Complete new build needed ASAP

jimmys69

MOODerator
Ok, well my wonderful 4 year old system is showing signs of failure.

Page file errors with do crash dump file to be seen. Seems like a motherboard or OS or HDD may be fucking up. Whatever...All recorded material is safe.

Because I have projects working right now that have deadlines, I am going to have to build a completely new system to reinstall everything as opposed to trying to fix the one I have now. All the while keeping the old machine running so..


Build the new one 'better' time.


Here is the question:


Any recommendations as to what works best? As far as SSD's or motherboard combinations? Power supply and video card? Any of these combinations that someone here has experience with and any suggestions?


I do know that I wish to stay with the Intel I7 and W7 setup. As per my favorite computer techs recommendation, I will just clone each stage of my OS (SSD) updates to another SSD and store it away in a fire safe or whatever.

I initially set my first recording PC up so that if one of the drives failed, I could just replace the drive with another and still keep my programs. It seems that RAID 1 configuration I have running is not so good when it comes to finding what the issue is with my system now. Strange blue screens for no apparent reason. OS is not able to even do 'System Restore'. It may be just a need to start the fuck over with complete reinstall of everything-including OS. But I have shit to do and can while building a new tower.

Time to build one for the next 5 years...

I reluctantly have $2000/or whatever needed to spend tomorrow. No online ordering. I will be purchasing from my local MicroCenter here in town.



Any insight? :)

I'm actually going to make popcorn now so this will be just what I am doing. :)

:eatpopcorn:

And maybe some :drunk:
 
Hmm.
Seems like a hell of a move!
Don't suppose you're just running out of space of the system drive? That's the most likely cause for page file errors.


If that's not the case I'd guess drive failure so run some kind of check on it.
Personally, I'd pick up a hard drive, install W7 on it, and test it out to see if you get the same issues.
If you don't, just migrate to that new drive.

Of course you can have old + new drives fitted simultaneously and choose which one to boot from for the time being.
 
Naw man. 30% of the OS drive is in use.

Replaced ram.

Here is the big issue: I can't even get a crash dump report. Windows has lost System Restore points-not that I really care, but I created one before trying Windows Update. It did nothing and I have a strange blue screen for no apparent reason now. The assumption of page file errors are from minor crashes 10 months ago. I can't even get them to be seen now.


I create a crash now (as I know how to recreate it) and it does not show that a crash ever happened.

Time for total reinstall of software and maybe some hardware. -problem is that I have shit to do on this system right now. I will deal with it later.

Memtest86 running on my system now.



Keep in mind, this is only happening on a project with 100+tracks and the only time it is a real issue is if I try to change buffer size while project is open.

I can work around that.


What I demand to not ever happen again - is anything like this.

So I am going to build a better system while I continue working with what I have. Not even going to pussyfoot around fixing what is running. I can figure that shit out later and use it for my office computer or give it to my daughter.

I care more that I have a new updated system that does not interfere with the projects at hand.
 
If you'll stump up for airfares I'll fly over and build you a monster new PC jimmy...

I don't actually know how, but you'll enjoy my company.:D


My only tip, and you're probably doing this anyway, is OS onto a separate SSD - I love the 5 second boot time for W7... :thumbs up:
 
Did you do a disk check (Error checking)? Also wonder if your virtual memory could be corrupt. Best to do overnight, but if you do a error check on the HD's, click on repair, then reboot (since it moves files from corrupt areas, this is done in a DOS style window).

Usually the Blue Screen is a hardware issue. Main areas are, HD, GPU, RAM, other (maybe heat problem).

I don't keep up as much these days, but the newer i7's are supposed to give a lot of bang. I usually stick with AMD, but that is just a personal preference, not technological reason. For off the shelf builds, the only one I know of is Alienware, but since Dell has taken them over, I can't endorse. They usually put high grade components in them, but they are so gaming focused.

SDD's are really coming down. 500GB for about $180 which would make a very good C drive for OS and install programs. You could re-purpose your current HD's for projects (reformat, do a drive error check, pop them in). I've never tried to clone a Raid 1 system, but it would seem if it just mirrors, then using a disk copy utility would get you where you need to be.

