i7 Builds - Specs and Results

[ejinbc]

Originally Posted by keithl

Thanks for your input. Much appreciated!
I am really trying to get 32GB in my machine with a $1500 budget. Maybe that's a no-can-do!
I'll take a look at your list.
I would probably have to take a hit on memory or a lesser CPU.

Thanks again!

K

While I am here...

It is doable ($1500 CDN before taxes)

Part List

You can use the onboard graphics (good enough). If you have any extra cash I would suggest a SSD first, then add a video card, then ...

Cheers

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by keithl

Thanks for your input. Much appreciated!
I am really trying to get 32GB in my machine with a $1500 budget. Maybe that's a no-can-do!
I'll take a look at your list.
I would probably have to take a hit on memory or a lesser CPU.

Thanks again!

DDR4 has doubled in price the last year and half. In last 3-4 months it has spiked 30% or better.

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by ejinbc

K

I spent way too much time pondering this. For what you are doing the build I did (see link) should be best price/performance ratio for low latency recording and VIs.
Note, if money is a problem you could go cheaper on the RAM (16 Gig), the storage (spinning disk), and the case. I would not substitute anything else.

Hope that helps. 8700K (with a slight overclock) is the way to go. See my post 3 posts above.

The 8700k is insanely impressive for the price. 95% of people would never need to attempt to overclock this processor. I can break over a 1000 dverbs on the dverb test at stock speeds. That is almost as powerful as the 8 core from the X series.

[PatriotsBiker]

Originally Posted by guitardom

The 8700k is insanely impressive for the price. 95% of people would never need to attempt to overclock this processor. I can break over a 1000 dverbs on the dverb test at stock speeds. That is almost as powerful as the 8 core from the X series.

I'm gonna get into sooooo many bad habits.

[KES2018]

Hi everyone. I am new to the forum and look forward to interacting with the group.

I am considering moving from my current Mac platform to a Windows platform via a custom build. I have built 4 Windows computers so far for friends and family and consider myself knowledgeable but not an expert. My question is will PT 2018.1 HD Native run and perform well on the I7 Core architecture? Specifically I am looking at the 8700K Coffee Lake CPU. When I look at the Pro Tools HD requirements that Avid provides it simply state “Xeon”. Not sure if that means PT HD needs a powerful multi core processor or is there something unique about the Xeon class of cpu’s for PT.

And yes I understand a custom build is unsupported by Avid.

And yes I know there is much much more to a successful build than just the CPU but first things first.

Your thoughts and comments are appreciated.

[KES2018]

Well I guess I made a new members’ mistake and didn’t search the forum well enough. Once I posted and looked at page 667 of the I7 build thread I saw the more recent posts, many talking about the 8700. Looks like people are having good success. Sorry for the question.

If anyone is interested here is my build. It’s almost final and I plan to order this week. Comments are welcome.

- I7 8700K Coffee Lake
- Gigabyte Z370AORUS Gaming 7
- Fractal Designs Define 5
- Noctua NH-D5 SSO-2 D Type
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1050 TI
- 2 Seagate Firecuda Gaming SSHD 2TB
- Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB DDR4 2666 (2 X 16)
- Samsung 960 EVO m.2 500MB NVMe SSD
- EVGA Super Nova 850 Watt
- Windows 10 Pro

I am still debating if I should swap one fo the Seagate HDD’s for a iTB SSD and if 32GB memory is enough.

Kirk

[steve-p]

Hi All,.. I am building a studio in the Philippines and i think i need to go with a Windows machine,. I had a Mac Pro shipped here and it is dead!! i cant get parts for it in the Philippines.

I need to be able to get parts for my studio computer and so far i have spent enough on shipping and parts for the dead Mac to build 2 PCs ! And the Mac Pro is still dead... sooo sad.


So i think i need to build a Windows machine. This will be the studio computer for running Pro Tools Only.

From reading this thread it looks like a great combo is the ASUS X99 MB and the i7-6800 or i7-6850k for the CPU.

