# Thoughts on this epic desktop



## Winspear (Aug 21, 2012)

Got a custom quote from Scan Audio for a 3xs system. It's the same as one of the builds offered on their site except I upgraded the graphics card to one which wasn't on their list so I can game  In theory that should've added £100 but it actually came out £100 cheaper than buying through the online store  I considered taking peoples advice and building it myself but from several sites the components actually came out at least £150 more expensive, and this way I'll get a good tweaked setup and 3 year warranty 

Windows 7
Case DEFINE XL USB 3.0 BLACK PEARL
PSU Enermax 750W Revolution 87+Gold
Mobo Asus P9X79 Intel X79 Socket 2011
CPU i7 3930k with Thermalright Archon SB-E cooler
32GB Corsair DDR3 1600Mhz XMS3
EVGA 1280MB GeForce GTX 570HD gfx
3 1TB 64MB Seagate HDDs
Dvd writer, Firewire card

It's going to be equipped with an additional HDD that Eastwest Complete Composers Collection comes on and an RME Multiface II interface with PCIe card connection at a later date.

Excite.


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## Jordan Djenital Warts (Aug 22, 2012)

That's pretty damn epic dude, but some of those components are pretty overkill unless you are planning on using it as some kind of server host for a small business haha.

Made of couple of comments below:


Windows 7 - Windows 8 is out very soon

CPU i7 3930k - Any reason to why you would want this amount of power for a price tag of just under £500? IMHO an i5 2500K has plenty of umpphh... When running windows 7 with Cubase 6.5 and a fuckton of VSTs etc. (SSD 4.0, Trillian, quad tacked guitars all with cab sims and impulse loaders to name a mere few) I'm not even touching the sides of the CPUs capability. OK so the 32GB of RAM helps, but studios have been using dual core CPUs for years with no problems. My advice is: unless money is of no concern to you whatsoever; I would recommend saving your money on an i5 2500K or something close to the capabilities / price range.

3 1TB 64MB Seagate HDDs - All I have to say to this is, you must really LOVE porn haha


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## Winspear (Aug 22, 2012)

Hey mate, thanks  
You're right to think it might be overkill haha. It's to enable me to work in the way I wish - which is to run a mix much like the one you described but on really low buffer, so I can keep tracking. I don't work in the conventional write>record>mix fashion whatsoever. I'm fed up of constantly freezing/unfreezing stuff to change settings and closing the DAW to change my buffer, bypassing a bunch of plugins because the CPU can't handle them on 64 buffer etc etc. 
Then on top of that - I run a very large amount of sample libraries such as Eastwest orchestra (which with full load an keyswitching is at least 10GB RAM and quite demanding CPU usage). Once again I don't want to be bouncing them.
It certainly might still be overkill, but having the headroom wouldn't be a bad thing. It wasn't really something I could get an accurate estimate for either, cause I don't think I'd have much luck asking somebody to open 20GB+ of softsynths and four/six instances of Revalver+cab impulses on a low buffer setting and with full mix plugins and ask how it runs, haha. Plus the fact I would _like_ to run 88.2khz which will double the CPU requirement.
Thanks for the suggestion though - I just didn't want to receive something and find it wasn't _quite_ enough.
The space is a generous amount for sure, but storage is cheap these days haha. One for the OS drive will have a huge amount of space for sure, but I'll fill the Samples drive up fairly easily (even with Eastwest shipping on it's own drive when I update it to the new version).
I just ordered it - couldn't seem to find any issues with the parts. I'll let you know how it runs. I'm hoping it will be around 70% at most, might be much less but who knows!


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## Xaios (Aug 22, 2012)

If you don't mind my asking, what did the price come out at?


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## Winspear (Aug 22, 2012)

£1800 including delivery - I couldn't find parts for any less than 2k!


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## SenorDingDong (Aug 22, 2012)

Very solid build, but I second the i5


My sister has an i7, I have an i5, nearly identical specs, and the performance difference between the two is so small as to almost be completely insubstantial.


