Primary use:Audio/DAW / Secondary use: Games/Video Editing

[Cain777]

Hi all,
Looking at updating my home studio desktop PC. Budget is £1500. Couple of extra notes, this is mainly for heavy audio/DAW work but I also use it as my main gaming machine (albeit casual HD gaming, by no means after cutting edge, I'm still playing quite a lot of older games tbh!). I also sometimes use it as an alternative to my work Mac for video editing when I work from home (Adobe Prem/Photoshop/After Effects).

Currently using an old (nearly 10 year old) i7-3770k 32GB DDR3 Win10 based desktop with 850W Corsair HX PSU and a lot of smaller drives (like 5 SSDs, 2 internal SATAs & 2 external e-SATA drives - lotta storage, some of it split into boot/OS, cache, games, backup, audio & backup of my NAS). Not unhappy with performance but the noise has got considerably worse over time to the point of making it hard to use for audio work now. So one of the big things for me is how quiet I can keep this without losing too much performance.

Anyway, happy to simplify the drive situation so it's one boot drive and one data drive. I can always use some of the older drives for backups.
Also, happy to stick with my current monitors and GFX card for the time being (but not to say I won't upgrade these down the line).
Using 2 x Iiyama 27inch 1080P monitors (60Hz) with a Zotac Nvidia GTX 1660 6GB gfx card.

The other things I will need to keep from the existing desktop would be my 2 x UAD Quad DSP cards and MOTU 424 sound card. (so that's 3 PCI-E slots required not including the GFX card but they can use 3.0 x1 slots fine).

Here's my first stab at the new desktop (also, I'm pretty comfortable installing OS/drivers/etc so happy to save some cash and use my existing Win10 license for now).

I've added some notes to explain my thinking on some of it....


Case
FRACTAL NORTH TG GAMING CASE (WHITE) Absolutely love the look of this case but would it require an external DVD/CDRW? can't see where internal one would go? Not a dealbreaker as I have an external USB DVD/CDRW (I do need to burn audio CDs now and again)
Promotional Item
Get a discount code for 20% off peripherals at Corsair.com
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 16-Core Processor i7-13700 (Up to 5.2GHz) 30MB Cache Out of the loop for so long, is AMD now worth considering over intel? - I've just gone with intel cos that what I have now, I have no loyalty on this
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING Z790-PLUS WIFI D4 (LGA1700, DDR4, PCIe 5.0, Wi-Fi 6) Covers my PCI-E needs
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200Mhz (2 x 32GB) Might seem like overkill but a lot the samplers I use benefit from large amounts of RAM
Graphics Card
INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR (GPU) Going to use the existing 1660 certainly for a while
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 990 PRO M.2, PCIe 4.0 NVMe (up to 7450MB/R, 6900MB/W) Boot drive
1st M.2 SSD Drive
4TB CORSAIR MP600 PRO NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 7000 MB/R, 6850 MB/W) Data drive, lot less storage than I have now but WAY faster, can always add more down the line
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET With all my extra USB controllers and whatnot I've calculated around 650ish for need, so I've just upped it a bit
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 200 Series High Performance CPU Cooler This is where I'm pretty clueless, for quiet operation do I need better cooling/more fans or would that make it louder?
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
ONBOARD LAN PORT
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 5 to 7 working days
Welcome Book
PCSpecialist Welcome Book
Price: £1,513.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-z690-pc/rTK7D0jHee/


Any advice is much welcomed (looking to pull the trigger on this sometime this month). Thanks for bearing with me!

 

[sck451]

Here's an alternative with AMD instead, which comes out significantly cheaper:

