$4,000 ish budget for high end audio AND video production PC

[songwritersoul]

Hi guys,

I haven't built a computer in probably around 8 years and want to build a beast of a machine as a retirement gift to myself. I'm really excited to see how much these m.2 drives speed up and stabilize my working with VI libraries. I'm not wanting to spend a bunch of money just to spend money, but I am willing to pay more for an extremely fast and robust machine that will give me years of great performance. I've checked out the companies that build "Pro Tools PC's" etc., but seems to me their prices are about twice what the parts cost at Newegg so no thanks. I'll build it myself for that kind of money.
I would greatly appreciate it if those of you who are really into this stuff, and are familiar with what's compatible with PT and other DAW's, would recommend me components to build this beast. I'm currently running PT HDX2, but am thinking about doing something crazy and going the UAD Apollo route with Cakewalk or something else. Not sure yet.
Here's what I'm looking for:

-Mobo that supports at least 4 m.2/NVME drives. (audio, system, VI and video)

-Mobo that supports latest DDR5 memory (128GB preferred)

-SUPER fast cpu that has good balance between cores and speed

-128GB fast ddr5 memory

-at least 4 m.2 drives with at least 2TB each

-latest TB support

-Room for 2 HDX cards

-GPU that will handle HD video editing with ease, but isn't a noise machine

-1000w or more PS

-Good amount of latest USB ports or room to add a card

-Silent case

-Liquid cooling?

I greatly appreciate any recommendations you can throw my way.

Thank you,
Steve

[EGS]

Start by picking your CPU, then MB, then ram. If I was building today, I'd go 13th gen

i9-13900K

or i7. You might want to read over the last few pages here: https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=238426

[JFreak]

What would be the nicest way of saying spec a Mac Studio instead...?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by JFreak

What would be the nicest way of saying spec a Mac Studio instead...?

Was your reindeer mean to you this morning?

[songwritersoul]

Originally Posted by JFreak

What would be the nicest way of saying spec a Mac Studio instead...?

Nothing wrong with Macs except that to get one with the specs I'm looking at, I'd be over $10k. I don't mind doing the labor when it saves me $5k of hard-earned money.

[songwritersoul]

Originally Posted by EGS

Start by picking your CPU, then MB, then ram. If I was building today, I'd go 13th gen

i9-13900K

or i7. You might want to read over the last few pages here: https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=238426

You named the exact cpu I'm planning on going with. The i9 13900 24 core.
The mobo I'm looking at is:
MSI MEG Z790 ACE LGA 1700 Intel Z790 SATA 6Gb/s DDR5 Extended ATX Motherboard

I don't know much about chipsets etc. so need to confirm that LGA 1700 is PT friendly.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by songwritersoul

Hi guys,

-latest TB support

Be careful with things like "latest", "fastest", or "best". What exactly do you need?

Latest Thunderbolt is Thunderbolt 4. Do you need that? Or will Thunderbolt 3 suffice? If you are not sure on the differences now is the time to read about them. Personally if buildign a PC Thunderbolt 3 (as logn as it has full 40 Gbit data poerforamnce) would be fine, for any audio interface or external drive support. I'd just not use any Thunderbolt display on a PC, so would not care about the enhanced display support in Thunderbolt 4.

And yes some Windows PCs esp. laptops screwed up Thunderbolt 3 to only support minimal features, but just check the detailed specs for what you are looking at.

If you need Thunderbolt 3 or 4 then that's a good place to help select a motherboard, and try to triangulate in on as well from the CPU side.

And on trying to be more specific with specs... How much total storage space do you need?

PCIe 4 based M.2 drives are common now. So you want at lease 4x PCIe 4 lanes on each M.2 drive. PCIe 5 lane drives are around the corner... but likely a while before they have any meaningful impact in the desktop space, and by then you'll likely be buying another PC. but you might not get those in MoBo slots since PCIe 5 lanes are limited off the CPU.... and PCI3 5 over PCIe4 wont' offer the performance kick that PCIe 4 going to PCIe 4 does.

4 x M.2 drive support on the motherboard? That is a bad spec to look for. Very few motherboards have supported 4 slots, and those that do are often only PCIe3 or worse (SATA). Wanting 4 x M.2 drives is likely to push you to need PCIe adapter cards in PCIe slots. Easy to do if using single M.2 adapter cards. Much more complex to do if you are using cards that adapt multiple M.2 cards to a PCIe slot... the card likely needs a PCIe switch, and you'll want it to run at PCIe 4 speeds with limits card choices and increases cost.

