I Built a New Music Production Computer! 

Currently; CPU: R9 3900X MEM: DDR4 3600 32GB Motherboard: X570 Aorus Ultra PSU: Corsair TX850M 80+ Gold Storage: 2x 2tb Samsung 980 PRO + 4tb Samsung QVO SATA 3 SSD GPU: GTX 1080ti Later this year I'll be doing a full system upgrade coz I game and produce music on my PC for fun.

@@RAM_845 Nice! Now that prices have come down, it's not as painful to buy a power GPU to game on!

@@ZachWirchak True that, I'm tempted to either do a full system upgrade or, do a PSU and GPU upgrade. such a dilemma.

@@ZachWirchak Update; CPU: R7 5800X3D MEM: DDR (2x16) 32GB 3600mhz RAM MB: Aorus X570 Ultra Storage: 2x 2tb Samsun 980 Pro + 4tb Samsung QVO SATA 3 SSD GPU: RX 6800 I reseated the cooler using Noctua NT-H2 3.5g thermal paste.

I just upgraded from an AM4 build to AM5: CPU: 7950X Mobo: Asus Tuf Gaming X670e-Plus RAM: Corsair 64GB DDR5 4800MHz, PSU: Deepcool DQ750 Modular M.2: 2 x 2 TB Corsair Gen4 , 2 x 1 TB (Samsung 970 and Adata) SSD: 2 x1 TB kingston. GPU: RTX 2060 6GB Cooler and Case: Arctic Freezer II 360, NZXT H7 Flow. Display: Philips 499P9 32:9 49" I mainly run cubase

Nice! Exciting times to get a new rig built. Once I sat back and thought about how many corners I was cutting when songwriting and creating, it HAD to get a new computer. In the last year I've had 4 large, important projects that all had over 100 tracks with automation, inserts, etc. and on those it's been a struggle. But not anymore!!! I've opened those projects on the new machine and it's not being push at all.

Thank you! So far I am super happy with it! I can't wait to really throw a lot at it over the years!

Like the 13900H in our G16MKII

Ahhh, thank you! Hope it helped smooth out a hard day.

Thank you! I definitely want to find something to put it on that can double as storage. Right now I'm using that end table to put my second monitor on. My fan situation will probably change sometime soon... the ones that came with the case are a tad too loud.

Nice build! That sounds like a great machine for all things creative! As for setting up on a new build, I had most everything dialed in on my last build. In my opinion, the nice thing about how downloads and plugin managers work, is they always put the proper files in the right spots. So all of that was nearly automatic on my end. The biggest thing I've changed since this build is my buffer size when working in the project. I use to bounce between 256 - 1024 depending on the size and CPU load, now it's been at 192 no matter the size of the project.

Excellent! So happy your machine is kick butt! I've been using my heavily, maybe 60 hours a week, and it hasn't skipped a beat and has been able to handle everything I've thrown at it!

That is awesome! I've heard great things about the M2's. And the price on those Mini's are actually not too bad either!

What was your PC build before moving over to Mac? It's about time to upgrade my pc and I'm hopping back and forth between building a new PC or going with a Mac Mini M2 Pro.

@@commonsense5188 My PC build was just an older refurbished Dell. It had an i7 processor and I had upgraded the RAM to 32gb and added a 2TB hard drive. It was a good workhorse for a few years but I am enjoying the new Mac much more.

Compared the prices to build the systems for music. Apple is more expensive

The main issue is not really the price. Is when something goes wrong. You have no chance to replace any internal component! @@Alleluia-alleluia

Hello! My build does create a little noise, but the times I've recorded live in the room (acoustic guitar and vocals), any fan noise is not picked up at all. I also have the stock fans from my case manufacture, so if I wanted to I could always replace the fans for some quieter ones. As I'm sitting here typing this, the ambient noises from my house creates as much or more noise than my tower does.

Fantastic, that is kind of what i was hoping you'd say. My house/room is quite noisy as it is (just like yours); i'm next to the furnace room and ductwork etc is an excellent acoustic carrier/amplifier. Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it, and best of luck on your projects!

Exactly. The new MOBO needed a BIOS flash too, but it was easy to do with the diagnostic LED light on the MOBO. And in the end I got a better MOBO so I was all good sending the first one back!

I cannot recommend it enough! I also kept my eye on prices and pulled the trigger when the 13700k dropped in price to about $415. I will say, I work on large projects (100+ tracks) with lots of plugins... so the 13700k could be overkill for a lot of people. BUT knowing the sky is the limit right now for the production side of things, is a great feeling.