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## Winspear (Aug 22, 2012)

Fair enough - I don't care about i5 vs i7 as such - I'm sure a 5 and a 7 with similar specs would be an insignificant difference indeed. Just there are no i5s nearly as powerful as this, which is more in the range of a Xeon system. Too late now anyway


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## Winspear (Aug 22, 2012)

With regards to power here's a quote about a 3930k
"I had Guitar rig running on 3 tracks 14 tracks of VI's with HUGE FX's chains an i think i got near 60% cpu reported by ableton at a 64 buffer.. 96khz 24 bit recording" 

So it sounds about right for me  I wouldn't be surprised if I bring it above 70%


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## Pav (Aug 22, 2012)

DO NOT get Windows 8. 

You could definitely stand to downgrade the CPU a tad unless you plan on overclocking. And if you are, your power supply will be cutting it pretty close on top of the beefy GPU. Other than that you should be good to do just about anything with that much RAM and HD space, just make sure your HDDs are at least 7200 rpms if you plan on recording.


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## Winspear (Aug 23, 2012)

Yeah forgot to reply to the windows part - definitely not getting W8! Whilst it actually has ok reviews in the audio community from what I've seen, I have no reason to get it and I hate the interface. Much like many studios are still using XP.
Yep all HDDs are 7200  You think? I was pretty sure 750W would be enough and the company are very happy with this configuration so I guess it will be fine. They check it all out to make sure so no worries. 
The CPU will not be OC'd but the GPU is.


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## mniel8195 (Aug 23, 2012)

forget windows 8 how about a solid state drive?


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## Pav (Aug 23, 2012)

EtherealEntity said:


> Yeah forgot to reply to the windows part - definitely not getting W8! Whilst it actually has ok reviews in the audio community from what I've seen, I have no reason to get it and I hate the interface. Much like many studios are still using XP.
> Yep all HDDs are 7200  You think? I was pretty sure 750W would be enough and the company are very happy with this configuration so I guess it will be fine. They check it all out to make sure so no worries.
> The CPU will not be OC'd but the GPU is.



If you won't be manually overclocking any of your hardware once you have it, 750W will be just fine.


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## Maniacal (Aug 23, 2012)

I would def get an ssd as your primary. Ideally 2 in raid but thats probably a bit too much £


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## mniel8195 (Aug 23, 2012)

i agree i feel like the only thing im missing in rig is a solid state drive. I would also get a blue ray drive they are not much more and might as well have it.


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## Ryan-ZenGtr- (Aug 23, 2012)

Why not improve your studio and hire a string section with the money?

/jk

More POWAAAAAA!!!

Nice rig. I saw a similar system reviewed in _Sound on Sound_ recently. I have a £400 computer which I built last year or so and I can't max it out for audio. But then again, the largest soft synth I use is Omnisphere, with around 120 tracks and bus effects for my largest productions on a 10,000 RPM hard disk.


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## Winspear (Aug 23, 2012)

Thanks guys  Well it's too late now like I said heh, was just checking out if there were any issues with the components I may not have found yet. 
An SSD was out of my budget as there's some other stuff I want to store on there and I don't really feel the need for one at all. Faster boot times and DAW loading etc is great..but my DAW is already an incredibly fast loader on this old laptop. If I was running Protools (ridiculous load times) then I might consider it - as it is I can have a project up in about 5 seconds. 
I could always install a bluray drive at a later date should I need - but as of now I have no interest or understanding in what the hell HD or Blueray are


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## Winspear (Aug 23, 2012)

Ryan-ZenGtr- said:


> Why not improve your studio and hire a string section with the money?
> 
> /jk
> 
> ...



