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AMD RYZEN 9 3900X- with Cakewalk


Sacalait

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I've been geeking out on these new CPU's.  Seems like some serious horsepower for a DAW.  So I'm wondering if anyone here has experience with this CPU and Cakewalk?  I've been using a fiver year old build with an Intel i7 4770K (four cores and eight threads).  It's done the gig.  But I'm contemplating building my own DAW machine with the Ryzen 3900x  (freakin' TWELVE cores and TWENTY FOUR threads!)  

Anyone with experience using this CPU commenting is appreciated!

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I guess I'd like to know if there are any issues with AMD CPU's.  I've been an Intel dude since the beginning.  But it seems AMD is taking the lead right now- especially on a price/performance ratio.  Maybe a developer could chime in quickly?

 

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Here's good reading:

https://www.scanproaudio.info/2019/07/12/amd-ryzen-3600-3700x-3900x-dawbench-tested-3-is-it-the-magic-number/

According to this, if you are running extreme number of Kontakt instances  with small  buffer size Intel has the edge. But for normal use I wouldn't worry about it. Ryzen 3900x is a very strong cpu for daw use. I hope someone can give you a more detailed view.

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23 hours ago, lmu2002 said:

Here's good reading:

https://www.scanproaudio.info/2019/07/12/amd-ryzen-3600-3700x-3900x-dawbench-tested-3-is-it-the-magic-number/

According to this, if you are running extreme number of Kontakt instances  with small  buffer size Intel has the edge. But for normal use I wouldn't worry about it. Ryzen 3900x is a very strong cpu for daw use. I hope someone can give you a more detailed view.

Great information IMU2002!  I appreciate it!

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I'm running a Ryzen 9 3950X with 64GB of ram and 2 2TB PCIE 4.0 drives. I built this powerhouse machine for my daily work as a software developer but it's a fantastic audio workstation as well. I use an Audient ID22 USB 2 interface with it and it just kills. I highly recommend the Ryzen family as a great platform for DAW boxes.

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17 hours ago, Kevin Walsh said:

I'm running a Ryzen 9 3950X with 64GB of ram and 2 2TB PCIE 4.0 drives. I built this powerhouse machine for my daily work as a software developer but it's a fantastic audio workstation as well. I use an Audient ID22 USB 2 interface with it and it just kills. I highly recommend the Ryzen family as a great platform for DAW boxes.

As far as I know the motherboards for higher than 3700x cpu requires  stronger power output and cooling  regarding the vrm. Maybe you can tell about your motherboard and experiences with it?

E.g. the MSI 450 series motherboards were great but MSI 570 series have a problematic reputation so far. Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE, Asus TUF GAMING X570-PLUS and Gigabyte X570 AORUS MASTER all look like solid choices for 3900x.

And what ever the motherboard, efficient cooling is essential for a reliable daw. I recently replaced the stock fans of my case (Fractal R5) and both the noise and temperature improved significantly. Three fans 7€ each so well worth the trouble. The stock cpu coolers are also noisy and offer the bare minimum for cooling, so better change it for something bigger/cooler.

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5 hours ago, lmu2002 said:

As far as I know the motherboards for higher than 3700x cpu requires  stronger power output and cooling  regarding the vrm. Maybe you can tell about your motherboard and experiences with it?

E.g. the MSI 450 series motherboards were great but MSI 570 series have a problematic reputation so far. Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE, Asus TUF GAMING X570-PLUS and Gigabyte X570 AORUS MASTER all look like solid choices for 3900x.

And what ever the motherboard, efficient cooling is essential for a reliable daw. I recently replaced the stock fans of my case (Fractal R5) and both the noise and temperature improved significantly. Three fans 7€ each so well worth the trouble. The stock cpu coolers are also noisy and offer the bare minimum for cooling, so better change it for something bigger/cooler.

The build experience was smooth as silk. I've had absolutely no problems with any of the components I used. I've always built my own PC's. (My first build was as part of a computer club project in the 70's, an Altair S100 bus 8080 computer, lol)

My most recent build prior to this was centered around an Intel i7/970 CPU and an X58 motherboard from EVGA. By comparison, that build was complex and fraught with challenges and while it ran well for over ten years, it had it's quirks. The DIY world for high-end PC's has come a long way and the parts I used were all well-thought out, well documented and extremely easy to assemble. I felt like I was cheating. :)

Event the liquid cooler was easy as pie and the temperatures are nice and stable. The build is very quiet. You can hear the fans ramp up a bit when I'm stressing things and I wouldn't call this an absolutely silent build, but I'm pretty sure if I monkeyed with the fan heat profiles I could get it pretty darned close.

I'm using the Ryzen Balanced Power Profile in the Windows power options control panel settings. That comes with the chipset drivers and sets up the memory speed profiles and CPU configurations. I haven't felt the need to use any more extreme settings.

