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2021 Computer, what should i do?


Bad Mac

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1 hour ago, craigb said:

You'll want to search for the threads where Jim explains what's important for an audio machine (speed, cores, threads, etc.).

I remember when turning off virtual cores and hyperthreading were hot topics.

I had a DAW scare tonight. The TV I am using as a monitor shows up as 2 monitors in Win10. I was having issues changing the resolution for different applications so I thought logically monitor 1 was my TV and the other was just some glitch and set 1 as my main display. Wrong! 2 is the TV, 1 is I don't know. It locked me out of my DAW. I had to go get my wife's work monitor and hook up in the 2nd monitor port and somehow it tricked Win10 in to showing me a blank screen with a mouse cursor. I blind logged in and up popped a limited desktop and task bar at the bottom. When I clicked on display settings the window was displayed on monitor 1 which was invisible, thus actually showing me nothing except the icon on the task bar. I then had to hover over the task bar icon, right click, select move, and fish around off screen for the display setup window and drag it down where I could see it. What an absolute nightmare. Long story short (fail), I loathe Windows 10. Oh how I long for 7, and even XP. They were grand.

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I’ve done 2 builds based on consultations with Jim Rosebery (Purrfect Audio Studio Cat)-

I followed his recommendations for all but a few components that I couldn’t source where I live. He followed up with all my questions whether related to hardware or software. The fact that he has run Cakewalk/Sonar for decades is a valuable bonus as he has context for any questions you might have related to our favourite DAW.

Edited by Michael Vogel
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3 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Ironically, my track score is a bit on the opposite side. Good with ATI/AMD and bad with Intel/nVidia.

Is there a difference? probably. But Jim sure seems to be an expert on computers and he assured me the computer would kick @$$.  not his words, mine. So as long as it does what i need really well, then i am not too worried about the last 3%.  My computer is ordered and i am totally stoked! will let you guys know how it does.

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13 minutes ago, Bad Mac said:

Is there a difference? probably. But Jim sure seems to be an expert on computers and he assured me the computer would kick @$$.  not his words, mine. So as long as it does what i need really well, then i am not too worried about the last 3%.  My computer is ordered and i am totally stoked! will let you guys know how it does.

I should just stop now. LOL! *ducking for cover* But historically AMD has always been less powerful and stable than Intel CPU's. The problems usually fell in the cache amounts, actual operating speeds, that kind of thing. Bottlenecking used to be a problem. But things have changed significantly in recent years. The gap between AMD and Intel is closing. 👍 Depending on how demanding you are on your DAW I doubt you would see a difference these days.

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Just poked my head into the Newegg site. They tend to be one of my favorite suppliers. Currently you can get an i7  10700K for 359.00 or a Ryzen 7 3700X for 319.00. That's not a huge difference in price for me. Both chips clock factory in the high 3ghz range. Looks like you can O.C the Ryzen to 4.4. Not sure about the 10700K. I could be mistaken but I think the "K" designation means you can O.C. the chip. I keep my 5820K 6 core i7 overclocked at over 4ghz and have never had a heat issue or any other kind of problem in the 4+ years I've had it. That chip is getting long in the tooth compared to more recent chips. For me though it's plenty. 

If I were going to upgrade today I would be looking at an i9 only because I run libraries and lots of plugins.As of now you can get an i9 10900K 10 core for about 5 bills.

For a budget build you can get an i5 for half that and still have a nice home studio computer. One of the main things I learned on my last build was the lanes on the 5820K are less which can affect throughput depending on what you're trying to do. For some odd reason they throttled the lanes on the 5820K .vs the 5820. I'm still running samples off of 4 large SSDs simultaneously. I think it has more to do with  the available throughput and speed of live recording channels from your interface. I seldom record more than 2 tracks at a time. I track acoustic instruments usually with a stereo pair of pencils or track a vocal. That's about the extent of my live work.

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