Building Production PC

Hay guys, i've found there's stacks of forums/threads out there about 'ultimate gaming pc's but i havent had any luck finding an equivalent for music production builds.

I am trying to get a blueprint of a really high-end system. I produce predominantly minimal/tech and am focusing a lot on mastering my tracks myself. Obviously this means using a lot more DSP and cpu etc especially with the addition of high-end plugins and vsts.

I am really impressed with the UAD plugins (just started using them on my mac via UAD-2 Laptop/solo). However after reading many reviews i can see that DSP starts getting used up fairly quickly and im currently maxing out my 1 year old 17" macbook pro (3.06ghz, 4gb ram, 128gb SSD).

Anyone have some supremeo pc rigs out there they can share their experience with? maybe some people are lucky enough to be running multiple UAD-2 Quad cards? just thought this would be a worthy thread for everyone to put in their 2cents.

thats a good question, iv always wondered about EMF interference and maybe custom cases to help that

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Originally Posted by Protokol

Hay guys, i've found there's stacks of forums/threads out there about 'ultimate gaming pc's but i havent had any luck finding an equivalent for music production builds.
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Same thing. You could build 2 quad core comps and sync(midi over lan/ethernet) them for much less than one UAD-2 Quad. :confused:

You could use 1 for VSTs, and the other to compile everything.

Or just buy another laptop and sync them.

www.apple.com

were you looking to mount this inside a rack case?, checking to see if space or placement is an issue, then I can offer some suggestions. thanks :)

TABS - never occurred to me that pc sync like you mention was even an option. ill have to look into it. But I am really impressed with the UAD plugins so i would need at least one of their cards to run them. cheers

Mmuave - no specifics at all yet, just getting some ideas together so i know which route to take. As far as cases go there's no space restriction in my studio, no problem putting it all into some huge full tower or whatever.

Also wondering if anyone has any info on the possible advantages of the latest cpu's and motherboards (i7 etc) in regards to audio production. For example my mate was telling me that ableton live can assign 1 core for each track or something like that, making the new 6-core cpu's really advantageous.

cheers for the info so far

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Originally Posted by Protokol

my mate was telling me that ableton live can assign 1 core for each track or something like that, making the new 6-core cpu's really advantageous.

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That's called Processor Affinity, anything with multiple cores can do it, you just have to tell Windows specifically how to utilitarian it under Task Management.

Aside from that, Im not sure what your level of technical understanding is, I'll just boil down my opinions.

Anyhow, the newer processors are quite nice, the Core i3 series can be compared to the C2D E8400 Wolfdale series which clocks in at 3.0ghz on a 1333 FSB (maybe somewhat below that pending on the i3 being references).

Once you start getting into the Core i5 (the mid range) and the Core i7 (holy shit range), things begin to get fairly advantageous with regards to processing power. If you do any type of virtualization (i.e: running VMWare, etc) the Core i series are fantastic for that as well. If you're looking for efficiency, power, and great overclocking capabilities and thermal ratio, I recommend the Core i7-920 Bloomfield, which has radiant reviews across the board.

All of this of course, should be paired appropriately with high quality RAM, with low CAS Latency and timings. It's a given that DD3 will be used with the rig you are considering building, and from personal experience, G-Skill Ripjaw and Corsair Dominator series are particular at the top of the food chain. The Corsair Dominator is great for pushing the clock speeds and timings, IF you know what you are doing, and know basic principles of delivering voltage in a balanced fashion via the BIOS to the CPU and RAM. If you don't plan on tinkering much with those, or don't think you'll be using overclocking as an option, Ripjaw should do fine.

For a motherboard, the sky is the limit, with obvious considerations taken for the socket type to accommodate the CPU, and the RAM type. You are at an advantage going with a custom PC build since manufacturers are more apt to put cutting edge features like USB 3.0 into their mother boards. Really cool if you ever plan on using it.

And of course, the main bottle neck of any computer, the hard drive. SSD all the way if you are looking for speed, my suggestion would be the Intel SSD 160GB X-25, 2nd Generation only since the early ones have had their share of issues, including firmware crashes and bricking.

I guess if I had to build an ideal bare bone setup:

Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66ghz
Corsair XMS3 6GB DDR3 1600
ASUS P6X58D LGA 1366 Intel X58

great response mmauve! im thinking i will start piecing together some chronic i7 system.
cheers!

i'd still like to hear from anyone else's setup or future setup