Here's the parts list:

Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 AORUS Master

Memory: 2 G.Skill Trident Z Neo Series 32GB sticks

SSD's: 2 Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD's (I mistyped earlier, these are 1TB drives, not 2.)

Power Supply: Corsair AX1000

Cooling: Corsair Hydro H150i 360mm liquid cooler

Graphics Adapter: Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX580

Case: Phanteks Eclipse P600S 

Firewire card: Ableconn PEX-FW107 1394b & 1394a (TI XIO2213 Chipset)

Edited by Kevin Walsh
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I have generally used AMD CPU's for most of my desktop PC's, for the last 10+ years, and love them.  I have a RYZEN 1950X Threadripper, in my main desktop, and it is a beast of a machine.

AMD CPU's do a fine job with streaming audio apps, such as Cakewalk by Bandlab - you get more bang for your buck with an AMD CPU, versus using an Intel CPU, though the Intel chips run many types of tasks faster - generally speaking, the AMD chips have better performance at the equivalent price point.

I should point out that when I built my monster desktop, the AMD motherboards had zero support for the then brand new Thunderbolt 3 protocol.  My laptop has an Intel CPU and Intel-based motherboard (of course), and it also has the Thunderbolt 3 support on it.  I believe some of the newest AMD-based motherboards have support for Thunderbolt 3, but I do not know which models of motherboard have that support.  SO, if you seek Thunderbolt 3 support - just make sure whatever you buy supports it.

Have fun with whatever you build.

Bob Bone

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17 hours ago, Kevin Walsh said:

The build experience was smooth as silk. I've had absolutely no problems with any of the components I used. I've always built my own PC's. (My first build was as part of a computer club project in the 70's, an Altair S100 bus 8080 computer, lol)

My most recent build prior to this was centered around an Intel i7/970 CPU and an X58 motherboard from EVGA. By comparison, that build was complex and fraught with challenges and while it ran well for over ten years, it had it's quirks. The DIY world for high-end PC's has come a long way and the parts I used were all well-thought out, well documented and extremely easy to assemble. I felt like I was cheating. :)

Event the liquid cooler was easy as pie and the temperatures are nice and stable. The build is very quiet. You can hear the fans ramp up a bit when I'm stressing things and I wouldn't call this an absolutely silent build, but I'm pretty sure if I monkeyed with the fan heat profiles I could get it pretty darned close.

I'm using the Ryzen Balanced Power Profile in the Windows power options control panel settings. That comes with the chipset drivers and sets up the memory speed profiles and CPU configurations. I haven't felt the need to use any more extreme settings.

Here's the parts list:

Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 AORUS Master

Memory: 2 G.Skill Trident Z Neo Series 32GB sticks

SSD's: 2 Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD's (I mistyped earlier, these are 1TB drives, not 2.)

Power Supply: Corsair AX1000

Cooling: Corsair Hydro H150i 360mm liquid cooler

Graphics Adapter: Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX580

Case: Phanteks Eclipse P600S 

Firewire card: Ableconn PEX-FW107 1394b & 1394a (TI XIO2213 Chipset)

Looks very good! You surely didn't cut any corners! A great ticket to the future 👍

I start to feel intimidated with just 16Gb of ram. But as I don't use huge sample libraries I rarely see usage above 8Gb. So far so good.

I chose a Noctua D15 for cpu cooling. Maybe a bit of overkill but it's running perfectly quiet once the temps curves are set.

 

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I just updated my signature, having substantially migrated from my 12-core 2010 Mac Pro to my newly-built AMD 16-core 3950X.  I'll try my first serious CbB mixing today.  The machine has:

  • AMD 3950X / 128GB RAM (Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200-C16) ASRock x570 Creator
  • Sabrent Gen4 1TB NVMe, Sabrent Gen3 2TB NVMe, 2TB Crucial MX500
  • 10GbE link to external servers : Media server with 4TB SSD RAID-0 and 16TB RAID-0 HDD.  Redundant Server with two 12TB RAID HDD's.
  • Cooler Master HAF XB EVO case

All the Universal Audio software installs fine, and the UAD-2 Duo PCIe is recognized in the Device Manager, but it fails with a Code-10 (failed to start). So for now, the UAD-2 stays back in the Mac.  I have no Thunderbolt devices to test.  My M32 mixer/interface is connected via an RME MADI ExpressCard. 

If anything unexpected happens with Cakewalk or Reaper or Studio One in the new machine that might be relevant to this CbB community, I'll update here.