Haha, yeah, my rig at the moment is a i5 520m laptop with 8GB RAM. It's not awful but I can only run one or two amp sims, or a single orchestral project with no other stuff going on etc. No keyswitches either with this RAM. Should be able to get everything up and running in the same project without the need to up the buffer to try out ideas which will be very very handy 
Excited to get Sibelius hooked up via MIDI to the DAW for a better scoring experience


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## jeremyb (Aug 23, 2012)

Why you buying 1Tb drives when 3's aren't too expensive?


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## Winspear (Aug 23, 2012)

Because I'll never fill up the 1TB sample drive (as when I renew Eastwest with the latest version it comes on it's own drive, so I'll have two 1TB sample drives, one EW and one everything else). 
The 1TB audio drive will last a long time too.
I figure 3TB drives would have more chance of dying before I ever fill them up and would be a waste of money. Also if I'm not mistaken - the more empty a drive is, the faster things are accessed? So I'm best off clearing old projects out and archiving the drive and replacing it with a new one, than having years of projects clutter a 3TB drive. Not sure if that's true, though.

EDIT: Though perhaps you meant that question in a much more simple fashion - why don't I buy one 3TB instead of three 1TBs? Because it's best to split up the drives into functions: OS, Audio/Projects, and Samples.


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## Winspear (Aug 24, 2012)

I'll let ya know how this thing is when it arrives! Sadly I wont be able to set it up as a full fledged DAW just yet and will just be using it for Adobe and orchestral work. 

It's official, I'm broke until 2013


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## Jordan Djenital Warts (Aug 24, 2012)

Woah... a bit of Windows 8 hate going on here haha! BTW you can change from the 'Metro' style GUI to traditional, but you know; it was just a suggestion 

SSD drives are good for a boot drive and works smoothly for me, but I probably wouldn't buy another until they become cheaper.

Either way man, you may be broke; but at least you've got a monster of a computer that you will not need to upgrade in a long time


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## ZEBOV (Aug 24, 2012)

Why 32 GB of RAM?


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## Jordan Djenital Warts (Aug 24, 2012)

ZEBOV said:


> Why 32 GB of RAM?


 
Why not? 

RAM is ridiculously cheap nowadays and worthwhile if you have shit loads of VSTi running etc.


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## Lagtastic (Aug 24, 2012)

mniel8195 said:


> forget windows 8 how about a solid state drive?



At the very least, get yourself a 60-80 GB SSD for your OS and programs. The current gen of SSD are super fast and reliable. I have TONS of crap installed and running in the background, yet my time from hitting the power button to being at my desktop (with no spinning circle) is 12 seconds. Windows is soooooooooooo much faster on an SSD. Upgrade man.



ZEBOV said:


> Why 32 GB of RAM?



Unless you are running a SQL instance, Adobe software suites, graphic design, video editing, AutoCAD and the like, 32GB of RAM is a bit much. 

It's all about the speed of the RAM, and @1600 is just fine. I've got 8GB of DDR3 @1866 and I never even use more than 4GB of it. That being said, I'm not into graphic design, video editing, or AutoCAD. Congrats on the new PC! Definetly get yourself a small SSD for your OS, you will not regret it.


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## Fiction (Aug 24, 2012)

Guys, He's getting a 9 string guitar, Ethereal is the king of Overkill.

Ba-Zinga!


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## Winspear (Aug 24, 2012)

Well I might look into Windows 8 in a few years but for now I'd rather go with something I know is compatible with everything I want to use  
The RAM is for Eastwest, primarily. I easily fill 8GB without master keyswitch patches etc. and that's purely running strings/brass/woodwind. When I upgrade it I'm going to have 6 more libraries to add to the mix. Plus I'd like to be able to do that at the same time as a full metal mix with superior etc. 
I do expect 24GB would have been sufficient but hey  I'm not running Vienna Orchestra but for the record those guys use multiple computers joined together 
I am indeed going to be running Adobe too.

