Hey peeps,

I'm asking for a friend who is trying to build a reasonably cheap DAW PC.
He has been offered for a reasonable price an Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3...
Does anyone know if this is a good (or great) motherboard for for DAW usage?

Personally I always go for Intel CPU and Chipset (ICH5 and X99 were my last builds and were rock solid), it's a couple of years since my last PC build, so I'm not up with the current situation with Intel Chipset variants either (ie. which type are better or worse than others for DAW). Furthermore I know that VIA can be a bug bear on some motherboards, as for AMD Chipsets since I've always avoided I know nothing about them.

So 3 questions.

1. Is the above mentioned Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 board good or bad for DAW? (as asked above).
2. If not so good for DAW which other chipsets are preferable? (Happy to get board recommendations too)
3. Once upon a time AMD were avoided at all costs when building DAW. Should they still be avoided for DAW system builds? Or have they greatly improved?

Note - it's a budget build so he can get some PCIe DSP cards operational (he has Macbook atm), so not looking at the current latest greatest.. rather a DDR3 board from a few yrs ago is preferable to cap costs.
He already has 16gb of DDR3 and not really wanting to make the $$ jump for a system build with DDR4!!

Thanks

=)

 

a lot to compare for youre question..

for used ones i would check out these area

https://www.ebay.de/itm/HP-Z620-Workstation/223709585387?_trkparms=aid=555018&algo=PL.SIM&ao=1&asc=60275&meid=1b7c0c57bc7f495383a16dd9516195af&pid=100005&rk=2&rkt=12&mehot=pf&sd=263948373768&itm=223709585387&pmt=1&noa=0&pg=2047675&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851

It Has The Following.

CPU 2 x 6 Core Intel Xeon E5 2620 At 2.00GHZ
Ram 12GB DDR3
DVD RW
NO HDD
USB 3.00
Nvidia NVS 310 PCI Express Gen 2 X16 Displayport 512MB DDR3
2 X Ethernet Ports
No Keyboard, Mouse Or Screen comes with this pc and NO power cable.

gpu out..ssd in...but i dunno if it has hdmi dvi port on mobo

 

For the price of a new X99 board & CPU, you could put together a modern system at the same cost or less.

An example:
https://pcpartpicker.com/user/edmars/saved/#view=hHfTCJ
(power supply, ssd & such left out on purpose)


Example of used workstations w/warranty:
http://www.deltaserverstore.com/tower.html

My personal home system is an off-lease Lenovo video workstation/server with
4C/[email protected] base, 32GB mem, 1TB & 2TB HD, 512GB SSD, Quadro graphics for under $400 U.S. with free shipping.

Can push Pro Tools into CPU overload without clicks, pops & stuttering or, crashing which allows for quick adjustments to keep the inspiration going. Thinking about adding a newer system once all of the new CPU & motherboards have been released next month or early next year.

 

Hi, from my personal experience, I tested AM3 motherboards with Phenom II cpu, it's not bad at all for system stability, I tested it with Xite-1 dsp system and with some usb dj hardware, such as Numark NV2. It works flawlessly, but it has some limitations if you need to use some modern GPU, there will be the bottleneck limitation on games and for example, with a Phenom II 1100t, the performance is very acceptable. It depends very much on what you'll have to buy and on what you already have. Usually building a system on vintage hardware makes sense when you can obtain an acceptable performance for very low price, for example if you already have some of the main components, it's a good advantage, but if you only have the RAM modules, i'd check for the prices of new components, because there are very good deals on first generation Ryzen based hardware and DDR4 is not so expensive. I also tested a system based on LGA-1366, triple channel DDR3 fully expanded to 24 GB and with a choice of very cheap and powerful Xeon processors that are being sold for 20 Euro, this has been one of the best vintage system I ever used, the only negative aspect is that CPU are sold for cheap, but motherboards are expensive, so it makes sense if you already have one, or if you are lucky and find one for very cheap, like it happened to me thanks to my technician job. My suggestion is to check for new or used Ryzen based hardware, i have seen many good deals and performance is far better than the one in your example.
Also i forgot to say that power supply is very often underestimated, but it can be the reason for system malfunction and damage, so my suggestion is to use a good quality one with enough power and it will be reusable on future hardware too.

 

MSI or Asus are generally more reliable than Gigabyte. Asrock sometimes isn't bad either, dirt cheap and often buggy (RAM timing problems mostly) but great performance. The best thing to do is pick the parts you want then google if the board works well with the RAM you plan to get, and if there are any other kinds of known bugs, like with M.2 SSDs and Win 10 update on a particular board or chipset.

 

I guess AMD has improved (again), but right now it's still a bit of a construction site with some problems to resolve. Ryzens/TRs deliver a great multi-thread performance at cost of anything else. There are compatibility issues like the broken RN generator, the power consumption at idle is (too) high, boot time is rather long, latency can be quite high, the faster CPUs don't have graphics, etc. But yes, often it works great apart from this.

But if you're going for AMD, you certainly want an AM4 board with an AM4 CPU. An old Phenom is rather pointless today. It's exactly these CPUs that made AMD sink into oblivion. It would make much more sense to get an older Intel, like 2nd/3rd/4th Core i generation for about the same price.

 

Of course it is good for running a DAW, you just have to set it up properly - meaning installing lite version of Windows 7 or MacOS El Capitan, for a start, then optimising these OSes further by removing and disabling unnecessary crap. There's no computer I couldn't make to run a DAW smoothly.

