New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

PC Configurations, motherboards, etc, etc

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Mr Arkadin
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New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by Mr Arkadin »

So it's been a while.

Still using my XITE-1 but my computer needs an update. Trying to see if anyone has any experience with the bits I might be choosing for a custom build. Some may remember the nightmare I had with the X99 motherboard (I think it was), so I'm trying to avoid any known pitfalls.

So far my ideas are:

OS: Windows 11 Pro
Motherboard: ASUS Prime Z790-A
Processor: Intel Core i9 13900K 24 Cores 5.8GHz
RAM: Kingston 2x32GB DDR5
Graphics card: GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 8GB GDDR6X
Audio card: SCOPE XITE-1

I have various Kontakt SSDs I'll re-use.

I'm also playing games on this and cutting video, hence some specs are over-the-top for audio, but I also want this to last a while.

So is the motherboard OK? Do I need more RAM? Is Windows 11 OK?

Any other comments/recommendations welcome.
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valis
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by valis »

I think the primary concern with Xite comes when interfacing with various applications using ASIO, rather than system level configurations. The primary issue with systems is still when drivers stall the rest of the system bus. I experience this even on a current model AMD build using a 5950X and RTX3090, and no amount of Asus BIOS updates has resolved it. Moving to a different board did immediately, and there's no way even gamers weren't impacted by the issue that I saw (onboard chipset level component would suddenly stall all system responsiveness until it stopped having whatever freezing interaction it had). The only way to mitigate this is by reading up on a given board extensively, and hoping people's collective experience (across forums etc) gives enough insight to cover your usage scenario (becoming unfortunately increasingly unlikely as people focus less on the technical aspects of builds in our arenas).


Windows 11 is better than Win10 in terms of efficiency and becoming increasingly necessary. It's just as stable as Win10 as well.

I see no other issues, given your comment that you'll be doing video and gaming to justify the RTX 3070 Ti
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garyb
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by garyb »

i haven't seen any motherboard issues for some time....
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Mr Arkadin
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by Mr Arkadin »

valis wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:03 am I see no other issues, given your comment that you'll be doing video and gaming to justify the RTX 3070 Ti
Actually it'll probably be just the RTX 3070 standard, as reading up on it the Ti didn't really seem to add much more than the regular for the extra cost.
Last edited by Mr Arkadin on Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Mr Arkadin
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by Mr Arkadin »

garyb wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 10:01 am i haven't seen any motherboard issues for some time....
I think I was just unfortunate with the X99. I think I even remember someone using one later succesfully, so maybe it was just too new at the time and a BIOS update fixed it?

The Z790 has two PCIe x1 slots I believe. Is it OK to use the x16 slots though?
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valis
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by valis »

Slot configurations for a motherboard vary depending on how the manufacturer decides to implement chipset vs. direct to cpu, so just refer to the manual. Don’t use a slot that will drop GPU to x8 as you may also have DPC style issues with the GPU not sharing well with the Xite’s PCIe card.
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yayajohn
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by yayajohn »

Hi Mr. Arkadin. Your new build looks really great.
I built a similiar box 2 years ago and initially had various problems unrealated to Scope but mostly got it sorted out.
(I still ocasionally get pops and clicks but only with VST instruments in the DAW.)
Here is the thread: viewtopic.php?t=36849.

Some recommended add-ons:
M.2 drive very fast
Watercooled heat sink - I initially put a traditional fan on top of my CPU. It was so big that it interfered with the closest RAM slot.
The water cooler portion that goes over the cpu is a lot smaller.
If you haven't bought your case yet then give these a look: https://www.bequiet.com/en/case

Good luck. i hope it turns out to be an awesome machine.
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garyb
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by garyb »

yes, you can use any PCIe slot.
x1 slots are best, just for the physical security, but as far as operation goes, any slot will do.
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Mr Arkadin
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by Mr Arkadin »

yayajohn wrote: Sun Jan 29, 2023 4:20 am Hi Mr. Arkadin. Your new build looks really great.
I built a similiar box 2 years ago and initially had various problems unrealated to Scope but mostly got it sorted out.
(I still ocasionally get pops and clicks but only with VST instruments in the DAW.)
Here is the thread: viewtopic.php?t=36849.

Some recommended add-ons:
M.2 drive very fast
Watercooled heat sink - I initially put a traditional fan on top of my CPU. It was so big that it interfered with the closest RAM slot.
The water cooler portion that goes over the cpu is a lot smaller.
If you haven't bought your case yet then give these a look: https://www.bequiet.com/en/case

Good luck. i hope it turns out to be an awesome machine.

It's a couple of months at least of research before I commit, so I'll check the water cooler option. Cost was the main issue here, but I have had problems before adding RAM myself with the huge heat sink/fan.

I was looking at adding the stick RAM - is that M.2? These didn't exist when I last put tpgether a PC.
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valis
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by valis »

I would recommend water cooling as well. There are several brands that offer all in one solutions that come pre-assembled (minimizing the leak issue), and the main consideration will be size of the radiator and it’s corresponding placement in the case. Skipping LED options in preference for radiator size and number of fans gives many options, though for an i9 I think you’ll want a large radiator with 3 fans.