If it were me, I would try replacing the C drive, clone and see if that fixes it, after doing a drive error check. I am sure you are careful with what you install, so I doubt it is the OS installation. I would check my HD's first, go from there.
 
If you're 100% determined to build a new machine regardless of where this fault is coming from then that's cool.
To my knowledge there's no thinking to be done about SSD compatibility with mobo or whatever.
Assuming everything's sata II or III, you just plug in and go.

Last I researched the Samsung 840 pros were very good bang for buck.
Things might have change but I'm betting not that much. They're ridiculous drives!

My thinking right now is this.
Buy a good Sata system drive, fit it as an additional drive in your current machine, and build up win 7 on it.
If it works out without issue then you can migrate to that new drive and you've breathed new life into your older machine. (don't underestimate how much!)

If it doesn't, go ahead and build a new machine. Nothing lost but a few hours.

I can't really advise on mobos/gpus etc. I'm a bit out of the loop there.
 
Hey Jimmy. I'm still running the same CPU as you. It's plenty powerful enough and 16GB RAM is still pretty future proof.

If you don't want to spend any time diagnosing your issue, I wouldn't do a lot different than your current build. A 4th or 5th generation i7 (i7-4790, for example), a 250GB (at least) boot SSD (Samsung Evo 840 or 850 are great - the pro versions are a premium option), a 1TB WD Scorpio Black for projects (these are fast drives, staying lower than 2TB increases reliability), any other drives for libraries, etc., as you see fit.

I use a Gigabyte Z68 mob for my i7-2600K. I don't know a lot about motherboards, but my friend just got the recent equivalent gigabyte for the i7-4790 that seems to work fine.

I recommend my SeaSonic PSU to everyone - it's rock solid and silent. There are plenty of good brands of PSU, though - get a modular one.

Any 'silent' triple copper heat pipe CPU cooler will be fine.

As for RAM, 16GB will be more than enough for a few years - I'd buy Kingston if I was doing a build now.

Are you building this yourself, or will someone at the shop put it together for you? You need to choose a case that will fit your bits - I use a Fractal Define R3, which has some sound-'proofing' and looks great - not great for gaming cooling and full length graphics cards, though. There are newer versions of the Fractal since mine.
 
I've built a couple of new machines recently. One was a gaming machine and the other was an audio machine.

For the gaming machine I went with the i7 4790K. Great processor, but it runs a little hot. So it needs more cooling, which means more fans, which means more noise. I ended up using a liquid cooler to keep it at reasonable temps, and the cooler's radiator fans would be way too noisy for an audio setting. On my audio machine I went with the i7 4770K, and it stays nice and cool with the stock heatsink/fan.

For a motherboard on my audio machine I went with the Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H. I wouldn't recommend it, I get a bit of electro-mechanical noise from it. It doesn't come through on recorded audio, but I hear it while monitoring. For my gaming build I used an Asus Z97-Pro, which is nice and quiet. I was thinking about swapping out the two boards and using the quieter one on my audio machine.

I would skip the add-on GPU altogether. These i7 chips have plenty of horsepower to run their own 2D graphics for general desktop use. A GPU would just mean more heat, more cooling, more noise. I run dual monitors from my 4770K and it has plenty of overhead left for the burdens of audio work.

I can definitely support the above suggestions of Samsung Evo SSD and WD Black HDD. I use that combination on both of these machines and I like them quite a bit. The WD Black drives have a bit of mechanical noise when they first spin up, but I don't hear them otherwise.

For RAM on both machines I used Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB DIMMs. These are low-profile DIMMs, so if you end up needing a beefier CPU cooling option, these are less likely to physically get in the way.
 
I offered these suggestions already. He can't really afford any downtime at the moment so the second PC seems to be a good option. there are some other factors coming in to play that make it harder. his current system is running is main OS drive in Raid. Raid1 I believe. Without being there to help him break the raid, replace the drive, and hope to hell that we replace the broken one and not the good one before the raid rebuilds itself. It just introduces a new level of possible complications (not guaranteed complications) that he can't have right now (projects that have to keep moving).

I was with you guys initially, he has a great machine (although with some problems right now). My normal fix for this would be to buy a couple solid state drives, break the raid and say to hell with that, reinstall everything from scratch and you're done. After talking with him a while though it just doesn't seem reasonable to try it since I can't guarantee no downtime.