But all in all - Fiction most definitely nailed it 



Jordan Djenital Warts said:


> Either way man, you may be broke; but at least you've got a monster of a computer that you will not need to upgrade in a long time



Yup - I don't know whether I'll have to expect to replace any components in this time but this machine has to last me until 2018


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## Yaris (Aug 24, 2012)

Hey I built a rig last year with a define XL and just know that the case is huge. The case is HUGE man.

THAT CASE IS FUCKING GIGANTIC

It was nice but I had to transport it back and forth whenever I moved into or out of my dorm. It would be nice if I could leave it somewhere forever, which I assume you're going to do, but I sold it a few weeks ago and transplanted everything into a 4 year old Antec New Solution case and I'm loving it. 

Otherwise the case is great for cable management and has extraordinary cooling. The build looks good, I just put 32GB RAM into mine and I love it even though I know I'll never use it. Also I put 2 Samsung 830s in there and I'd strongly recommend having at least one SSD in yours. That PSU should be more than suitable, I've got a 620 Watt in mine and I'm not using it all.


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## The Reverend (Aug 24, 2012)

That sounds fucking fantastic. Seems like going huge is the only way to get the most bang out of your buck when it comes to computers, anyways. In ten years, a computer with your specs will probably be the norm .


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## Winspear (Aug 25, 2012)

You're right the case is huge  Not a problem for me no - it's the only one they offered on this particular model of theirs and I'm not really fussed what it is. Does indeed look like it'll be great for cooling etc! 
Aye Reverend, that's another reason I went all out. While I'm quite sure a _little_ less power would be ok (but seriously, I need a lot) I don't want to be needing a new rig because I can't run the updated versions of my software for lack of power  What did I say when I got this mid-high spec laptop just under 3 years ago? "Never need another PC again!" Bullshit. 

I am soooo stoked for this.


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## Winspear (Sep 25, 2012)

Yaris said:


> THAT CASE IS FUCKING GIGANTIC



Fucking this!


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## Winspear (Sep 25, 2012)

Lovely lovely - cooling is nice. Thing is pretty quiet even with the 570 card in there. Gonna get it set up as a sample station later this week and see how the RAM and CPU performs with Eastwest software. For now just getting bits and bobs installed and going to give it its first run of Guildwars 2!


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## Xaios (Sep 25, 2012)

Congrats.


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## axxessdenied (Sep 25, 2012)

No Offense... but a lot of people giving you poor advice in this thread that obviously don't understand what purpose you built this machine for.

Good choice on the processor. You want pure processing power for your DAW and plugins. Things like Ozone 5 are huge CPU hogs, and then you get into bridging 32-bit apps into 64-bit environments and the processing requirements can shoot up quickly.

6-cores vs 4-cores... easy pick for me there.

why 3 x 1 tb drives vs one 3 tb drive? Simple, it's a recording PC and you don't want your hard-drive to bottle-neck your performance.

SSD is great. But, not worth the price imo. If you leave your PC running most of the time it's not that big of a difference. Not worth the money, you're better investing it into your CPU and RAM!

32gb of ram is just lovely. What that allows you to do is totally get rid of your page file and not ever worry about windows crashing because of low memory.

This PC is very well built. You guys have no idea what you're talking about. You're going to be set for a very long time!

Whoever mentioned that the 750-watt PSU is really silly. I run a 2500k and 2 x 6950 on a 750 watt. The 3930k when not overclocked uses about 35 more watts than the 2500k I believe.

Awesome PC, dude!


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## Konfyouzd (Sep 25, 2012)

EDIT: School'd by axxessdenied


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## Winspear (Sep 25, 2012)

Loving it - and just like I thought an SSD is definitely not necessary. I was using it alongside my laptop and decided to restart both at once in a race of sorts - I had the internet open on the new rig before the laptop had even reached the password screen. Under one minute 
Cannot wait to get the new version of Sonar fired up on it with Eastwest synths later this week


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## Konfyouzd (Sep 25, 2012)

You're making me wish I'd waited and saved for my computer, but I think my noobishness makes mine more than enough for now.


