Hi,

after reading a lot of stuff, mostly here on the forum, I am now ready to finally start building an audio-workstation. I already got an RME Babyface for testing and I am very happy with it so far. I will now plan the parts and buy them when there is a good price for them - especially waiting for the next gen AMD chips to be released. At the moment I am specifically looking at the heart of the system which will be centered around a Ryzen 3900X I think.
In order to be able to play VSTs with ~10-15 tracks at minimum latency I try to avoid any parts that might become a bottleneck. I am just a little overwhelmed by choosing the mainboard + gpu combination (as AMD chips seem to demand an extra gpu - otherwise I wouldn't get one) and would love any advice from some more experienced builders.

So far I know to look out for:

• Interrupts/IRQs from the gpu that might block the cpu for some time and then produce pops and clicks have to be manageable/non-existent (seems to be related to how the pci-e slots are set up/handle IRQs)
  --> apparently some nvidea gpus are much more demanding of Interrupts than other gpus.
• good VRM on the mainboard for cool and steady power supply of the cpu (and bus speed?)
  
• no onboard W-LAN that might cause interrupts (I might get a usb-adapter or something like that)
• big heatsink part on the mainboard for silence

Could you recommend a specific mainboard-gpu-combination that ticks those boxes? Also:

• I don't need a particularly strong gpu as I am only a part time gamer at best and don't do a lot of video work. So I'd also rather take an affordable one and put more money into the other parts.
• I want to stay in the 150-350€ range with the mainboard and below 200€ with the gpu and only go high if it is really worth it
  
• Some M.2 SSD and 32 to 64 GB RAM CL16 3600MHz should be able to work with full speed

Thank you so much!

 

Last edited: Sep 7, 2020

I believe in this case, you'll probably either want a B450 or B550 chipset motherboard. An X570 usually has a chipset fan so that usually introduces some noise vs the passively cooled chipsets that come with the B450 or B550. You could run an A520 but I would not recommend it for a Ryzen 3900x just due to those boards usually having weak VRMs. Anecdotally, I've seen more simple boards get better DPC latency numbers - based on that I'd probably try to get the most simple board with nice VRMs to power your 3900x.

Motherboard wise, I would probably get a Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro (non-WiFi edition, full ATX version), either that or a B550 Tomahawk (which has better VRMs if you don't mind spending a bit more). As for mATX options, the B550M Mortar is probably the best option. I feel these boards offer the best fundamental qualities while not going overboard on features which may inadvertently increase DPC latency. I haven't done any research on if they have been tested for DPC Latency but overall, they are fundamentally good boards with good VRM and heatsink designs, don't have onboard WiFi and all run passively.

As far as graphics cards go, I have heard the same things about Nvidia graphics cards having some DPC latency spikes here and there, particularly the Pascal based cards. It's anecdotal evidence, but I've never had any issues with my AMD RX570's in terms of DPC latency - some of them do have coil whine but this is only while gaming and I've had these issues with Nvidia cards as well. An RX570 or RX5500XT with a nice AIB cooler (such as an MSI Gaming X) would likely fit well into your budget for your graphics card.

 

B550 D just got Thunderbolt Certification and is available.

 

Thunderbolt is not relevant for me, because I will use the Babyface as a USB-interface
And silence is secondary compared to latency-performance as long as the mainboard is not super-loud, which I don't expect. I will read up on mATX boards. I have taken ATX as a given so far.

Also I think I remember a few negative voices concerning MSI is like a bad brand for mainboards? But I never really understood why...

 

Thanks for the info.

 

The fan on good X57- mobos only spins when the pci-e gen.4 chipset is running hot. In your defense all your mobo manufacturers had to undergo several bios updates to reach an expected nominal functionality. In real world metrics, with DAW work, you will probably never hear the fan - when it spins at max it's about 24-25db @ 20cm. I 've installed probably many X570 and B550 boards the past year, i had no client complain about the X570 fan.
So there, B550 has some ok boards with interesting feats but it has only one pci-e 4 slot. All the hype about B550 is because it's newer. Still, essentially it's a cut down version of X570 and even more importantly, B550 is expensive. The money you pay for a good B550 board can go to a X570 board. So for example, the MSI B550 MAG (Tomahawk) was expected around 100-110$ but it costs about 180$ and so costs the B550 Aprus Pro. Accordingly the Asus X570 TUF WiFi costs about 200$ and it's a solid board for the price. I just built a DAW pc on it actually with a 3700X and 32gb DDR4 @ 3600mhz and the sys rocks. Also at this price point the X570 Aorus Elite WiFi is a solid board almost indentical performer to the TUF. Difference is the AORUS has Intel Lan and the Asus is Realtek.