Case
FRACTAL NORTH TG GAMING CASE (WHITE)
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 7700 Eight Core CPU (3.8GHz-5.3GHz/40MB CACHE/AM5) Good and very efficient (read, quiet) CPU
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING B650-PLUS WIFI (AM5, DDR5, PCIe 4.0, Wi-Fi 6)
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 5600MHz (2 x 32GB) AMD Faster DDR5 memory
Graphics Card
NONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 990 PRO M.2, PCIe 4.0 NVMe (up to 7450MB/R, 6900MB/W) I'd personally choose a 512GB Solidigm P44 Pro to save you money without significant speed loss
1st M.2 SSD Drive
4TB CORSAIR MP600 PRO NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 7000 MB/R, 6850 MB/W) Definitely better to be over-provisioned -- and a more powerful PSU is more likely to operate in its silent mode
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 200 Series High Performance CPU Cooler Plenty for the 7700, but questionable for the 13700 you chose
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
ONBOARD 2.5Gbe LAN PORT
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 5 to 7 working days
Price: £1,408.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am5-pc/DerPK3mVuP/

 

[Cain777]

Thanks so much for the quick reply. I've now done some more AMD research and unfortunately it looks like there's a good chance that my UAD Quads cards aren't compatible with Ryzen CPUs So I might have to go with Intel after all which is a shame as that CPU sounded like a good fit in terms of performance-to-noise (not to mention price!). Further research then...

 

[SpyderTracks]

Thanks so much for the quick reply. I've now done some more AMD research and unfortunately it looks like there's a good chance that my UAD Quads cards aren't compatible with Ryzen CPUs So I might have to go with Intel after all which is a shame as that CPU sounded like a good fit in terms of performance-to-noise (not to mention price!). Further research then...

Quad GPUs aren’t dependent on CPU. Where are you seeing they are are? They’re only reliant on PCIe specification

 

[sck451]

I'd honestly be a little surprised if you still find you benefit enormously from DSPs with a modern system. A 7700 is far, far more powerful than the CPUs that existed in 2012 when those DSP cards came out; the benefit of a dedicated signal processor will be far, far less today.

But I'd also be surprised if they didn't work. It's not impossible (motherboards are complicated things!) but I'd be quite surprised.

 

[Cain777]

Hi all, sorry about the confusion - I'm referring to Universal Audio Quad PCIe DSP cards ( https://www.uaudio.com/uad-accelerators/uad-2-pcie.html ). I understand the points regarding modern CPU power but I have a rather large collection of UA plugins that aren't yet native so rely on a working Quad card. I know that makes them seem like rather large hardware dongles but until they've all gone native (which seems to be happening slowly) this is the situation I'm in. I need to be able to open older projects so can't just cut ties with the Quad cards quite yet.

Here's the official UA statement on AMD Ryzen - https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002525646-AMD-Ryzen-CPUs-and-UAD-2-PCIe-Compatibility

The issue isn't clear cut - some people on the forums seem to have them working, some don't. But I'd rather not take chances if I can help it. So maybe I need to pick an Intel CPU that I can keep cool without excessive noise?

Thanks for your replies!

 

[sck451]

That seems very peculiar to me; if I were you I'd be very unimpressed with "oh, we didn't bother to test this" as a response from a manufacturer! My guess is that it is specific, probably cheap, older motherboards that were at fault, rather than Ryzen per se, but that article is particularly unhelpful in actually working out what to buy.

If you must go with Intel, you might look at something like this. It's quite a bit more money because going with Intel basically demands you spend more on cooling, and I'm also suggesting you go with DDR5 memory, which makes it more than your original build both for the RAM itself and for the motherboard. You could go down to the 13600 instead, which would still be plenty for audio work; you could reduce the SSD size and plan on adding a second one when the first one is full up to defer the cost a bit. You could go for a cheaper cooler, but I'd (a) expect that to be louder and (b) be a little anxious about its cooling efficacy in heavy workloads. Though for single-core stuff even the FrostFlow 200 would be ample.

Case
FRACTAL NORTH TG GAMING CASE (WHITE)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 16-Core Processor i7-13700 (Up to 5.2GHz) 30MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING Z790-PLUS WIFI (LGA1700, DDR5, PCIe 5.0, Wi-Fi 6E)
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 6000MHz (2 x 32GB)
Graphics Card
NONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB SOLIDIGM P41+ GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3500MB/sR, 1625MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
4TB CORSAIR MP600 PRO NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 7000 MB/R, 6850 MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
Processor Cooling
CORSAIR iCUE H100i ELITE CAPELLIX XT RGB High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
ONBOARD LAN PORT
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 5 to 7 working days
Price: £1,652.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-z790-ddr5-pc/rQzvMGRD9S/