@@ZachWirchak oh ok yeah i dont have projects that big but some vsts do use way too much power on certain presets of sound i got it back in 2018 so i think im going to wait until 14700k drops theyre saying its going to be a good year to upgrade when that drops

go with 12th gen if you are thinking of latest windows 11 because the windows process scheduler works great with it, it will provide best performance, 12th gen is also so power efficient because P core and E core terminology so thing is that , and about R5000 series if you are not gonna do any kind of single threaded task like gaming which requires more single thread power then Going with R5000 series can be good choice considering productivity and having no gpu , intel's iGPU kinda sucks so there is that

@@RazoBeckett. Thanks Razo. With the price drops on the 12th gen it seems ideal to just go for intel with ddr5. I heard intel igpu is pretty good for video editing. I have a gtx 1070 which I can eventually upgrade. I will have to choose between a r9 5900x or i7 12700k. but according to what you said I am strongly leaning towards the i7.

@@JMXCzw if you are buying the Intel one with the 'k' then go with it , it's nice choice ,,, best of luck for building yours. 🙂

@@RazoBeckett. Thanks. I appreciate it.

I'm a bit late, but 100% go intel. Just be sure to do proper research on the parts and the DAW you use. There can be certain combos that play better than others. Hope you figured it out! 😊

Yeah, I'm incredibly happy with it. It's been perfect so far and I run it hard everyday for hours on end. It's been able to handle ever large project I've thrown at it.

Yep see video info. He dropped the Adrush B668M and used a MSI Z690 Motherboard instead. Was zooming in on that as well as during reading i saw many had problems with BIOS not being ready for gen 13. Am preparing a new build as well. Current gear Elitebook 8460p, If i recall well. Intel Core i5-2520M CPU @ 2.50GHz 2.50 GHz, with 16 GB ram. Should be ancient as my daw crashes already with 8 tracks of VSTi. As strong as my old core2duo of before i bought that referbished laptop think 8 years back. When running my sampler and lightweight VSTi then i can do 16 tracks or so. Used to run most on hardware as ATARI starter, heck still work on Logic 5.3 PC, on win 10. But after mostly doing mixes only last years, and reaching 51th age in december, Its about time for a new workhorse. I just want to be able to use the DSP56300Emu-1.2.25 VSTi. The Virus emulator. On my current rig i only hear crackles when playing it. With buffer downgraded to the bottom i get some sound out of it, but impossible to use that instrument. So it amazes me that an i7 could run 100 tracks. Makes me fear that what i plan on building probably be overkill, lol. I will contact a hackintosh builder and ask him to make my new machine a Mac AND PC in one. Then i can give the new Logic a proper try instead of running it as virtual machine on my weak old laptop. Soon to build Dream-Build. Core i9-13900K, 3,0 GHz (5,8 GHz Turbo Boost) socket 1700 processor ASUS PRIME H770-PLUS D4 socket 1700 motherboard Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black cpu-cooler G.Skill 128 GB DDR4-3600 Quad-Kit RAM SAMSUNG 990 PRO, 2 TB SSD [Windows M2 fastest 7400MB/s] Lexar NM790 4 TB SSD {Hackintosh & Figure 2 TB for soundbanks} M2 of 7000MB/s Seagate Exos X20 20 TB [Store disk] [7200 HDD] be quiet! PURE Base 500 FX midi tower {Case} be quiet! Light Wings PWM 140 mm high-speed case fan [Top van Extra] Was about 2000 Euro last time i checked, but 17 October 14900K gets released, so waiting till that gets released. then the CPU price should go down a bit. So plan on then building it, or heck the hackintosh maker may have a 13th gen as 2nd hand cos one of his customers wants the 14th gen. Then i just get that one and possibly get it hackintoshed for the 2000 only. Taking air cooling cos i expect to be using the new build for at least 10 years. And i figure water hoses probably dry out within those 10 years, and then the system breaks. I do not do maintenance to my rigs, never used defragment even on my old gear. SO then i guess air cooling be most durable. And am no longer recording rappers or singers, so my computer may make some noise, as studio recorder instead of life recording. Still even in doubt over the motherboard, as i'm not sure if buying a DDR5 board be wiser then a DDR4 board. Figure the 128 GB DDR4 must be enough. But then i also know which ram to buy, as then i know the read speed of the mobo. If the mobo can only run ram at 2400 then it be silly to buy 3600 speed ram, as then the mobo wont be able to use that speeds and then i'd be wasting money. BUT it's remarkable that its possible to get the parts for under 2000. So makes sense to me to do it well if that affordable. So I try to get a mobo with 4 connections to M2 drives, so i can later put 2 more 8 TB drives in as future update, for the endlessly growing sound banks. SO like you the failing mobo was also on my mind. Figure i just spend the 250 to let the seller build it for me, then i do not have the worries of bios updates or configuration of ram in the software, but just get it running well. Bit of a pitty as i was kinda looking forward to finally build one myself. But all the review complaints about mobos not having been updated in the bios and not working kinda took the adventure away. As i do not want to invest, for me at least, such a huge amount and end up with gear thats not even working cos of a damn bios update. Cracking a demo i can see as fun, but i hate bios and finetuning of settings. So then rather pay for the build and know it got done well, and be hassle free.