Less feats means less interupts means faster sub-parts communication within the board. If though, we were to base our selection on what's the absolute faster in this particular subject everyone would buy ITX boards because typically they are the fastest ones on DPC.
Thing is, different workloads and work routines vary a lot because everybody's needs are different. The lowest DPC possible will not help anyone make better music and i haven't met any person able to tell differences measured on microseconds. If we 're talking miliseconds then most boards behave almost similarly with the more fully featured perhaps being ~0.1 ms slower ... I'd take the features please you can keep your 0.1 ms along with that mediocre board whatever it is ehehe. Jus kiddin of course
Anyway, different peripherals like GPUs or Audio Interfaces may misbehave on the DPC mon and become system bottlenecks, so careful selection is mandatory. So as said, a Radeon 5xx series will do the job without breaking the bank. Ironically every Radeon 5700, 5700XT and more recently 5600 i have installed have many problems. From driver issues to black screens, freezes, stutters and yes you guessed it, crazy DPC spikes. So unless the user is a gamer too, i'd stay away from the Navi based Radeons. Good ol 580/570 etc will do the job. The MSI RX570 (or similar) with dual fans and 8 gb ram costs about 150$. Lastly on this and just to say something about it, my EVGA 1080 GTX exhibits the lowest DPC i have ever seen on a modern GPU. I have witnesssed many Nvidias misbehave in the past but these guys have stepped up their game lately tbh.
So for the board suggestion:
Mid-high board: Asus ROG Strix X570-E or ASRock X570 Taichi. Both go for about 270-280$. For a slight step up is the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master @ 330$ adding a TB3 header. All these boards have very good VRMs, enough to hold even the top from the upcoming 4000 desktop Ryzen series, the Master has perhaps the best VRM but the Asus is the best overclocker of all, just fyi. Also the Asus has the richest backplate connectivity, if you are looking for lots of USBs, thats the one. Also both the Asus and the Taichi have 8 sata ports the Master has 6.
So, i should write only those 4-5 last lines but wth... np.
Y'all be well
Cheers

 

Last edited: Sep 7, 2020

I have seen people with a X570 motherboard set the PCIe GEN to 3 and no more DPC spikes
or strange behavior with other hardware parts.
I just build a new PC, a B550 mobo + Navi Radeon and with PCIe set to GEN4 or GEN3, no problem
with DPC spikes or black screens, but the mobo BIOS/DRIVER/GPU FIRMWARE/OS are all new.

 

@taskforce thanks for not only writing the last 4-5 lines, this is very helpful to me!
I will look into the mainboards and the Radeon 500-series

A question on the usb of the board:
if I use 4-5 midi-controllers via usb-hub and not directly via the boards backplate - can that become a bottleneck for latency?
To be more precise: i would use 'slow' controllers like a leap motion or launch control for cc's(don't care about their latencies) via usb hub at the same time as my piano via midi via the babyface via direct connection to the mainboard-usb. The piano should be fast. I guess this should be no problem as everything should just be processed when it arrives at the mainboard, but I had to ask.

 

Last edited: Sep 7, 2020

My advice is to wait if you can. If not, consider the ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE or, the Giagabyte B550 Vision D.
Either board will allow the use of unbuffered ECC RAM. Another Gigabyte board is the https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X570-AORUS-MASTER-rev-11-12#kf

For any type of modern gaming you will need a card with 8GB of memory for titles such as Red Dead Remdemtion II playing at medium to high resolution. For older titles like Sniper Elite 3 or Crysis 3, a 2GB Quadro will do (Displayport outs). Other than that, look for a Sapphire Pulse RX 580.

 

Last edited: Sep 10, 2020

I just built one with the 3900X and X570. One thing to watch for is the wireless adapter. If it's a new Intel, there's a good chance that it loads WiFi Direct Virtual Adapters instead of the Microsoft Virtual Hosted Network Adapter. This isn't a huge deal to most people but it completely removes the ability to create a local-adhoc connection. This is something that I did a lot with multiple touchscreen tablets over wireless MIDI as it had near zero latency. The new drivers only allow for Mobile Hotspot and sharing a network data connection. This is not nearly as effective, has higher latency and costs you data.
It's a known issue with newer Intel wireless adapters on Windows 10.

The only existing workaround I've found is to find Windows 8 drivers for your hardware and use those. The newest ones don't have any Windows 8 drivers which means having to search and install "compatible" drivers through trial and error.

The CPU is awesome though. I've been throwing everything I can at it and still haven't come close to stressing it.