All that said, more options on hardware never hurt.
 
I've built a couple of new machines recently. One was a gaming machine and the other was an audio machine.

For the gaming machine I went with the i7 4790K. Great processor, but it runs a little hot. So it needs more cooling, which means more fans, which means more noise. I ended up using a liquid cooler to keep it at reasonable temps, and the cooler's radiator fans would be way too noisy for an audio setting. On my audio machine I went with the i7 4770K, and it stays nice and cool with the stock heatsink/fan.

For a motherboard on my audio machine I went with the Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H. I wouldn't recommend it, I get a bit of electro-mechanical noise from it. It doesn't come through on recorded audio, but I hear it while monitoring. For my gaming build I used an Asus Z97-Pro, which is nice and quiet. I was thinking about swapping out the two boards and using the quieter one on my audio machine.

I would skip the add-on GPU altogether. These i7 chips have plenty of horsepower to run their own 2D graphics for general desktop use. A GPU would just mean more heat, more cooling, more noise. I run dual monitors from my 4770K and it has plenty of overhead left for the burdens of audio work.

I can definitely support the above suggestions of Samsung Evo SSD and WD Black HDD. I use that combination on both of these machines and I like them quite a bit. The WD Black drives have a bit of mechanical noise when they first spin up, but I don't hear them otherwise.

For RAM on both machines I used Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB DIMMs. These are low-profile DIMMs, so if you end up needing a beefier CPU cooling option, these are less likely to physically get in the way.

I have the same Gigabyte mobo model, but for the older z68 chipset, and I don't get anything like that issue. Is this a common issue with the Gigabyte mobos?

I would recommend a better and quieter cooler than the provided standard Intel one for any CPU. My Scythe Mugen 3 is a good example - it is silent and keeps my CPU in good order. A similar copper heat pipe cooler should be sufficient for the i7-4790 (indeed, it is in my friend's recent build). Then again, the i7-4770 would be powerful enough for a DAW machine. I'd be led by price and availability on this matter.

The low profile RAM is a good shout - I needed low profile RAM with my CPU cooler heatsink, which is gigantic. This depends on the motherboard (where the RAM is positioned) and the cooler you settle on. The trade off is that low profile RAM doesn't have the big cooling fins that standard RAM has. I don't think I've seen any ill effects of this, but it's worth bearing in mind.
 
Case, Boot Drive, Program Drive, Data Drive (x2 RAID 1), Power Supply, Mother Board, Cooler, CPU, GPU (4 monitor capacity) or DUAL capacity (depending on your need), Memory, Removable Media, OS.

Completely fanless build I've started buying. This is a very solid build. Completely quiet except for BD drive and Data Drive head movements. As long as you're not planning to do gaming or overclocking, this should be a monster with only the cooler listed. The new Haswell E hex core runs actually cooler than most 4-core Haswells...
 
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I have the same Gigabyte mobo model, but for the older z68 chipset, and I don't get anything like that issue. Is this a common issue with the Gigabyte mobos?

I would recommend a better and quieter cooler than the provided standard Intel one for any CPU. My Scythe Mugen 3 is a good example - it is silent and keeps my CPU in good order. A similar copper heat pipe cooler should be sufficient for the i7-4790 (indeed, it is in my friend's recent build). Then again, the i7-4770 would be powerful enough for a DAW machine. I'd be led by price and availability on this matter.

The low profile RAM is a good shout - I needed low profile RAM with my CPU cooler heatsink, which is gigantic. This depends on the motherboard (where the RAM is positioned) and the cooler you settle on. The trade off is that low profile RAM doesn't have the big cooling fins that standard RAM has. I don't think I've seen any ill effects of this, but it's worth bearing in mind.

Yeah I was pretty pissed about that Gigabyte Z97 board. The onboard audio is downright unusable, and my PCI M-Audio card was also very noisy. My current USB interface isn't too bad, orders of magnitude quieter. I didn't see a bunch of complaints about this board, so I must just have received a bad one out of the batch.

Good suggestion about the CPU cooler. I should have shopped around more before I settled on the Corsair H100i. Good cooler, but I had to fudge the placement of the radiator due to the risers around the CPU on my Asus mobo.