I see it supports up to 32GB of DDR3 RAM. So that's OK. But I don't really like mATX motherboards because they usually have just 2-3 PCI/PCIe slots. So it's got only two PCIe slots [+one PCI], of which one will be occupied by a graphics card if you pair it with an AMD FX-8350 8 core CPU that I could only wholeheartedly recommend and can be found very cheap these days. Is one PCIe enough? If you need both PCIe slots, you will have to use a non-FX AMD processor with onboard graphics, and that I wouldn't recommend.

As for other ideas for a motherboard, I would recommend you something like Asus Z97-A which supports DDR3 and Intel 1150 cpus like i7-4770 or 4790K which are great for a workstation computer even these days. This board has more than enough slots for everything. Pair it with some cheapo AMD or Nvidia VGA and you got yourself a great and powerful, but very cheap workstation.

 

Oz? Hey mate :D. Greets bro. Here you go mate:

Simply put, its too old and cannot be paired with one the newer Ryzen generations of cpus. It is not good even if paired with one of the better cpus of its generation. The current mainstream socket for AMD is AM4 this one is AM3+. This mobo even when relevant (it's a 2013 model), it was considered a budget mobo but a good overall bargain for something like an office comp or web & light multimedia, certainly not for DAW, unless of course it's the only thing you 've got.

I'll start from the end. Going DDR3 would not have an apparent toll on performance, but doing so because you already have 16gb that costs 30 euros makes no sense at all, ddr3 platforms are old and even if all was fine, the price difference, just isn't worth it bro, unless the guy has no income whatsoever. I will propose a few configs quite relevant that will not break the bank and still be modern enough to run DAW soft respectably.

To answer your 3rd question, AMD is the tech leader atm., with 7nm lithography on their cpus (Intel is still at 14nm for their desktops), their current chipset is the first with pci-e 4 and their Ryzen 3 mainstream series has a 12 core cpu with a top 16-core being released next week, all the way down to inexpensive 4 core APUs, their platform is quite scalable and upgradable. So yeah, they have improved.
As for your 2nd question for AMD, mainstream platform is socket AM4, chipsets compatible with current gen Ryzen 3 are x470,X570, B450.
For the current Intel series socket is 1151 and the mobos are Z390/Z370, B360, B365, H370, H310.
So budget daw base config 1 should cost around 230 euros and it would be something like :
MSI B450 Tomahawk, at ~100 euros
Ryzen 3 2200G (previous gen, onboard gpu, 4-core/4 threads @ 3.5ghz, 3.7ghz max boost), at ~75euros
Patriot Viper 16gb(2x8) DDR4 @ 3000mhz or equivalent, at ~55 euros

The budget daw base config 2 is a bit more expensive at around 290 euros (you can take it down to 270 euros going for a H370 mobo but it's not worth it really) :
AsRock Z370 Pro 4 at ~100 euros
Intel i3 9100 (current gen, about 15% faster than the proposed AMD, onboard gpu, 4-core/4 threads @ 3.6ghz, 4.2ghz max boost), at ~135 euros
Patriot Viper 16gb(2x8) DDR4 @ 3000mhz or equivalent, at ~55 euros

Pair any base config with all or any of these:
The best budget pci-e x4 SSD which atm is the Addlink S70 512gb (NVMe, max speed 3gb/sec read, 2gb/sec write), at ~60 euros
The best budget hdd should be the Seagate Barracuda 2 tb - 7200rpms, at ~50 euros.
The best budget PSU imho, should be the Thermaltake Smart RGB 700 (700w, rated 80+, 5 yrs warranty, near silent), at ~50 euros
One of the budget midi tower cases that don't feel plastic or stupid lol, the Corsair Carbide 100R at about 50 euros.

If you ask me what i'd buy, i'd go for the AMD, eyes closed. And i have a i3 9100 comp at home which is indeed 15% faster (20% in games) than the AMD 2200G but it is also almost twice the price. The AMD has the advantage that can be upgraded up to a 16-core/32 threads Ryzen 9 cpu. Surely we 're talking about a budget machine, but investing in a more future proof platform along with the lower price, should weigh towards the AMD platform.
Whatever the decision, both systems contain entry level cpus that will run DAW adequately, although don't expect them to run a myriad plugs. An indication of horsepower, my 9100 with 16gb at home will do about 50-60 Waves plugs + 5-6 demanding soft synths + 8 Kontakt instruments @ 85% cpu load. The AMD should be about 15% less which still is respectable in my book.

So there you have it matey, our budget core system ranges from 230 to 290 euros, with a full system from 390 (AMD Ryzen, SSD only) to 500 euros (Intel i3, SSD+HDD).

Just a final tip, the best budget monitor for productivity is by far the AOC 3279VWF (32", QHD 2560x1440, VA panel 75hz, 5ms, 3 yrs warranty) at 190 euros. An almost identical but with an IPS panel also exists from AOC at 200 euros. I have installed 2 of those VAs and one IPS in home studios and i have another brand new VA right now in the studio. Everyone is happy with these, the monitors are bright and detailed enough to do DAW work and also game, watch movies etc. The VAs have slightly better contrast, the IPS has slightly better viewing angles.

Cheers

 

Okay guys, thanks for your input.
He's turned down the offer and is going with my original suggestion of an X99 ASUS board with Intel Chipset.

Really appreciate the time you fellas put into your replies mucho mucho gracias!