 

just checked and mine budget range b450m steel legend supoorts 3900x and up to 64gb ddr4.. also rgb support.. so far all good with philips rgb keyboard + mouse + 800x300 mousepad (
*rgb*) combohellyeaah.. mobo spec link here if u like..

https://www.asrock.com/MB/AMD/B450M Steel Legend/#CPU

 

It heavily depends on the usb hub selection, but i don't see how adding many midi controllers can add to any real audio latency, because that's the latency you should be really concerned about imho. Dpc and/or general system latency concerns pro gamers who want the absolute overall fastest response tbh. Unless of course -as we discussed- you have DPC spikes that affect the system's performance.
If i can recommend any USB 3 hubs, the Sabrent 4-port, it's very sleek, goes for about 10-11$ and has more than 12k positive reviews in Amazon alone. If you want more ports then the Anker 10-port is very good too. Btw, irrelevant but Sabrent makes very nice nvme ssds too, almost equal to Samsung's, you may keep an eye out for them.
As far as your Babyface is concerned, if you plug it on the mobo directly you will never have any probs.

People have many problems with this, but the mobos are NOT responsible for this. AMD fkd up with the new Radeons. Since the only pci-e gen 4 GPUs available are the Navi based Radeons, many people who went and bought last gen Ryzen and Threadripper thought wth, let's get a new pci-e 4 GPU too. The trouble and forum chatter went through the roof just because of this. If you take a closer look, AMD went out of their way and advised their pro spenders err... users i mean lol, that is TRX40 and Threadripper users, to use pci-e gen.3 GPUs. At least until they solve their own driver issues. So yes there are issues but the GPUs are the culprit here. I have installed a 16X pci-e gen.4 raid nvme m.2 SSD card (comes bundled with the Gigabyte TRX40 Designare) with 4 Aorus pci-e gen.4 @ x4 speed SSDs @ raid 0, Crystal Disk saw a jaw dropping 18gb/sec. No DPC spikes no nothing and the client, who runs a 3D video design and rendering machine was fully satisfied. He got a much faster system than the Mac Pro he was about to buy with half the cost too. But of course this is another story, thing is the AMD Navi are guilty for all these probs. Anytime soon, Nvidia are releasing their new line and yes, they 're gonna be pci-e gen.4. If i can make an early prediction, i am pretty sure they have learned their lesson from the problems AMD has had all this time with their own GPUs and they 're gonna deliver solid cards. I just hope AMD manages to bring Big Navi in time and troublefree (which is more important really) so we can have some alternatives and healthy competition.

Hey bud . Hmmm this looks like a problem alright. Let's see if this helps and excuse me if you already tried this:
reg delete hklm\system\currentcontrolset\services\wlansvc\parameters\hostednetworksettings /v hostednetworksettings
This will delete the HostedNetworkSettings DWORD parameter in the registry's HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WlanSvc \ Parameters\HostedNetworkSettings , essentially removing permanently the (shitty) MS Virtual Adapter driver.
Then restart and when booted up, check your wifi network. It should show as "not configured" and hopefully you may set it up the way you wanted.
Now if you have Intel WiFi6, perhaps Intel's own "My Wifi" (it is installed together with Intel PROSet/Wireless driver package) doesn't allow you to remove the MS Virtual adapter sht. In this case your system will have 2 Microsoft Virtual WiFI adapters in the Control Panel. Now go to Control Panel and installed soft, find Intel PROSet, select change (you cannot directly uninstall it) and then select and uninstall MyWifi from the drop down menu, like here:

This will leave you with one remaining MS virtual adapter that you can uninstall using the first method.
Hope this works mate.

Well, we 've said (and agreed) many times before that if you want cheap B450 you go for the MSI Tomahawk which sells for about 110$ now. Why? Because it has the best VRM from all the cheap B450 mobos, proper voltage control and proper memory for the BIOS.
Now the B450 Steel Legend has a 4+2 phase VRM and on paper it's same as MSI's. But it's not. If you put a 3900X on it, chances are when the cpu boosts @ 4.0-4.1 ghz your VRM hits 90-91 degrees Celcius. Also the power delivery on this mobo can be scetchy at times. If this doesn't scare you for the longevity of the sys then np. As long as the sys is working fine, you 'll be ok mate . If anything, i would go and put a small Noctua fan directly on top of the VRM heatsink removing heat and i wouldn't care less bout the bling/looks, but hey that's me. This fan has all the Noctua merits (very low noise, can be semi-passive through PWM mobo control) but it's much smaller. If by any chance i got you interested, here it is: https://noctua.at/en/nf-a4x20-pwm
Btw, the B550 Steel Legend is a much better board overall, but this is no budget mobo, it comes at 180$ and competes with the cheap/mid range X570 boards just like the B550 Tomahawk and Aorus Pro.
In general, mobo manufacturers were heavily criticized for their VRM/power delivery choices on the B450 and have indeed stepped up their game with the B550 but this comes at a premium making the B550 mobos mostly niche products to suit someone with specific needs in order to cut 30-50$ from buying an X570 board.
Cheers