 

[Cain777]

Cheers for the reply. Yeah the UAD issue is a bit annoying, won't be buying any new plugins from them (unless they're native) and hoping that eventually I can ditch the cards.
So I think this might the build I'm going for. Basically what you said but slightly downgrading the data drive to get closer to my budget. I also realised (as you pointed out) that I've only had 512GB for my current boot drive and it's been fine so 1TB was unneccessary.
Also, I've plenty of external or traditional ssd storage available that I can add if I really need it. Alternatively, when funds allow, I can sell the data drive and get a bigger capacity but I suspect the gfx card will be the first thing to get upgraded down the line.
So I'm feeling pretty good about this now -

Case
FRACTAL NORTH TG GAMING CASE (WHITE)
Promotional Item
Get a discount code for 20% off peripherals at Corsair.com
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 16-Core Processor i7-13700 (Up to 5.2GHz) 30MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING Z790-PLUS WIFI (LGA1700, DDR5, PCIe 5.0, Wi-Fi 6E)
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 6000MHz (2 x 32GB)
Graphics Card
NONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB SOLIDIGM P44 PRO GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 7000MB/sR, 4700MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 7000MB/R, 5000MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
Processor Cooling
CORSAIR iCUE H100i ELITE CAPELLIX XT RGB High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
ONBOARD LAN PORT
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 5 to 7 working days
Welcome Book
PCSpecialist Welcome Book
Logo Branding
PCSpecialist Logo
Price: £0.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-z790-ddr5-pc/WXd88gFS7c/

Thanks everyone for your help!

 

[sck451]

You could save another £70 if you went with a Solidigm P41+ drive instead of the 980 Pro. That would be ample. Also you have multiple M.2 slots so you could easily add more storage without getting rid of what you already have here. And you can always put an M.2 drive in a USB caddy to make fairly cheap and high-quality external storage if you use up all the internal slots and need to remove one...

Otherwise, looks good to me.

 

[RichLan564]

What do the UA cards do, just allow you to run their plug-ins on their dedicated hardware?

Can you not just sack them off and run the plug-ins directly in your DAW if you already own them?

Seems like they may have been useful years back when PC's were limited in processing but not now, unless i'm misunderstanding what they are for of course!

 

[Cain777]

Hi - yep, they're VST plugins that run only on the UAD SHARC processors. Like you said, dates back to when cpus needed all the help they could get. They've ported some of them over so you can run them native without the cards (can share them with my macs etc much nicer workflow!) but unfortunately there's quite a few of them still not ported (and ones that I have used a lot). Eventually when all the critical ones that I use are native I will jettison the cards (I suspect sooner or later they just won't be compatible with new mobos). Until then I'll just have to keep them and wean myself off the non-native plugins!

 

[RichLan564]

Hi - yep, they're VST plugins that run only on the UAD SHARC processors. Like you said, dates back to when cpus needed all the help they could get. They've ported some of them over so you can run them native without the cards (can share them with my macs etc much nicer workflow!) but unfortunately there's quite a few of them still not ported (and ones that I have used a lot). Eventually when all the critical ones that I use are native I will jettison the cards (I suspect sooner or later they just won't be compatible with new mobos). Until then I'll just have to keep them and wean myself off the non-native plugins!

Ah, cheers, that's a shame

 

[Cain777]

One last thing... does anyone here know if you can opt out of having the PC Specialist branding/badge put on the front of the case? I love how the Fractal North case looks as is without any logos (fickle I know!).

 

[SpyderTracks]

One last thing... does anyone here know if you can opt out of having the PC Specialist branding/badge put on the front of the case? I love how the Fractal North case looks as is without any logos (fickle I know!).

I don’t believe so but you can remove it yourself, it’s just stuck on with glue

 

[sck451]

Yes, I got mine off easily enough by prying at it with a Stanley knife, then getting rid of the glue residue with alcoholic handgel. (I didn't have rubbing alcohol to hand and it worked fine!)

 

[Cain777]

Good to know - thanks guys. I'm placing the order today - exciting times thanks for your help and insight, cheers