Honestly I do think that the 4770 is more than ample for an audio application. I have yet to stress it past 20%-30% utilization. I can't say that I've ever had a 100+ track project though!

BH,
That's a really good price for that 6-core i7. Is it hyperthreaded (12 logical cores)? You might want to check that cooler's specs...says it's rated for 95W or less (i7-5820K is 120W), and it doesn't mention the socket LGA20111 as a compatible socket.
 
Yes the 5820K is hyperthreaded, but listed as 6 core 12 thread.
And the motherboard I was considering is v2 not v3. Got that sorted. Need a fanless cooler for a 120 watter...Have case and PS so far. Going to be a slow build as I check and triple check everything I'm doing. Maybe not as solid a build as I originally specced it....still, I want my next comp to be fanless and high performance. Quad DVI card was a great find even if the memory is small (how much do I need for a DAW?).
Okay, fixed the link to the cooler to support 2011 and 150W (5820 runs 140W @ 3.6 overclock or 120W at 3.3 regular).
 
Nice looking build there Broken!

Just a rough cost looks like about $1800 (I didn't even put into cart to check my math there so excuse me if I'm off).

I'm a huge fan of the crucial drives, the M550 is an awesome drive, but I've had just as much luck out of pretty much all of their drives. Going with something like this http://www.microcenter.com/product/...III_6Gb-s_25_Solid_State_Drive_CT500MX200SSD1 would save a bit of cash. If you go with the 500GB I wouldn't really bother seperating the OS/applications but there is always a chance I'm wrong there. I run mine at home with no issues, but I don't use cubase. I have a 480gb SSD OS/program drive and 256GB data drive (for projects) and then a 1tb data drive for my junk/storage.

I can't really complain about any of those parts honestly, it's a great looking build. I looked at the 4 core i7 but that 6 does look sweet for an extra hundred bucks or so. Also I like the look of that mobo!
 
Point of separating drives there is speed. Your temp and trash directories are on the OS drive. Your programs (and soundbanks etc.) as well as the recording folders go on the 500G. That way your loads and saves are not disrupted by system activities. It's not truly necessary with SSD, but it's something I did with a three drive system with 7200s to make it faster, so I just plopped it together that way. Boot drive is supposed to be a 120G Samsug @ $75 (hardly worth quibbling over) and the program drive the 500g (also Samsung). So,
$180 Case
$140 Fanless 520W PS
$575 Drives
$205 MB
$460 CPU & Cooler
$240 GPU
$135 Memory
$185 OS & BD
2120 Total fanless, fast system.
Course you can buy THIS for less if you don't mind losing 3/4 of the drive space, the RAID 1 and gaining a lot of noise from fans...
Okay, Jimmy: You're going to MC for stuff, so all bets are off. This system isn't going to be available there. Certainly not for those prices.

So, go for a 95W 1150/1155 Quad Core CPU with a decent (don't grab the $39.95 special) MB, modest graphics card(s), fanless if you can get em (unless you're planning to branch out into video production), 16GB quality RAM (HyperX/Vengence/Ripjaw) @ 1600 or better (depending on your MB capabilities), WD Black drives (3TB is cheapest/GB at the moment), Samsung EVO 850 SSD(s). Hold it all together with a quiet case, say, Cooler Master 352 or Fractal Design R5. Add W7, an appropriate power supply (also, preferably fanless) and you're all set.
 
BTW, don't let the salesperson talk you into DDR4 2400 for an MB/CPU that will only support up to 1866. Unless you are going with Haswell II E CPU, the DDR4 is just extra money spent for no gain. If your MB doesn't support 2400MHz clock, it's not going to help, again, money thrown away. Yes, it will still work, but no, you won't get any benefit.
 
A couple of suggestions,

Make a clone of the software drive on a new drive. Then try the clone and see if it works better. If it does not, keep the clone safe and do a re-install of windows, the re-install that keeps the software installed (whatever that is called, I should know I have done it enough) this is when you put the windows disc in and say install, it will then say there is a version of windows and do you want to repair.

Have a look in the computer and see if the processor is covered in dirt/dust and give it a blow out, also check that the heat sinks are in place.

To check that heat build up could be the problem try running the computer without the side panel and see it improves.

Alan.
 
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