Edited by MediaGary
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49 minutes ago, MediaGary said:

I just updated my signature, having substantially migrated from my 12-core 2010 Mac Pro to my newly-built AMD 16-core 3950X.  I'll try my first serious CbB mixing today.  The machine has:

  • AMD 3950X / 128GB RAM (Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200-C16) ASRock x570 Creator
  • Sabrent Gen4 1TB NVMe, Sabrent Gen3 2TB NVMe, 2TB Crucial MX500
  • 10GbE link to external servers : Media server with 4TB SSD RAID-0 and 16TB RAID-0 HDD.  Redundant Server with two 12TB RAID HDD's.
  • Cooler Master HAF XB EVO case

All the Universal Audio software installs fine, and the UAD-2 Duo PCIe is recognized in the Device Manager, but it fails with a Code-10 (failed to start). So for now, the UAD-2 stays back in the Mac.  I have no Thunderbolt devices to test.  My M32 mixer/interface is connected via an RME MADI ExpressCard. 

If anything unexpected happens with Cakewalk or Reaper or Studio One in the new machine that might be relevant to this CbB community, I'll update here.

I've not run into any problems with interfaces with the Ryzen system at all, sorry to hear about your UAD device. I assume you have updated your BIOS, chipset drivers and obtained the latest UAD device drivers? 

I've tested a rather long-in-the-tooth MOTU 8pre connected to a PCIE Firewire card with great results. I recently moved an Audient ID22 to the primary interface role, also with very good results. 

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1 hour ago, Kevin Walsh said:

 

I've not run into any problems with interfaces with the Ryzen system at all, sorry to hear about your UAD device. I assume you have updated your BIOS, chipset drivers and obtained the latest UAD device drivers? 

I've tested a rather long-in-the-tooth MOTU 8pre connected to a PCIE Firewire card with great results. I recently moved an Audient ID22 to the primary interface role, also with very good results. 

Yes, the latest UAD 9.11 download, the latest 2.10 BIOS for the ASRock Creator, and the latest AMD chipset driver [2.03.12.0657] dated 3/19/2020 are all in place.  

A few months ago I had attempted to use the UAD-2 across my 10GbE network using Vienna Ensemble Pro v7.  I got a few things going, but it was clumsy.  I decided then to begin a slow walk away from the UAD-2 stuff.   

I had consistently used only the EMT140, DreamVerb, Reflection Engine, LA-2A, and Oxide from among the UAD-2 stuff.  I will now substitute the Waves Abbey Road Plate,  PhoenixVerb and Valhalla Vintage Verb, Cakewalk CA-2A, and my collection of tape emulator products that include Nomad Factory Magnetic-II, ToneBoosters ReelBus, Abbey J37, iZotope Vintage Tape, and of course the wonderfully useful Overloud tape emulator in the ProChannel of CbB.  It'll be fine. 

Edited by MediaGary
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7 hours ago, Kevin Perry said:

I'd read elsewhere about some Ryzen BIOSes enabling (this is from memory) 10 bit PCIe IDs which cause issues with some devices.  See if you have something like that in the BIOS you can change?

Thanks for the tip!

The BIOS parameter is Advanced AMD CBS / NBIO Common Options / PCIe Ten Bit Tag Support

Its default status is .Auto=Disabled..  I changed it to 'Enabled.'.  There was no change in the symptom...still Code 10... Device not Started (UAD2Pcie)

I'll see if I care enough when I get up tomorrow to send an error report to ASRock tech support.  They may welcome the distraction, or deem me insular and self-involved to bring up such an issue at a time like this.

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22 hours ago, MediaGary said:

I just updated my signature, having substantially migrated from my 12-core 2010 Mac Pro to my newly-built AMD 16-core 3950X.  I'll try my first serious CbB mixing today.  The machine has:

  • AMD 3950X / 128GB RAM (Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200-C16) ASRock x570 Creator
  • Sabrent Gen4 1TB NVMe, Sabrent Gen3 2TB NVMe, 2TB Crucial MX500
  • 10GbE link to external servers : Media server with 4TB SSD RAID-0 and 16TB RAID-0 HDD.  Redundant Server with two 12TB RAID HDD's.
  • Cooler Master HAF XB EVO case

All the Universal Audio software installs fine, and the UAD-2 Duo PCIe is recognized in the Device Manager, but it fails with a Code-10 (failed to start). So for now, the UAD-2 stays back in the Mac.  I have no Thunderbolt devices to test.  My M32 mixer/interface is connected via an RME MADI ExpressCard. 

If anything unexpected happens with Cakewalk or Reaper or Studio One in the new machine that might be relevant to this CbB community, I'll update here.

Maybe a bit far fetched but could this be a pci lanes thing? If you have two m.2 drives, (presumably) a graphics card and this UAD all sharing the available 24 pci lanes, some settings might need attention in bios. I'm not an expert but I would try removing the other m.2 drive and see what happens. Unless you have all the daw stuff on that drive. 

Just a thought.

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Something to look at, certainly. On the other hand I was using a PCIE Firewire card for my MOTU 8 pre along with a GPU and two PCIE4 m2 drives with no problem on my 3950x. The firewire card might well be less hungry for lanes than the OP's UAD card though,

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