@Voo Could you develop that please because that's precisely what I'm going for even if TB will not be used in a first time..

 

that's all something you should thoroughly research, not rely on handful of forums folks,
my mindset is:
1) one good air cooler with one good fan can provide low noise at moderate efficiency - I just noticed my signature does not mention cpu cooler - I use Noctua NH-U14S - not the best but one passive ribs and one fan - totally capable of cooling 30% OC'ed i7-5820K of mine
2) having 2 SSDs is very much recommended, but I personally can't tell whether having faster one for system+programs OR for libraries,
980 PRO is arguably the BEST SSD you can get, but is it really needed? I don't know, from my experience 860 PRO (SATA) is noticeably better than (NVME) Intel 660p so I guess you need to research whole SSD model, not just interface of its own, perhaps I'd say on limited budget NVME might prove worthy as non-system drive, but I can't tell for certain...
3) one thing I can say is, with nowadays prices, for audio workstation you'd better buy cheapest SSDs you can find to serve as library storage, just forget about HDDs, those are no longer viable for audio workstation,
4) just for reference, I'm using RME HDSPe AIO paired with RME ADI-2 DAC (over ADAT/SPDIF) to get ultimately best low latency audio driver AND pristine quality conversion for my monitors and heaphones - no recording done on my workstation (ASex signature)
5) about video, as long as you choose right codecs/formats, you can make use of hardware acceleration (encoding/decoding) provided by your graphics card, in my case, NVENC provided by my 1080Ti can do majority of the stuff without bothering cpu at all (in Windows only, MacOS doesn't support that!), and also doesn't stress my RAM by various sharing like what integrated gpus do

 

Thank you @tzzsmk for sharing your mindset!

You are right about not depending too much on a few answers but you know when you start from practically scratch it's extremely difficult to find and understand every pieces of informations objectively without relying on other experiences.. I spent like 20 hours in the last 3 days checking informations and learning hardware stuff but now I'm saturating a bit..

But it's ok the build is almost done, it's just that I would like to start buying components next week as it could have good deals for black friday/cyber monday..

And it's true I'm not sure I need this 980 PRO SSD, it was just an idea to exploit the PCIe 4.0 as it was almost the same price than another 970 EVO plus but I prefer to keep it simple and functional rather than going into adventurous thingy for sure!

 

@Batteruno actually, another approach you can try is, contact folks who develop software you intend to use (long-term), in their eyes you as a potential customers they won't give you a bad advice, so let's say you want a certain DAW or synth, contact devs of those and take their ideas into account,
I genuinely think devs are desperate for feedback of actual user (paying customer) base, so if you have your own mind settled on what you expect, you can always request their insight as well, nothing to be ashamed of

 

Ive been researching these boards for a week solid before I purchased one.

The Vision D is a good board if you can live with 4 Sata ports. 550 boards always have less PCIE lanes but they used them wisely on that board. I haven't seen any other 550 boards I liked because they disable M.2 or sata ports.

Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus you listed does not have a thunderbolt header. always look under the internal connectors when looking at the specs of a MB.

Even though they say they support thunderbolt make sure there is not a revision number to the motherboard. GIGABYTE X570 AORUS PRO WiFi has a revision, I called around trying to get revision 1.1 to that board and I could not find one. 1.0 does not have the header... just be careful

From my research Asrock seems to have the most 570 boards with a thunderbolt header.

Couple notes: Most of the cards for a Thunderbolt header are under 100 bucks.
550 boards do not require a chip set fan
570 boards that have a thunderbolt header are generally more expensive

Just do alot of research and check out youtube for reviews. Its a gauntlet

 

Last edited: Nov 20, 2020