Actual M.2 card selection should be relatively easy (prices have come down, spend the money on performance drives). Just get Western Digital WD Black SN850X or Samsung 990 Pro. Personally I would get all the same make/model to simply firmware updates etc. (Yes even at risk of future model specific bugs).

You might be much better off starting with a two (or three?) PCIe 4 M.2 cards of 4TB each (the WD Black SN850X) and finding a motherboard with dual PCIe 4 or PCI3 M.2 slots on it. Anything beyond that you can add via PCIe adapter cards in future, but you may run into PCIe slot budget issues.

And cooling matters for high-end SSD performance. I hope the Motherboard vendor has organized this well. Pick the correct/compatible M.2 cards, some variants have heatsinks on them, some do not, some with heatsinks may not fit all M.2 slots. I would hope motherboard vendors or their user forums will be super clear exactly what M.2 cards folks have tested with.

One thing you can do is create a spreadsheet of the overall PCIe lane and physical slots available in different PCs that can use them and match that up with your needs. That's often where you see stuff like a 16-lane GPU and many M.2 drives eats a lot of the total PCIe lane count and maybe physical slots as well. Make sure you are on top of stuff like motherboard M.2 slots eating lanes from PCIe card slots.

Your job now is to fix constraints (like CPU choice, Thunderbolt needs. (realistic) M.2 slot needs) and then rapidly short list candidate motherboards and then deep dive on that short list to see if stuff could work/what looks best.). (edit: OK I see you have a candidate motherboard, so do a build now in your head/spreadsheet and make sure stuff will really work).

Things like memory are easy... you are going to only purchase the exact memory DIMMs on the vendor qualified list and going to follow all memory config recommendations.

And as I pointed out before your attention should be on this thread: https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=238426 I would have just posted questions to that thread.

[Darryl Ramm]

Wow you did manage to find a motherboard with Thunderbolt 4 and more than a few (PCIe 4/5) M.2 card mounts. I've never seen that board before. Be careful about PCIe slot use deconfiguring some of those M.2 cards and visa versa. You'll have to check the documentation.

My main question with that motherboard would be around physical PCIe slots. It only has 3 x 16 lane slots... if you go with a discrete GPU (I still would) that leaves only two slots for your HDX cards and none extra. Maybe that is OK for you. (I keep finding ways to use small cards in PCs, from legacy serial port cards to specialist I/O cards etc. always something to add).

One downside of that board is its dual 2.5 Gbit Ethernet, I'd normally want to see 10 Gbit Ethernet in any modern computer. And you don't have a PCIe slot budget to add a Ethernet card. It does have latest Intel WiFi which is great. No current need to another card there. Ditto with USB 3.2 2x2 support... so you should be set with any (non-Thunderbolt) PC oriented external drives etc.

[songwritersoul]

Thanks for all the input. You've given me some things to think about. I'm probably going to sell one of my HDX cards as most of the plugins I use are native anyway and last time I checked, I haven't had any songs go over 50 tracks so what I have is overkill as far as PT goes.

The reason for wanting a fairly cutting edge computer, besides the obvious performance bump, is so it's as future proof as is possible in the world of computers...hence TB4, DDR5 and as many m.2 bays as possible.

My current i7 build wasn't built with video in mind and when I've done video editing on it, it has been a total slug so I'm looking to build a nice dual purpose rig. I've waited a couple years for the price of m.2 drives to come down to Earth and I can stomach the prices of them now.

That thread you posted the link to has like 700 pages. I don't really want to sort through that many pages trying to find relevant and current info. I also hate to hijack a thread, but looks like that one has been hijacked more than a few times already so maybe I will haha. Thanks for the info.

[EGS]

Originally Posted by songwritersoul

... so need to confirm that LGA 1700 is PT friendly.

LGA 1700 is the compatible MB socket for Intel 12th & 13th gen chips - i.e. it doesn't really have anything to do with app compatibility, like Pro Tools. You should be golden with that MSI. Post your parts list ... over on that other site ... and people will chime in with any issues.

Re storage: I recently installed a single WD_Black SN850X (4TB size) in my build. On Crystal Disk Mark, I'm showing 6966 MB/s read and 6522 read. I'm using it for boot, sessions, & VI samples. SFX libraries, iTunes library, & all backups are on various external spinners as needed. Works!