The main benefit from my perspective is moving the heat away from the center of the case, which has helped me with cooling my RTX 3090 a great deal. I also used one in my newer Scope PCI build, which has a very lowly GPU and as a result the case heat is largely produced by the RAM and Analog Devices chips on the Scope cards, which is easily expelled with all the airflow.
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yayajohn
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by yayajohn »

M.2 is a stick hard drive that plugs right into your motherboard.
From the web:
"An M. 2 SSD is a small form factor solid-state drive (SSD) that is used in internally mounted storage expansion cards. M. 2 SSDs conform to a computer industry specification and are designed to enable high-performance storage in thin, power-constrained devices, such as ultrabook laptops and tablet computers."
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Bud Weiser
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by Bud Weiser »

yayajohn wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 7:23 am M.2 is a stick hard drive that plugs right into your motherboard.
From the web:
"An M. 2 SSD is a small form factor solid-state drive (SSD) that is used in internally mounted storage expansion cards. M. 2 SSDs conform to a computer industry specification and are designed to enable high-performance storage in thin, power-constrained devices, such as ultrabook laptops and tablet computers."
Carefull w/ these ... the PCIe x4 versions run hotter than PCIe x3.
because of the mainboard design in office machine, one of these slots is i the neighborhood of the chipset (w/ cooler).
The M.2 NVMe x4 in this slot runs WAY hotter than the other, especially when the controller is busy w/ grabbing garbage and trim.
It goes up to over 70°C for minutes.
Both M.2 are same barand and model,- Crucial P5 ...
I didn´t expect from AsRock Z390M Pro 4 mainboard.
The machine is very cool otherwise,- it runs Intel i3 quad (3.6GHz 6MB cache) only inside a very good cooling Sharcoon tower w/ 4 fans (plus CPU fan).

So, for hi-end worstation builds, keep care for mainboard design and M.2 socket locations when using the high speed M.2s.

:)

Bud
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Mr Arkadin
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by Mr Arkadin »

So my final build looks like this:

Intel Core i9 13900KF Raptor Lake-S CPU
Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX XT 360mm AiO Liquid CPU Cooler in Black
GeForce RTX 4070 12GB Graphics Card
Corsair RM1000e 1000W Modular 80+ Gold PSU
ASUS Prime Z790-A WiFi Intel Motherboard
1 x Samsung 980 PRO 2TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD
1 x Samsung 870 QVO 4TB SATA III SSD
1 x Seagate IronWolf Pro 8TB NAS Hard Drive 7200RPM, 256MB Cache
Kingston FURY Beast RGB 64GB (2x 32GB) 5600MHz
Fractal Design Meshify 2 Mid Tower Case
Microsoft Windows 11 Pro High-end

I'll be adding Samsung EVO 860 2TB SSD which has my Spitfire Audio sample libraries and a 1TB SSD for other libraries. I intend to record audio on the Seagate HDD.

I'm obviously hoping for no issues like I had with my X99. However, now that I've looked at some old YouTube videos it seems the X99 had a lot of issues, so hopefully that was just a bad timimg on the motherboards. The company I'm using are Chillblast. Not the cheapest but when I had the X99 problem they let me return the computer and pop down with my XITE-1 and try it out on a few motherboards(I went for a previous generation one in the end which is the one I'm using now).

I see from many Windows 11 videos that there is a lot of bloatware. I'll be disabling/uninstalling as much as possible. I'll try and make a note of what I do so that the next Scoper can have a reference.
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valis
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by valis »

sepuka
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by sepuka »

One note. Drivers for Nvidia video cards usually think that there is nothing more important than them in the system and occupy the bus for a longer period. The ASIO buffer does not have time to fill up and the sound starts to wheeze earlier than it could, regardless of the speed of the processor and the number of cores. AMD drivers behave more modestly, they usually offer lower real-time latency, which allows smaller buffers. This changes from time to time, version to version, but the usual behavior of drivers is something like this.
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valis
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by valis »

NVidia has studio drivers which offer better compatibility with Adobe and etc, as well as better bus timing.
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yayajohn
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by yayajohn »

Nice build Mr. A! That will take you pretty far into the future.
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Mr Arkadin
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by Mr Arkadin »

valis wrote: Wed May 10, 2023 3:35 am NVidia has studio drivers which offer better compatibility with Adobe and etc, as well as better bus timing.
Ah, OK. I just used the drivers that came with my last PC and updated as a went along. This is their 'Game Ready' drivers. Didn't even know they offered different drivers. Studio Ready sounds like it'll be a better fit.
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Mr Arkadin
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by Mr Arkadin »

Well it's up and running.

Seems OK at the moment. No crashing like the X99 I tried years ago (bad timing with that mobo). Have done some optimisation, but really need to streamline Windows 11 even further I think.

Scope on XITE-1 takes 7 seconds to load!
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valis
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Re: New PC build 2023 Advice Needed

Post by valis »

Putting this under a 2023 build topic rather than its own, because this is just a component offering that's moderately interesting. If you have a build that doesn't have the IGP for your Intel/AMD cpu, or want to keep your CPU thermals AND case thermals down, there's a new Intel based low profile GPU for desktop use that might be worth considering:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/20054/as ... ery-budget

Intel gives driver updates a lot longer than AMD does, and on par with Nvidia for the Quadro line, so for normal uses I don't think there would be any concern for the foreseeable future.
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