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## Winspear (Sep 25, 2012)

I'm still not past the stage of dicking around rather than actually releasing music, though 
This baby is running GW2 on 1920*1080, all max settings, 13% CPU and 40 fps - it's so pretty


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## axxessdenied (Sep 25, 2012)

It's a worthy computer to go along with that gorgeous ViK


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## Xaios (Sep 25, 2012)

axxessdenied said:


> No Offense... but a lot of people giving you poor advice in this thread that obviously don't understand what purpose you built this machine for.



I agree that I don't agree with everything other people said, but I don't agree with everything you said either. 



axxessdenied said:


> Good choice on the processor. You want pure processing power for your DAW and plugins. Things like Ozone 5 are huge CPU hogs, and then you get into bridging 32-bit apps into 64-bit environments and the processing requirements can shoot up quickly.
> 
> 6-cores vs 4-cores... easy pick for me there.



Agreed, although one must acknowledge diminishing returns past a certain price point.



axxessdenied said:


> why 3 x 1 tb drives vs one 3 tb drive? Simple, it's a recording PC and you don't want your hard-drive to bottle-neck your performance.



Yes, but more hard drives does not necessarily equal better performance, because at the end of the day, you're often still only using one drive at a time. That is unless you've got them configured in a RAID array.



axxessdenied said:


> SSD is great. But, not worth the price imo. If you leave your PC running most of the time it's not that big of a difference. Not worth the money, you're better investing it into your CPU and RAM!



Absolutely agreed.



axxessdenied said:


> 32gb of ram is just lovely. What that allows you to do is totally get rid of your page file and not ever worry about windows crashing because of low memory.



While I agree in spirit, I don't know of anyone for whom 16GB has proven to be insufficient, even in demanding media applications.



axxessdenied said:


> This PC is very well built. You guys have no idea what you're talking about. You're going to be set for a very long time!
> 
> Whoever mentioned that the 750-watt PSU is really silly. I run a 2500k and 2 x 6950 on a 750 watt. The 3930k when not overclocked uses about 35 more watts than the 2500k I believe.



Agreed.



axxessdenied said:


> Awesome PC, dude!



Again, agreed.


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## iRaiseTheDead (Sep 25, 2012)

I'm only here for pictures :/

Haha seems pretty legit


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## Winspear (Sep 25, 2012)

With regards to the RAM, it's kinda just the line between orchestral synths or not haha. If you aren't using those, 8GB is fine - but as soon as you want to load up Eastwest or Vienna you're gonna want at least 16 I've found. A lot of those guys are using multiple PC's chained together for that reason.

Hopefully get a pic tomorrow


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## Winspear (Sep 29, 2012)

Thought you guys might like to see inside from when I opened it up to put in a 4th HDD


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## Handbanana (Sep 29, 2012)

Like the last guy said. Overkill....32GB of ram is pretty much pointless. Especially with DDR4 right around the corner. Id rather shoot for a 2GB card for future-proofing. And most middle of the pack intel cpu's will do anything you need them to.


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## Winspear (Sep 29, 2012)

Read the post at the top of this page dude 

FYI, I loaded up a single piano and it was 24GB. A violin section is 4GB.
Yes you can stream the samples from the HDD and with an instrument like that piano I would - but streaming a full orchestra from a HDD even with 64MB cache is not always a success and results in dropped notes.

Needs are personal - middle of the pack intel CPUs will not run multiple amp sims, convolution cabinets, anywhere up to 10 virtual instruments, and mix plugins on 64 buffer setting for low latency. No most people don't need that work flow and are happy to bounce things down or work in a record>mix workflow and up the buffer but that's not what I enjoy haha

But most importantly - Overkill is _fun_


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## axxessdenied (Sep 29, 2012)

Handbanana said:


> Like the last guy said. Overkill....32GB of ram is pretty much pointless.