 

Last edited: Sep 8, 2020

Just to put things in perspective, I'd like to add the more likely bottleneck you're going to encounter is USB and disk speed. Pretty much any CPU and motherboard built in the last 5-10 years should be capable of playing 10-15 instruments with minimal latency and you're not even close to putting a significant stress on the 3900X unless you're rocking like 80 tracks with 5-6 plugins on each.

Standard precautions apply, though. Turn wifi/bluetooth/whatever off while working, don't install tons of crap software you don't need, disable your antivirus so it doesn't mess with your DAW, etc. As long as you use common sense there should be no issues. 3900X is one monster of a chip.

 

I agree with all you said, i just wanna say i 've tested enough 3900X cpus and it's more like 200 24bit ch. with 5 Waves plugins each and the cpu was at 75%. That was with 32gb of ram but wtf, that is one thousand plugs lol. My 7700k (no oc for the test) managed 200 plugs on the very same test at about 77%.
In another similar test with the 3900X and 64gb ram, i loaded 20 Omnisphere instances with 8 sounds each, that is 160 synths. Cpu was cheering around 70% lol.
So yep, the 3900X is the best money can buy on the consumer platform and only surpassed by the 3950X which is even more absurd and -performance wise- leaves everything to dust including most Xeon chips as well. The only catch with this platform is the very few pci-e lanes. The alternative for ws with lots of pci-e lanes is the latest Threadripper, but the entry price is 1250 euros for the cpu alone with a "cheap" mobo costing 400+. But hey, TR Pro is coming, and that line up includes 12 and 16 also 32 and 64 core chips. The downside is they are only available to OEMs, starting with an exclusive deal with Lenovo, but i guess once they 've sold enough workstations we will see those chips sold separately and then i will finally be able to build my dream machine.
Cheers

 

Last edited: Sep 10, 2020

@taskforce taken note. thanks tips.

This is true.. My AMD codename Zacate, 8gb ddr3 was performing solid well until modern awesome plugin requires more cpu crunch (like gulfoss, tc electronic finalizer, etc..) otherwise I wont make a jump sadly... nothing much difference for working in reaper.. only able to use modern plugins.. i think 2 cores Athlon 200GE or 3000g should be more than enough for starter i think.. my b450m steel legend supports it too.. mobo spec link here if u like..=))

https://www.asrock.com/MB/AMD/B450M Steel Legend/#CPU

 

I got the 3900x about 3 months ago, AMD Asus PRO WS X570-ACE is the main-board I choose.

I can run 5 Acustica Audio Gold 4 instances on 128 samples at 48khz in flstudio,
(with 5X auto-tune, 5x ns-1, 5x fabfilter-ds. Grouped together on a bus with ca-2a and breeze.)

Nvidia supplies an studio driver these days if you have interrupt problems.
Which I did not have with the game driver to begin with. (gtx1660)

 

Last edited: Sep 8, 2020

The older Ryzen 5 2600X (6 core/8 threads) goes for about 130 euros now and is the same price as the 3400G (4 core with i-gpu) but with better performance since it's a 6 core cpu. Add another 30 euros for a cheap gpu and you are good to go. If this is too much then the 2200G goes for about 100 euros and has i-gpu.
Sorry but below the 4core spec, we aren't talking about a music comp, we 're talking about office comps. Surely an Athlon 200GE can run modern softies but you will quickly run out of cpu with soft synths and plugs. And the 65-70 euros price it comes with, just isn't worth it. Wait a bit more and get something useful. Imho of course
Cheers

 

I'm like luke on luke i'm your father scene rn...
3200g here #haha

 

Actually 3 months ago it was about 45 € but the price has increased until those 65 €. I think the demand increased because OCing was introduced in recent mobo firmware updates
The best value-for-money cheap AMD APU is now the 3000G for about 53 €

 

Last edited: Sep 8, 2020

Yeah, with hyperthread support which 3200g doesn't have I came about late to know about hyperthread support in kontakt.. i think ableton supports it too.. seems like hyperthread is a must consider things for audio production nowadays.. *i think, not sure.. random encounter from daw / plugins and specs survey.. *