Also open to Gigabyte MB suggestions

- Would it be ok to go with a step down from that, ? maybe an I5 CPU ? and then what MB would i use ?
- And what Graphics card would be good ? (I don't need a gaming card)

I have built PCs in the past for gaming. But that was a couple years ago. I don't know what the best MB-CPU combo is for protools.

I will be running
- Windows 7
- PT10 with 2 HD PCIe Cards for 48 D-A and 32 A-D
- 32 gig Ram (8gig sticks)
- Basic Graphics Card, dont need anything fancy.
- (Possibly SSD for System drive and another for the Recording drive)

Any suggestions are appreciated,.


Thanks guys,
Steve Perkins

[YYR123]

I have the GTX760 card. Might might be hard to find at this point in time, because it is pretty old now....but that card works great for me....mid level GPU with no issues.

They actually have updates for it quite often.....

[lesbrunn]

Originally Posted by ejinbc

I just built the 8700K system linked below - running Win 10, ProTools 2018.1, MOTU 1248 USB, Waves Gold + HEQ, Kontakt Komplete:

System Builder https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/6nmc3F - Core i7-8700K 3.7GHz 6-Core, GeForce GTX 950 2GB FTW ACX 2.0, Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker Canada

If you want low latency, the 8700K system is probably the way to go because of the faster single core performance.

I overclock to 5.0 GHz. Overclocking is trivial (see YouTube e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoUtA7DKXhU) and completely stable on my system. Actually, I find overclocking gives better stability/performance for DAW work. I disable all clock and power switching in the BIOS. I setup a custom fan profile in the BIOS for quieter operation. Airflow is important for overclocking. With the Noctu cooler I reverse the normal case airflow to draw in from the back directly onto the Noctu Radiator, and exhaust out the front. This gets the coolest air over the Radiator for cooling. The CPU never goes above 70C when using ProTools on a busy project.

I am very happy with the 8700K. I had been using an overclocked 3770K (4.5 GHz) for several years waiting for a worthy upgrade. This was it. The single core performance allows me to run at 64 sample buffer 24/96 kHz for recording (16 audio, 16 midi, 6 instances of HEQ, 1 HDelay, 1 Kontakt running AR Modern Drums, 1 Kontakt running Pianos, and then other instances of Kontakt instruments as required), and the 6 cores allow me to run many more CPU intensive plugins during mixing. All good.

I did not delid my CPU; it should not be necessary for 5 GHz. Get the thermal paste right and make sure you have the coolest air possible moving over the radiators. I just used the asus overclock profile for 5 GHz on the Asus Z370 Prime A motherboard and adjusted the XMP for my memory. Once it was working, I lowered the CPU voltage from the overclock default until my system wasn't stable in a stress test then upped the CPU voltage back a few mV. Done stable and cool.

Also note, there is a big difference in CPU load (temperatures) between running a DAW with a busy project and running a Prime stress test. On a stress test the CPU temp cycles from 60 to 85 C, but with a full DAW load it only goes up to 70 C max.

Happy Camper

Sweet system! The parts would be cheaper from amazon and newegg, though.

[Barney1981]

Hi There

I hope you someone can help, I am now at my wits end trying to get PT to play ball on my PC and have run out of options.

I am constantly getting CPU spikes causing 9093 errors on my PC and I have been through every combination of events I can think of. I get the errors in PT10, PT11 and PT12.4, I have tried endless hardware configurations with various video cards, even using on board GPU, same issues occur in all situations in windows 7 and 8.1 (haven't tried 10)

I have done all the recommended optimisations on the avid force page, trashed prefs etc and still the behavious is the same, even at higher buffer rates although it is reduced on 1024 and above.

There must be something PT doesn't like with my hardware but I don't want to imvest in anything unless I know 100% what the component is that is causing the issue.

I have an intel i7 6700 om an ASUS Z170M-PLUS with 16GB RAM which should be more than enough to handle the job.

If anyone can end my suffering I would be forever in your debt.


