Audio Workstation

[pingelit]

Hi to all,

with the recent release of Kabylake it's finally time to get building on my new system

I'm based in germany, won't be needing keyboard, mouse, monitor nor OS. Sadly I can't really reuse parts from my old rig ... so all new parts it is.

I'm planning on building an audio workstation, on which I can occasionally game on. No AAA titles, maybe a bit of minecraft (Vanilla and modded) or some basic racing games.
I'm using Reaper as my DAW of choice and got a Focusrite USB interface. Where most Interfaces now a days are thunderbolt, I'd like to keep this possibility open so a thunderbolt option would be great. I often use quite a bunch of VST's and VSTi's, no huge sample packs (yet) tho.
My current resolution is 2x 1080p, but I plan on upgrading to a 1440p or 4K monitor on a later date, while keeping at least one of my old monitors. So worst case is 4K + 2x 1080p.

Budget wise I'd like to keep it under 1500€, if I can get it cheaper ... all the better. I hope to use this PC for quite some time so a bit overkill right now could be worth it in the long run.
I'm not planning on overclocking this system.

My current plan is the following:
CPU: Intel i7 7700
CPU Heatsink: Noctua NH-D15
Mainboard: Gigabyte H270 Gaming 3 or Gigabyte Z270 Ultra Gaming?
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2666 16GB or 32GB?
GPU: ASUS Strix GTX 1050 Ti
SSD: Samsung 960 EVO 256GB
PSU: Corsair RM550x or RM650x or RM650i?
Case: NZXT H440 white

I'll be runnig Win 10.
If I need some more storage space I've got some mechanicals and a small NAS flying around.

Question to you is, can I save some money somewhere? Do I need all of this? Which PSU, Mainboard and memory config? Did I miss something?

Thanks very much in advace for your help

 

[Thelosouvlakia]

https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/RN6NBP

I know it's not kaby lake but the difference in performance isn't huge.. And you have money left in your budget to go for 32GB of ram. Also I opted for rx470, will do 1440p on non AAA titles

 

[NeverBackDown]

https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/RN6NBP

I know it's not kaby lake but the difference in performance isn't huge.. And you have money left in your budget to go for 32GB of ram. Also I opted for rx470, will do 1440p on non AAA titles

I basically entirely agree with this build here OP, I'd only change the ram to 32GB if you are going to be doing some serious Audio Work. Never enough ram!

And to chime in on what Thelosouvlakia said, even though it's not Kaby Lake, it definitely is still very capable and in my opinion, much more worth the cost than the build you spec'd out. If you do plan on 1440p or let alone 4k, the 1050ti it not capable of doing so, especially if you end up adding your two 1080p monitors. The 470 will make life much easier for the GPU and on you.

 

[pingelit]

Okay so I'll go with 32GB RAM.

For me the price difference between Kaby and Skylake is so marginal that I'd probably go with Kaby, plus I like some of the new features.

Regarding graphics ... I'd rather stay with the green team. I had some bad luck with AMD/ATI in the past :/ and the passive operation on the nvidia's is quite intriguing. And I don't plan on gaming in 4K ... just normal desktop application in 4K.
If it's real bad I could always run the additional monitors from the CPU graphics .. or am I wrong?

 

[tinytomlogan]

Okay so I'll go with 32GB RAM.

For me the price difference between Kaby and Skylake is so marginal that I'd probably go with Kaby, plus I like some of the new features.

Regarding graphics ... I'd rather stay with the green team. I had some bad luck with AMD/ATI in the past :/ and the passive operation on the nvidia's is quite intriguing. And I don't plan on gaming in 4K ... just normal desktop application in 4K.
If it's real bad I could always run the additional monitors from the CPU graphics .. or am I wrong?

If youre not gaming across all of the screens it wont matter. You will take a performance hit because of the other screens running but it wont be 50% or anything daft.

Youll want to make sure you pick a quiet card though because even desktop use with 3 screens will pull a fair bit more power from a single card and up the idle temps

 

[pingelit]

If youre not gaming across all of the screens it wont matter. You will take a performance hit because of the other screens running but it wont be 50% or anything daft.

