PC Shopping

Not clear. I wonder if by the time you add memory, disks, software, and your time/effort/lack of warranty if you aren't better off with a complete Win 7 Pro system from Tiger Direct or direct from an on-line company that will negotiate price by phone.

In recent years I have been very happy with systems that I picked up from TD and from major vendors by phone.
 
By Phone! How interesting,. never even crossed my mind. Thanks for the idea. Also I should mention that I'm dedicated to reaper, doubt I'll ever see really high track counts, and the box will also be used for strictly 720p video editing in vegas. What I like about the box. Xeon(4 cores, 8mb cache), supposedly quiet case, server stability/performance?
 
Its a server class case, so it will be louder than your average PC. Typically a bad starting point for any device headed into an audio-studio environment. No OS, your out the $ on a fresh copy of Windows 7 Pro x 64 bit. Adding RAM is subjective, however, do know that in a server class device, you are purchasing what is known as ECC or Error Correcting Code RAM. Its fancy speak for RAM that is supposed to help prevent corruption, it also means additional processing over head that, in a multi user environment (where a server is utilized), not such a big deal. However, in a single user desktop, you want as little overhead adding to the system load as possible. All in all, if you were purchasing this for an SQL server (Linux, Windows, what ever), you would be on to something. As a DAW, this will not be a stellar performer, it will be loud, consume a good deal of power for no real benefit and probably be a regret in 2 months time. Personally, I'd rather see someone purchase a nice i5 Intel laptop to record with than this solution.FWIW, steer clear of server class equipment for desktop use. Best of luck!
 
FWIW, i have been struggling with a replacement computer for my Home Studio for the last 2 years and i recently just shopped around the local classifieds until i found a reasonable i7 machine. I literally just finished putting in new hard drives and am doing the windows update and already i am seeing some positive results. I sort of gave up on trying to a ground up build. The reality that set in was this: I am not a professional that has clients waiting for product.

This is a hobby for me and some friends and i guess i don't need the golden goose of computers. Plus a very wise man told me never spend money on brand spankin new technology. Looking around you can find really good 2 to 3 year old processors on the cheap in some previously owned computers. Something to think about really.

I too am a dedicated reaper user and from my lengthy research anything more than Win 7 home premium is probably overkill. A lot of the DAW builders you find online use Home Premium. I haven't loaded reaper on to the machine yet but i'll follow up shortly.

How many tracks roughly do you think you'd be using on average?
 
Quad core xeon sounds cool, but it sounded a lot cooler before 12 core xeon servers. ;)

Take a look at this list. Your cpu ranks bang in the middle of a load of i5s.
I'd go with the general advice so far. :)

ShanPeyton said:
Plus a very wise man told me never spend money on brand spankin new technology.
Click to expand...
I live by this.
My new setup is 12core 2.66/24gb 1333/gtx680. None of that is new but it's shit hot!
 
Steenamaroo said:
I live by this.
My new setup is 12core 2.66/24gb 1333/gtx680. None of that is new but it's shit hot!
Click to expand...

Seriously nice! For someone jumping in, if you could trade the 12 2.66GHz cores for 4 3.5GHz, you would be much better off if your objective is to support a current DAW.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Quad core xeon sounds cool, but it sounded a lot cooler before 12 core xeon servers. ;)

Take a look at this list. Your cpu ranks bang in the middle of a load of i5s.
I'd go with the general advice so far. :)


I live by this.
My new setup is 12core 2.66/24gb 1333/gtx680. None of that is new but it's shit hot!
Click to expand...

Good lord. What a workhorse steenamaroo!! I imagine everything is a breeze on that rig.

For interest sake, i had my Windows 7 installed, and all updates installed in about 4 hours and 15 mins last night. What a difference that SSD made. My friend who lent me the install disk was impressed. Took about 5.5 hours less time then it took him the last time he did it on his WD Green HDD.

I also just thought i'd add this into the thread: Intel Core i5-4460, Zalman ZM-Z9 U3 (Black) - System Build - PCPartPicker Canada

This was the parts list i compiled after ALOT of research into other DAW builds and other general blogs on building a computer. I would have bought it if my work hadn't slowed down and i didn't have to slash my budget. I kept flip flopping between this build and a pretty tricked out mac Mini.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Take a look at this list. Your cpu ranks bang in the middle of a load of i5s.
I'd go with the general advice so far. :)
Click to expand...

Pls be really careful w benchmarks. I was involved in dealing with HPC benchmarking for years in terms of procurements of massively parallel systems. If used improperly, they can be extraordinarily misleading when it comes to the performance of critical software. I don't see the direct connection between the expected performance of a specific DAW and the given generalized gaming benchmark.
 