Full System Details:


Model : OEM System Product Name
Serial Number : System Ser**********
Chassis : Default string Desktop
Mainboard : ASUS Z170M-PLUS
Serial Number : 1507490********
BIOS : AMI (OEM) 3301 02/10/2017
Intel vPro : 11.08.50.3399
Total Memory : 16GB DIMM DDR4

Processors
Processor : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz (4C 8T 3.41GHz, 3.4GHz IMC/4GHz, 4x 256kB L2, 8MB L3)
Socket/Slot : FC LGA1151

Chipset
Memory Controller : ASUS Core (Skylake-D QC) Host Bridge/DRAM Registers 100MHz, 2x 8GB DIMM DDR4 2.13GHz 128-bit

Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : Kingston/Hynix (Hyundai) KHX2133C14D48G 8GB DDR4 PC4-17100U DDR4-2134 (14-14-14-35 4-50-16-5)
Memory Module : Kingston/Hynix (Hyundai) KHX2133C14D48G 8GB DDR4 PC4-17100U DDR4-2134 (14-14-14-35 4-50-16-5)

Video System
Monitor/Panel : ACI VG248
(1920x1080, 24.0")
Monitor/Panel : ACI VG248
(1920x1080, 24.0")
Video Adapter : AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series (8CU 512SP SM5.1 800MHz, 16kB L2, 1GB DDR5 4.5GHz 128-bit, PCIe 3.00 x16)
Video Adapter : AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series (8CU 512SP SM5.1 800MHz, 16kB L2, 1GB DDR5 4.5GHz 128-bit, PCIe 3.00 x16)

Graphics Processor
OpenCL : AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series (512SP 8C 800MHz, 16kB L2, 1GB DDR5 4.5GHz 128-bit)
D3D 11 : AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series (512SP 8C 800MHz, 16kB L2, 1GB DDR5 4.5GHz 128-bit)
OpenGL : AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series (512SP 8C 800MHz, 16kB L2, 1GB DDR5 4.5GHz 128-bit)
OpenGL : AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series (512SP 8C 800MHz, 16kB L2, 1GB DDR5 4.5GHz 128-bit)

Storage Devices
Crucial_CT128M550SSD1 (128GB, SATA600, 2.5", SSD, OPAL, SED) : 119GB (C:)
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB (500.1GB, SATA600, SSD, OPAL) : 466GB (D:)
SAMSUNG HD204UI (2TB, SATA300, 3.5", 5400rpm, 32MB Cache) : 2TB (E:)

Logical Storage Devices
System Reserved : 350MB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Crucial_CT128M550SSD1 (128GB, SATA600, 2.5", SSD, OPAL, SED)
Data & Docs (D:) : 466GB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB (500.1GB, SATA600, SSD, OPAL)
Libraries (E:) : 2TB (NTFS, 4kB) @ SAMSUNG HD204UI (2TB, SATA300, 3.5", 5400rpm, 32MB Cache)
Hard Disk (C:) : 119GB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Crucial_CT128M550SSD1 (128GB, SATA600, 2.5", SSD, OPAL, SED)

Peripherals
LPC Hub Controller #1 : ASUS Z170 Sunrise Point-H LPC Controller
Audio Device : ASUS Sunrise Point-H HD Audio
Audio Device : AVID Tech HD Native
Serial Port(s) : 1
Parallel Port(s) : 1
Disk Controller : ASUS Sunrise Point-H SATA controller [AHCI mode]
Disk Controller : ASUS Sunrise Point-H PMC
USB Controller #1 : ASUS Sunrise Point-H USB 3.0 xHCI Controller
SMBus/i2c Controller #1 : Intel ICH SMBus

Printers and Faxes
Printer : Send to Microsoft OneNote 15 Driver (1200x1200, Colour)
Printer : Pantum P2200W Series (1200x600)
Printer : Microsoft XPS Document Writer v4 (600x600, Colour)
Fax : Microsoft Shared Fax Driver (200x200)

Network Services
Network Adapter : Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (2) I219-V (Ethernet)
Network Adapter : TAP-Windows Adapter V9 (Ethernet)
Wireless Adapter : Qualcomm Atheros AR9287 Wireless Network Adapter (802.11n (HT), AES-CCMP, 144.4Mbps)

Operating System
Windows System : Microsoft Windows 8.1 Personal 6.03.9600
Platform Compliance : x64

Performance Enhancing Tips
Warning 2513 : TPM not detected. Some security features are unavailable.
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.