I'm in the same boat of needing (maybe a needing/wanting ration of 5:1) to replace my aging and starting to sputter circa 2014 i7 3700. I too won't be working or playing games.

I don't use large Kontakt libraries (though was imagining buying something orchestral to write for strings, woodwinds and brass) and was wondering why 32 gigs of RAM would be important for my situation.

Also, are Noctua fans something that can be retrofit into an existing bought off the shelf desktop unit (I have no computer building chops)? I really could use as near silent as possible a machine as I can manage as I use microphone capture for the majority of my music.

I think this info might also be beneficial to YhomTorke66 who might or not be related to late great The Monkees guitarist Peter Tork).

 

To the op:

I'm just going to throw this out there, even though someone already mentioned it. A lot of people seem to think you need to build this super system for audio production, when most people don't need close to that. Gaming and video rendering are typically way more hardware intensive. But there will be exceptions to this.

And, if that's what you want, we will happily spend your money.. if you want the best of what is out there and want to stick to AMD, it really depends on your budget. Go balls deep with the Threadripper, or save yourself a whole lot of money and get an R9 7900, which will be more than satisfactory. The vast majority of people won't even need that, but if that's in your price range, that gives some good future proofing. Myself, I have an R9 3900X (i.e., older generation), and absolutely love it. This was actually the first time I bought an R9 or i9. I only did it because I traded a motorcycle for a computer I got to build, so I went high-end affordable. I've typically bought i7s, though.

I mean, we're talking super low hanging fruit when it comes to price, now. So, that would be my reason to just go 32GB. It's not a big difference in price from 16GB to 32GB, but it's hard to say how much you'll benefit. There are other VSTs that might take up decent memory too, like big ROMplers or samplers, for example. Or just having a whole lot of things open at once. But you may never use it, and it's very easy to upgrade RAM after the fact, so don't feel like you have to go >= 32gb.

Bear in mind, everything goes in RAM before being processed. When RAM is full, then swapping occurs, which means you're reading/writing from/to disk. Maybe not so bad when you're doing it on an SSD though, and if the data swapping in/out isn't large.

I'd say you should feel confident enough to just go with 16GB, and if you find that you're seeing a lot of disk activity when working in projects, that's an easy and cheapish upgrade to go to 32GB afterwards.

Yes, except you may be limited by the case you buy. Some coolers can be very tall and require decent sized cases, so amount of clearance between the cooler and the side of the case is a consideration. Every cooler will state what the minimum required clearance is. But there should be no reason you can't remove the existing cooler, clean off the thermal paste on cpu die, then install the Noctua fan.

I build all of my own systems.. much preferred that way. Been doing it since my old Intel 286. Maybe the one before that, even (PC XT, but I think that one came pre-built). There's a lot to consider when building a system, especially nowadays, but it becomes a bit second nature after a while, and I think better value route to go! If that will never be your thing though, make friends with a nerd

 

Last edited: Feb 1, 2023

this isn't entirely true, RAM is basically another layer of cache for data between disk cache and processor cache, nowadays operating systems are designed to effectively manage its usage, as long as there's enough capacity to use (and re-use), having more RAM won't give you huge improvements, especially not nowadays when you can get some 2TB NVME PCIe 4.0 SSDs that give you ~7GB/s read/write speeds, and maybe even more importantly, hundreds of thousands I/O operations per second,
doesn't mean you shouldn't go for 32GB ram, just saying that won't save you from cheaping out on slow SATA SSD...

 

Thanks, @naitguy!

 

No he's not you dickfuckingwadoffeces.

 

Use https://pcpartpicker.com/ to pick the computer components that are compatible with each other

 

This site is a godsend and I came here to share a link to it as well. The compatibility checking function is super handy for people just now building their first pc

 

Yep, the 1st and only computer i ever built was a Hackintosh and i wouldn't have been able to do it without that site. Really really valuable

 

One note to add about airflow is that you want to have a bit of positive pressure inside the case. As intake fans suck through screens/filters airflow will be slightly reduced.
So, have the intake fans be a bit better than the output fans.
In my case I have 2 intake and one exhaust.
That keeps enough pressure in the case to prevent any dust entering through open areas, but instead, the case is always "leaking" clean air. Most cases have a lot of open area on the back, so it doesn't hurt to have a lot more intake airflow.