CPU E3-1275 v6

[Phryq]

Or you have this one for 2011-V3, that supports 4x SODIMM and PCIe-16x: http://asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EPC612D4I#Specifications

Sorry to bump. It seems this board only supports e5, not e3?

I'm looking for something with a high clock, so I was thinking e3 1275 v6. Maybe this supports e3 but just doesn't list it?

Although, maybe those e5s can clock as high or higher than the e3? Something comparable in price and performance to a 7700k (maybe not as fast, but close).

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Yup, this is a scket 2011 board, so Xeon E5. They do have E3 compatible boards though:

• http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C236D2I#Specifications
• http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C232D2I#Specifications

Those 2 boards do not have 4x RAM slots though and lack M.2, except the first one but it is limited to 2240 in size.......

 

[Phryq]

Ok, 2 ram slots is no good. If I'm settling for that, I'll go with the Micro STX.

But I wonder how the e5 performance is... anyhow, that's a question for the audio community.

I'm also looking at this board for a 7700k. A little bit bigger though.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157734

 

[Phryq]

Maybe I should just wait until someone eventually makes a 4 ram-channel thin-itx board? I'm getting tired of endlessly googling motherboards

 

[Thehack]

Maybe I should just wait until someone eventually makes a 4 ram-channel thin-itx board? I'm getting tired of endlessly googling motherboards

Why is 4 RAM slots so important?

 

[Phryq]

For music composition, we're constantly streaming 'samples' from disk in real time. Most composers have 128+ gb of ram. I've tried endlessly to figure out if I can make due with 32gb by using PCIe drives (either RAID 0, or no RAID but spreaded workload) to no avail. It might work, but no one has tried it, and it might require registry tweaks.

So having at least 64gb for me would be ideal.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

About Xeon e5, the e5-1600 series starts with 4 cores / 8 threads CPU (3.5GHz base for the e5-1620).

They also supports quad channels memory, which will increase the memory bandwidth. ECC memory comes as a must-have too for any producivity acitivity.

 

[Phryq]

About Xeon e5, the e5-1600 series starts with 4 cores / 8 threads CPU (3.5GHz base for the e5-1620).

They also supports quad channels memory, which will increase the memory bandwidth. ECC memory comes as a must-have too for any producivity acitivity.

But the 7700k has a higher clock, and much lower TDP. For music, ECC isn't needed.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

If you want 64GB, I think you'll have to go mATX then ..... or get a Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 barebone (and maybe build a new chassis for it)

It has a DTX motherboard, which is in my opinion the best SFF motherboard form factor.

 

[Thehack]

If you are working on that level of project wouldn't it make more sense to use node rendering?

It will be smaller to have two stx computers than a single matx

 

[Phryq]

2 stx computers... that would be cool. I wish they could actually have a tiny dual socket motherboard.

That DTX motherboard looks awesome. Too bad you can't buy the board only.

 

[Thehack]

2 stx computers... that would be cool. I wish they could actually have a tiny dual socket motherboard.

That DTX motherboard looks awesome. Too bad you can't buy the board only.

Two STX in one chassis would be about 10.5" x 5.5", 266mm x 140mm. About the same height and not as deep. Then you can decide how many nodes you need for your project. You also get twice the cores/threads. DAW scales more with cores/threads than frequency.

 

[Phryq]

Right, but I would have to make a master-slave setup, and my VSTi samples would have to be on disks of both systems... so double the memory usage.

Reaper might be able to do that in the future... I'd also need 2 operating systems...

I mean, if I was going to try a master/slave setup like that, I could just use a laptop and build an STX slave.

Thehack, do you write music using a DAW? Do you use sample libraries?

 

[Thehack]

Right, but I would have to make a master-slave setup, and my VSTi samples would have to be on disks of both systems... so double the memory usage.

Reaper might be able to do that in the future... I'd also need 2 operating systems...

I mean, if I was going to try a master/slave setup like that, I could just use a laptop and build an STX slave.

This is true. I use FL studio myself, but not to the scale where I run into RAM limits, as I don't have big fancy libraries running.

With SSD speeds or NVME speeds, would stream from disk be sufficient? It certainly wouldn't work in low latency usage, but should work okay for real time playback. I haven't looked into the DAW world in a while so I'm not sure what advancements we've made.

 

[Phryq]

I've been looking into it. Using NVMe drives my disk read time should be fast enough, the problem is that Kontakt instruments, even with samples purged will eat up the ram. I'm doing tests right now to see how far I can push things, but still, 64gb ram would be ideal.

Everyone in the audio world is telling my clock trumps cores, otherwise I'd just be getting a Xeon or a Ryzen board.

 

[Thehack]

I've been looking into it. Using NVMe drives my disk read time should be fast enough, the problem is that Kontakt instruments, even with samples purged will eat up the ram. I'm doing tests right now to see how far I can push things, but still, 64gb ram would be ideal.

Everyone in the audio world is telling my clock trumps cores, otherwise I'd just be getting a Xeon or a Ryzen board.

That doesn't really make sense. Each instance of an instrument is its own thread/process. Frequency scales so bad with performance and power usage, so given the choice of increasing your core count or your frequency, I would always choose core count. That's why the big producers use node rendering, to scale out your cores and instances.

Take a look at this video:


That said. If your job relies on reliable DAW, I would not go with Ryzen until I confirm it works well with your platform. I'm just a hobbyist.

 

[Phryq]

I'm also a hobbyist, but I've been told that Ryzen scales with Ram, and that the current motherboards won't support large amounts (64gb) of overclocked RAM.

So then again, maybe I should wait for Ryzen motherboards to mature.

I'm not sure what you mean with node-rendering audio. I've done that with video (Fusion).

 

[Thehack]

I'm also a hobbyist, but I've been told that Ryzen scales with Ram, and that the current motherboards won't support large amounts (64gb) of overclocked RAM.

So then again, maybe I should wait for Ryzen motherboards to mature.

I'm not sure what you mean with node-rendering audio. I've done that with video (Fusion).

It does scale very well with RAM, but that is for mostly interdependent threads. DAW is mostly independent threads. Each instance would take a thread to process. Ryzen is good with okay RAM, but better with faster RAM. The benefits of faster RAM are nice to have, but its high core count/threads far outweighs what the i7 would provide you.

I'm just using node as a catchall term for a slave/master DAW.

 

[Phryq]

Thanks. Do you have any evidence for this? It's just that some are telling me I need high single-core / clock, and others are saying the opposite.

Though logically what you say makes the most sense.

 

[Thehack]

Thanks. Do you have any evidence for this? It's just that some are telling me I need high single-core / clock, and others are saying the opposite.

Though logically what you say makes the most sense.

It certainly makes sense for my case, as FL studio distributes the threads to each individual cores. Your mileage varies for each software. By evidence you mean a scholarly article? Not really besides me using my google fu. The Ryzen 7 1700 is about equal to a stock 6900k, and 1800X is equal to an overclocked 6900K.

Disclaimer still is that Ryzen is a new platform. I would email your software developer to see how compatible Ryzen is first.