i7 Builds - Specs and Results

[Skwaidu]

Originally Posted by mdub

Good point on IG. I do have a GC in my current build as a fall back. It's a GT640, lol. But it gets the job done.
So, the 12th gen has plenty of headroom? I wonder how much faster everything is going to load. Right now, it takes a few minutes to load tracks. I haven't tried much OCing on my current rig, which I have always heard not to do for music recording.
What type of monitor setup are you guys using?

Yes, the i9-12900K is a total beast already, and the i7-13700K and the i9 will surpass it, the i9 by far. I definitely don't *need* to upgrade for any feasible project (the largest I've done with the i9-12 is a 700 track 7.1 score mix session, heavily stemmed with individual stem bus processings/limiting, 7.1 reverbs etc), but shaving 10-25% off the already super fast offline bounce times etc would still be nice.

I've OC'd my i9 by +300MHz all cores and it runs fine with some undervolting. Note, that I'm on a Noctua NH-D15 and I do see thermal throttling in Cinebench, but never in DAW use (which is normally much more like gaming as far as CPU demands).

[mdub]

Did going to SSD change the game at all. They are so much faster now. How many do you guys use? Also, are you liquid cooling? Does that make much difference in steady performance? I know the I9 gets hot!!

[Skwaidu]

Originally Posted by mdub

Did going to SSD change the game at all. They are so much faster now. How many do you guys use? Also, are you liquid cooling? Does that make much difference in steady performance? I know the I9 gets hot!!

I have M.2 PCIe Gen 4 for the OS drive which obviously makes everything crazy fast from it's part (though the difference to Gen 3 does not feel massive - but that compared to a SATA SSD definitely is a noticeable improvement). For the main audio drive I want with a PCIe Gen 3 drive due to price. It's still faster than any current audio task could utilize, possibly barring high end VI instrument sample streaming.

[mdub]

Hey all, I got my i9 built and it is awesome. I didn't realize how much performance I was missing. My sessions load in seconds. Protools loads in seconds. Installing files takes seconds. No plugin drag, I've also had no issues with opening plugins while I'm in playback. I have some features that I didnt have on the other PC. I can actually switch between buffer sizes without having to restart. Which I have only seen on MAC. (game changer for me).
I went with the ASROCK Taichi Z790 board because the other was not available at the time. It has been rock solid. Being able to go 4K has also been a game changer. Now I use a 4K TV and it gives me a much broader use of screen space.
I have tweaked some settings in the BIOS as I go but it has been very minimal. I will update over the next few days but the week has been really awesome.

[Skwaidu]

Originally Posted by mdub

Hey all, I got my i9 built and it is awesome. I didn't realize how much performance I was missing. My sessions load in seconds. Protools loads in seconds. Installing files takes seconds. No plugin drag, I've also had no issues with opening plugins while I'm in playback. I have some features that I didnt have on the other PC. I can actually switch between buffer sizes without having to restart. Which I have only seen on MAC. (game changer for me).
I went with the ASROCK Taichi Z790 board because the other was not available at the time. It has been rock solid. Being able to go 4K has also been a game changer. Now I use a 4K TV and it gives me a much broader use of screen space.
I have tweaked some settings in the BIOS as I go but it has been very minimal. I will update over the next few days but the week has been really awesome.

Hi, great to hear!

I also did the drop-in upgrade from i9-12900K to i9-13900K keeping the old Z690 Mobo (MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4). If possible, it indeed feels even faster in use (although I had the blazing i9-12 to compare).

A word of warning to others considering the Z690 13th gen route though: Installing the Chipset drivers, BIOS, ME etc updates was a bit fiddly, I had weird threading issues at the start until I realized that I had installed the Chipset Driver (600->700) before the 13th gen compatible BIOS (1.92) and it hadn't actually applied. The PC worked, but after reinstalling Chipset drivers some things improved, large session load also went down by 5-8%.

There have still been some other gremlins with the Z690 BIOSes, I excpect that there will be some BIOS and driver updates in the coming months still.

[EGS]

Originally Posted by Skwaidu

I also did the drop-in upgrade from i9-12900K to i9-13900K keeping the old Z690 Mobo ...

Cool! Any bios issues will likely vary by MB manufacturer. For example, my Gigabyte Z590 had an issue regarding Thunderbolt, but only with the latest bios version. I found some blog chatter about it, saying the previous bios would fix Thunderbolt. I flashed it back one version, & viola it fixed my issue.

[songwritersoul]

Hi guys, I usually don't make a practice of hijacking threads, but this one seems like it's been hijacked more than a few times already so I'll post my situation and hope some kind, knowledgeable people can help keep me from making any huge mistakes with my new pc build.
Ok, here are the basics of what I'm looking for. A fast, robust, future proof-ish pc for PT AND video editing. I am currently using HDX2, but thinking about selling one of my cards to free up space and because most of the plugins I use are native anyway.
Here is roughly what I'm looking at currently:

CPU: i9 13900 24 core

MOBO: MSI MEG Z790 ACE LGA 1700 Intel Z790 SATA 6Gb/s DDR5 Extended ATX

Storage: (4) SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2 2280 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.3c Samsung V-NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V8P2T0B/AM

Memory: (128gb) G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 6400 (PC5 51200) Desktop Memory Model F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RK

GPU: ASUS TUF Gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 V2 OC Edition Graphics Card (PCIe 4.0, 10GB GDDR6X, LHR, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a, Dual Ball Fan Bearings, Military-grade Certification, GPU Tweak II)

E-ATX case: Thermaltake View 71 RGB 4-Sided Tempered Glass Vertical GPU Modular E-ATX Gaming Full Tower Computer Case with 3 RGB LED Riing Fan Pre-installed CA-1I7-00F1WN-01

PS: CORSAIR HX Series HX1200 CP-9020140-NA 1200W ATX12V v2.4 / EPS12V 2.92 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Full Modular Power Supply

Cooling: MSI MAG Core Liquid 240R V2 AIO Liquid CPU Cooler, 240mm Radiator, Dual PWM, ARGB Lighting Controlled by Software LGA 1700 Ready / AM5 Compatible

OS: Windows 11

Ok, tell me where I may be going wrong. I've built a few pc's in the past, but it's been a long time and I haven't kept up so there may be a lot I'm overlooking. Any thoughts are much appreciated.

Thank you,
Steve

[EGS]

List looks good! I'd suggest a Titanium rated PSU; I like Seasonic. If you need a large capacity PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, the WD 850X comes in a 4TB version.

[songwritersoul]

Thanks. I'll check out power supplies again.
In my last build, I ended up having to return the video card because it hogged up two pcie 16 slots. How can I tell if this will be the case with this mobo and gpu BEFORE I buy either?

thanks.

[Skwaidu]

Looks good to me as well, though I guess you are aware that even Z790 supports faster memory speeds when using only 2 sticks over 4?

I don't know how memory intensive your video work is, but for non VSTi Pro Tools use 64GB is more than enough.