64Gb ram was a necessity

Interesting! So far the CPU/Cubase hasn't given me any problems. I also haven't messed with any of the "in software" performance setting like I had before on my older i7. Right now I'm running at 192 buffer size and my latency is at 2ms or 3ms and its perfect. This CPU, SSD(s) and ram combo loads up projects soooooo fast no matter the size. I'd say it loads them 5x faster.

@@ZachWirchak I’m so happy to hear that, I built mine with DDR5 which in theory makes a tiny bit faster than DDR4. And with tracks, how many can you run without any problems Audio and VST Instruments?

@Beto Blanco so far the largest project I've had open was 115 tracks, 30 mins long with 1-3 inserts on each track and A TON of automation throughout. I think the CPU performance would spike at 50% and would hover around 30%. I think I had that at 256 or 512 buffer size, can't remember. That same project on my old machine was at 95%+ CPU usage and I had to run it at 1000+ buffer.... and it still struggled.

​@@meck10101I'm building my new PC for Cubase 12 and I'm avoiding the gen 12 CPU .. Cubase has said it themselves that gen 12 is causing issues.

Thank you for the comment! I've heard this i7 runs hot. I've been monitoring the temps with different work loads and it's been good so far with the Noctua NH-U12S. When I'm working on a large Cubase project or editing some labor intensive 4K videos, the CPU core temp hovers around 48 degrees Celsius (118 Fahrenheit). But I've yet to have a project that pushes the CPU to over 50% workload and keeps it there. So I'm sure it'll get hotter once I have projects that will actually push it.

You can undervolt 13700k a bit to limit it power consumption and heat while maintain the performance as it was

Totally. I'm not a "Mac Hater", but dollar for dollar you can do so much more with PC IMO.

I did not have in on my old computer. Let me guess, do they make it hard to move the license to a new computer?

@@ZachWirchak i think they only have one license per pc, which is a bummer cause i’m thinking of building a pc anytime soon ..

So far it's been solid. The temps stay low even when under pretty heavy load when working on large projects.

I released a new video a couple weeks ago sharing some performance samples, you should check it out! But in the mean time, a short answer is no... zero regrets. It's been amazing so far!

@@ZachWirchak I watched it I forgot you did 😂 I meant to comment on your latest video update. Thanks for the response 🙏

@@chukutribe thanks for watching!

12 core should be plenty good enough. Which CPU do you have? My last machine which served me very well for a long time only had 4 core and 8 threads. (the i7 6770)

It came to about $1200 not counting the GPU I had sitting around.

On my music recording rig, I was running a i7 6700 w/ 32gb 2133mhz, 256 ssd, 1TB hdd, 650w PSU and a nvidia quadro m2000. My video editing was a i7 6700, 64gb 2133mhz, 1660gtx, 650w PSU and a 1TB ssd.

@@ZachWirchak i7 6700k is 4 Core 7-8 years old CPU, much lower clocks. 150-200% boost from 13700k is welcome

Xeons are really old architecture and really slow clock speed CPUs, absolutely not ideal for music production. Unless you record more than use heavy VSTs. Modern VSTs require good single core speed as well as heavy performance cores. Also, RAM speed matters too.

Right around $1500.

I've used lots of Mac's over the past 15 years and have never had good luck when it comes to performance vs a good PC. The price vs performance to me is not there. I've also been a video editor for most of my career and to get a Mac that performs as well as a $2000 PC you've have to spend just about double. With that said, I know a few people who run smaller music production projects and they've been using the same Mac for 15+ years and it still runs great.

Well they did not use VSTs either ;)

I swap the motherboard later in the video. The original motherboard you're referring to is compatible, it just needs to be flashed with the latest update from the manufacturer. But I didn't want to deal with that... so I just picked up a overall better mobo.

@@ZachWirchak can you provide a name or link please. Thank you!

I've only have worked with the i7 from that list of CPU's. But I've had GREAT success with them. And the more cores the better for music production.

5700G by far the weakest of all. You should compare to 7000-series. Also, a 5700X for example is way ahead and actually different (better) architecture than the 5700G, but you probably know it.

Since putting in on the ground for it's initial testing, I've got it slightly elevated off the ground to help with heat and air flow.

Sorry, I've already used parts from it to build a backup rig.

Audio interface is still necessary. This guy has plenty HW outside of the PC....You should never even try to use the motherboard integrated audio chip! That is crackle fest and not at all for professional use! Unlike Apple's integrated audio chips those are quite good recently.

​​@@zeus1117If you buy a high end motherboard, the audio is good, i have a DT770 Pro (32ohm) plugged to the motherboard it sounds crystal clear Obviously for recording using the motherboard is a bad idea.

You can have that depending on what motherboard you choose. I assume you want that for audio interface?