Wrong. 



We have already established the need for 32gb of ram. Saying to wait because this hardware just around the corner is pointless. There's always something better around the corner.

Remember this is a workstation set up, not a typical desktop pc for browsing porn and playing games.


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## Itchyman (Oct 1, 2012)

I would've gone with a Noctua D14 (quieter) and a lower output, higher efficiency power supply (only 500 is needed for that system - even OC'd). Also a Lian-Li case.. But I own 3 PC's, all with Lian-Li's - kind of a fanboy haha
I would also have gotten any other graphics card than the eVGA reference GTX570. Those things are notorious for frying themselves. The power delivery circuitry on the reference 570 is far too weak for the capabilities of the chip. 

Here's my PC btw


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## Xaios (Oct 1, 2012)

Itchyman said:


> I would've gone with a Noctua D14 (quieter) and a lower output, higher efficiency power supply (only 500 is needed for that system - even OC'd). Also a Lian-Li case.. But I own 3 PC's, all with Lian-Li's - kind of a fanboy haha



I used to love Lian-Li cases, because they have a wonderfully understated and functional visual aesthetic, and are highly modable. However, they haven't evolved with the times these past few years. Lately their cases seem flimsy compared to aluminum cases put out by other companies, and they don't add all the minor conveniences that other manufacturers strive for, which all add up in the end.


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## SirMyghin (Oct 4, 2012)

Came into this thread a few days ago. Nice Rig

You bastard.

I have been putting off building a new gaming/recording rig for some time and you have got the juices not only flowing, but planned... Now I am sitting here waiting and thinking "Why wait another paycheque when you have the money in your savings anyway".

Bastard.


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## Winspear (Oct 5, 2012)

Nice PC Itchyman!
Didn't know about the evgas..hopefully this holds up ok but I have a 3 yr warranty 




SirMyghin said:


> Came into this thread a few days ago. Nice Rig
> 
> You bastard.
> 
> ...



 That's the spirit


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## SirMyghin (Oct 5, 2012)

^^

The only saving grace I had was that it would take 6-7 business days to get it all together and I will be leaving town in near that time and didn't want to rush it


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## Rook (Oct 6, 2012)

I'm glad my iMac is more than enough for me (3.1GHz, think its a 2500k, 27") but that is a fucking incredible machine man.


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## SirMyghin (Oct 6, 2012)

Macs.


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## Xaios (Oct 6, 2012)

SirMyghin said:


> Macs.



I know. They're just so precious, aren't they.


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## Winspear (Oct 7, 2012)

I enjoy using Macs but Windows is fine for me, supports the softwares I use, and allows me to put together a system like this without breaking the bank...Sorta 

Blown away by what a beast this thing is


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## Rook (Oct 7, 2012)

Xaios said:


> I know. They're just so precious, aren't they.



I know! Bless my virus software free, on for the last 2 years and not a single crash MacBook Pro, bless its fast, reliable little heart haha.

I kid you not, I dropped it straight onto concrete, it's dented to shit and it works as well as it did day one. More than I can say for the 4 windows machines in my house I have to constantly dick around with for other people when they don't even leave the house and mostly just run iTunes, IE and word...

We're not getting into this. 

Ethereal, great system, enjoy your massively powerful machine with your massively mental guitar.


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## SirMyghin (Oct 7, 2012)

^
The reason there are no mac virus is not that they are virus free, is that people don't waste time writing viruses for such a small demographic. They won't get their nerd rocks off that way. The only crash this system, 4 years old, has ever had was due to a fault in the ram (they are oh so slightly bupkis and the computer can't sleep ). And a surge took my bios one time, non of which is windows related though. 

The problem with windows isn't the operating system, it is the users (most of which know jack shit).


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## Winspear (Oct 8, 2012)

I've crashed Macs countless, countless times doing the most menial of tasks, just sayin'


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