Youll want to make sure you pick a quiet card though because even desktop use with 3 screens will pull a fair bit more power from a single card and up the idle temps

Would the Strix cooler suffice? From the reviews I read it seems to be quiet and good performing too.

What about the PSU? Does one need the Corsait link? And has the RM550x enough power?

 

[Thelosouvlakia]

What about the PSU? Does one need the Corsait link? And has the RM550x enough power?

You don't really need the corsair link, and to be honest with todays hardware power consumption a 450W psu would be perfecly fine with a kabylake i7 and a 1080... Provided... that the psu is a quality one and has actually 440+W on the 12V rail...

 

[NeverBackDown]

Okay so I'll go with 32GB RAM.

For me the price difference between Kaby and Skylake is so marginal that I'd probably go with Kaby, plus I like some of the new features.

Regarding graphics ... I'd rather stay with the green team. I had some bad luck with AMD/ATI in the past :/ and the passive operation on the nvidia's is quite intriguing. And I don't plan on gaming in 4K ... just normal desktop application in 4K.
If it's real bad I could always run the additional monitors from the CPU graphics .. or am I wrong?

All cards have passive operation.
AMD are better at multi monitor support, so something to consider. I assumed you would play the racing games at 4k, so I made the decision to use a 470 as it would perform much better. If they aren't anything new, wouldn't be a problem either way

 

[Nadz1lla]

My build and current hardware knowledge isn't fantastic, but the guys already beat me to opting for 32gb RAM. I would suggest, however, using your SSD for the OS and DAW host, but chuck in another HDD for your audio save path and VSTs / Plug-ins.
Also, ready your external storage for backups backups backups! I had my old DAW machine go *fzzzt!* and unfortunately had only backed up the once and it was months before the blow-out happened, so I lost loads of recent audio and Cubase projects.

My DAW machine currently runs a 128gb Samsung 850 Evo Pro as my OS and DAW drive, and a WD Black 1tb for all my audio / projects / VSTs and Plugins, 16gb RAM and on-board graphics as I don't game on it (purely a music machine) with Win 7 Pro 64 and it's amazing for music-making with Cubase.

Obvs the more RAM you have, the quicker large VSTs will load. Even on 16gb RAM, all my EastWest Quantum Leap stuff and SD2.0 loads up a dream really fast.

 

[pingelit]

All cards have passive operation.
AMD are better at multi monitor support, so something to consider. I assumed you would play the racing games at 4k, so I made the decision to use a 470 as it would perform much better. If they aren't anything new, wouldn't be a either way

Ah okay, I didn't know that. Never the less I think I'll go nvidia. Like I said, had some bad experiences with them and I can't see myself using AMD cards in the near future.

My build and current hardware knowledge isn't fantastic, but the guys already beat me to opting for 32gb RAM. I would suggest, however, using your SSD for the OS and DAW host, but chuck in another HDD for your audio save path and VSTs / Plug-ins.
Also, ready your external storage for backups backups backups! I had my old DAW machine go *fzzzt!* and unfortunately had only backed up the once and it was months before the blow-out happened, so I lost loads of recent audio and Cubase projects.

...

Obvs the more RAM you have, the quicker large VSTs will load. Even on 16gb RAM, all my EastWest Quantum Leap stuff and SD2.0 loads up a dream really fast.

Thanks for the advice Nadz1lla. I'll consider throwing in one of my old HDD then and work on my backup system

 

[Nadz1lla]

Thanks for the advice Nadz1lla. I'll consider throwing in one of my old HDD then and work on my backup system

No worries, just my humble £0.02.
If you have a soundcloud / bandcamp of your music I'd be interested in having a gander. I have one myself but there's nowt on it at the moment.

 

[pingelit]

No worries, just my humble £0.02.
If you have a soundcloud / bandcamp of your music I'd be interested in having a gander. I have one myself but there's nowt on it at the moment.

You can check out my bands YouTube channel if you want. These songs were my first real project . (Don't know if I can just post links here, so remove if it's not)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5_masiJniqMAm5jIg1gomw

Last question from me .. does anyone would want to see a build log? would be a first for me tho