Advices on PC Rig

[Mateus Borges]

Hello guys,

like many others, after years of suffering I won't dare trying building a new rig without 1st hearing from you guys.

I want to breath some new life into my old PCIX PT HD 2 rig with possibilities to further upgrades, both PT card-wise as system-wise, and off course, in a silent way. I'm using PT 10 HD 'course.

After quite some research, I was thinking about this rig:

MOBO:
ASRock X79 Extreme 4

CPU:
Intel i7 3820 LGA2011

COOLER:
Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B
Nexus Basic D12-SL

POWER:
KingWin Stryker 500-Watt ATX 500 Fanless Power Supply STR-500

GPU:
Asus NVidia GeForce GT640-DCSL-2GD3 2GB GDDR3 PCIe 3.0 x16

MEMORY:
Kingston HyperX 32 GB DDR3 1600MHz

HDS:
OCZ Vertez 4 256 GB (system)
OCZ Vertez 4 256 GB (working audio)
Some other 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 1 TB (sample)

I can't stand dropouts and -1063 errors anymore!

Thx in advance!

[albee1952]

I would bump the PSU to 600 watts(with a big, slow fan). The rest looks fine. I'm on the fence over SSD for recording. WD Caviar Black works fine and you get about 5 times the space for the same money Can't comment on dropouts or -1063 as I have never had either here. Does that motherboard have the PCI slots you need for the HD cards? I'm not an HD user so I don't know if the HD cards need a power connection. If they DO, then I would bump the PSU to 650 watts(but don't take my word as the "last word" on this). Hopefully we will hear from some HD system builders soon

[Mateus Borges]

Thx for the suggestion! Yea, I also have a couple WDs here for storage and I really love 'em.

Kingwin have a 600w fanless 80+ power, I'll see if I can grab one.

Anything else?

[Darryl Ramm]

WD is just the brand, the model matters a lot, WD Caviar Black are great, WD Caviar Green are toxic for Pro Tools.

[mikeyman]

Originally Posted by albee1952

I would bump the PSU to 600 watts(with a big, slow fan). The rest looks fine. I'm on the fence over SSD for recording. WD Caviar Black works fine and you get about 5 times the space for the same money Can't comment on dropouts or -1063 as I have never had either here. Does that motherboard have the PCI slots you need for the HD cards? I'm not an HD user so I don't know if the HD cards need a power connection. If they DO, then I would bump the PSU to 650 watts(but don't take my word as the "last word" on this). Hopefully we will hear from some HD system builders soon

I think i asked this before but i forgot the answer.What good does a more powerful power supply make?When i had my computer built i was going to get the I5 but instead ended up with the I7 and the guy said i had to have a bigger power supply with the I7 so he put in a 750 watt unit..Thanks Albee

[Mateus Borges]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

WD is just the brand, the model matters a lot, WD Caviar Black are great, WD Caviar Green are toxic for Pro Tools.

Thanks for the tip!

[Mateus Borges]

Originally Posted by albee1952

I would bump the PSU to 600 watts(with a big, slow fan). The rest looks fine. I'm on the fence over SSD for recording. WD Caviar Black works fine and you get about 5 times the space for the same money Can't comment on dropouts or -1063 as I have never had either here. Does that motherboard have the PCI slots you need for the HD cards? I'm not an HD user so I don't know if the HD cards need a power connection. If they DO, then I would bump the PSU to 650 watts(but don't take my word as the "last word" on this). Hopefully we will hear from some HD system builders soon

Yup, it does have the PCI slots I need and space for everything. I also have a small "expansion" for the TDM flex-cable wich I got from a user here in the DUC to connect the chips together in mobos in wich the slots aren't close enough for the original flex-cable.

Any expert in PC HD machines can give me an extra input?

Thx for everything so far guys.

[YYR123]

I would up the card to a GTX650 instead of the GT640...

The DDR is 5 versus DDR3

I have the GT640 and for almost the same price i could have up'd my performance....with the GTX650

[albee1952]

I can't comment on graphics options. As for power supply, its simply to bee certain you don't starve the system for current, especially on the +12V rail. There are so many parts that use that rail, from CPU to fans to drives...so its really about the 12V rail more than anything else. If it runs split rails, I would look for 20A per rail and for a single rail, over 50A. My i7 950 rig had a split rail supply rated at 16A per rail, but the 950 can pull 18A. The system was not stable until I swapped the supply YMMV As for fanless, again, I have no comment, other than to suggest a hard working machine that runs long hours(like a DAW computer) should benefit from all the help it can get in the cooling department I assume you are looking for quiet? Larger fans(like 140mm) spin slower and make less noise and there are some darn quiet liquid cpu coolers(Corsair H60 here). Food for thought