make use of powerful graphics card, some need high-precision capable graphics card;
as you'll be jumping the platform couple generations, you'll need new DDR4 ram anyway, and buying less than 32GB doesn't really make sense imo - fair to say I doubt you'd often make use of 64GB ram, so you can probably stick with 2x16GB kit for now and have 2 slots available for later eventually;
speaking of SSDs, definitely throw at least pair of 500GB or 1TB SATA-III SSDs there, it's noticeably faster to work on projects with compared to HDDs;
about Kontakt, you might want to take a look at Vienna Ensemble Pro solution (to host Kontakt), your old PC would be perfect to become VEP server, and you could offload all the instruments processing there

 

Alrea

already seen that gave me a headache frankly

 

hi guys
i was getting worried of being ignored and then bam ... well thank you all for your valuable input.
@korte1975 i know it won't make my songs better but i hope it'll make me work faster
@rhythmatist yeah i wish but some are not so lucky and live in 3rd world countries where buying stuff from abroad is a lot more expensive so we have to do with what is available alas
@tzzsmk thank you that 9900 is really tempting especially for rendering as you say i hope my budget can stretch so far also the old will be kept for my kids after i take the large HDD out and maybe the 240gb SSD
now what i think i have so far is this:
9700k or 9900 if budget allows
MB probably the MSI MSI Z390-A Pro
32 Ram DDR4 2666
HD WD 2TB WD2003FZEX Black HDD
Power Thermaltake Smart RGB 500w
now a few question
my SSD is a SanDisc SDSSDHP256G should i invest in a new one for the operating system ? will it be much fatser i am on win 7 now will be switching to win10
do you guys use SSDs for you kontakt libraries ? between my 3D library and my music i have maybe more than 2 terabytes so it might be farfetched for me
using Studio one 4.5 and a Focusrite 2i4 i am on minimum 11 ms latency which is bugging me and it gets worse when my track and VSTs count rise will this be solved with the new system i will be using kontakt, omnisphere etc

thank you all once more and sorry for any inconvenience and forgive me for any mistakes english is not my native language
cheers