ShanPeyton said:
Good lord. What a workhorse steenamaroo!! I imagine everything is a breeze on that rig.
Click to expand...
Heh. It is a bit nuts. :)

ShanPeyton said:
For interest sake, i had my Windows 7 installed, and all updates installed in about 4 hours and 15 mins last night. What a difference that SSD made. My friend who lent me the install disk was impressed. Took about 5.5 hours less time then it took him the last time he did it on his WD Green HDD.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah...two Samsung 840 pro SSDs too!
Yeah man, they much such a difference, huh?
 
DinoRock said:
Pls be really careful w benchmarks. I was involved in dealing with HPC benchmarking for years in terms of procurements of massively parallel systems. If used improperly, they can be extraordinarily misleading when it comes to the performance of critical software. I don't see the direct connection between the expected performance of a specific DAW and the given generalized gaming benchmark.
Click to expand...

Fair point, but it's just a rough ballpark.
If a manufacturer has slapped i5 stickers all over something but didn't bother to say that it's the first gen entry level chip, that list will give you a fair idea of it. ;)
 
Steenamaroo said:
Really? Why so?
Click to expand...

It depends on the level of parallelism in the DAW code. If the code makes *effecient* use of a multi core system, then it might be a win. If not, then you are likely better off with the fastest individual cores. I don't know the inner workings of many of the DAWS people on this forum use, but I suspect that most are not making efficient use of a multi core system. I might be very wrong and would be happy to know how any of the popular DAWS are paralleled for a shared memory system given the speed of the FSB on the configurations being discussed.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Heh. It is a bit nuts. :)



Oh yeah...two Samsung 840 pro SSDs too!
Yeah man, they much such a difference, huh?
Click to expand...

No. I just have a 120GB Kingston Hyperx SSD. I wish i had two samsungs. The pain about living this far north is that the sales at best buy/future shop/local computer shops provide a better price than online sales + shipping up here. Kind stinks but it is what it is right.
 
Ah yeah, of course.
In any app that's using a single core my machine would rank well below many i5/i7 chips.
I'm running PT11 (64bit) on OS X. I don't know the ins and outs, but I'm pretty sure PT is using the available resources.
 
ShanPeyton said:
No. I just have a 120GB Kingston Hyperx SSD. I wish i had two samsungs.
Click to expand...
2 samsungs is what I have..I forgot to mention earlier.

ShanPeyton said:
The pain about living this far north is that the sales at best buy/future shop/local computer shops provide a better price than online sales + shipping up here. Kind stinks but it is what it is right.
Click to expand...
Pain, yeah. I suppose you just have to go with what's available a lot of the time.
 
I was curious about Reaper's usage of multiple cores, and found this little nugget from a SOS article (notably out of date from 2008):

SOS said:
Reaper's Justin Frankel told me that he routinely does a lot of his development on a dual quad-core Xeon PC, so it's hardly surprising that the default Reaper settings work well with up to eight-core machines, typically offering over 95 percent utilisation of all eight cores. Reaper mostly uses 'Anticipatory FX processing' that runs at irregular intervals, often out of order, and slightly ahead of time. Apparently, there are very few times when the cores need to synchronise with each other, and using this scheme he can let them all crank away using nearly all of the available CPU power. Exceptions include record input monitoring, and apparently when running UAD1 DSP cards, which both prefer a more classic 'Synchronous FX multi-processing' scheme.
Click to expand...
 
First, let me thank everyone for having such a civil and informative discussion. From what I've seen, this is not always the case on this HR forum.

So, I work in the area of high end massively parallel compute systems (i.e., supercomputing). When people benchmark systems in this area, they rely on various benchmarks (google Jack Dongarra for more information) that focus on how many floating point operations one can perform per second. That's fine for bragging rights but not always a good predictor of performance for different systems acquired to perform certain tasks. That is, DoD systems focus on different algorithms than NSF systems than do NIH systems than do transaction based systems etc.

In fact, another point of confusion is efficient utilization of resources vs an efficient algorithm (to a point earlier). So, when teaching a 3rd year graduate course in massively parallel algorithms my first project often concludes with the majority of the class keeping all available processors very busy, compared to the small minority who recognize that by utilizing far fewer processors that the algorithm will run faster, which is the ultimate goal. That is, keeping the processors 95% utilized is not necessarily a predictor of the efficiency of the software, which is what matters.

Just food for thought.
 
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