Advice on building a powerful music production workstation

[J1mcrane]

Hi everyone, first I'd like to say what a fantastic group of people there are here, so many very clever and intelligent people who never talk down or belittle anyone, even for the most noob of questions, for that you should all be commended.

I'm in the process of selling my Mac Pro 2013 , 3ghz, 8core, 64 Gb. I use it solely for music production and am very aware of the new Mac Pro soon to be announced and prices obviously falling. I will have all the proceeds available to put toward parts for a new machine. I bult a Hack a few years ago with the help from you guys here and had it working flawlessly, so here I am again.

I am currently sourcing the parts and am looking to build the most powerful machine I can afford, with as little stress along the way (if there is such a thing when building a hack)

Main goal: To create a powerful machine which will be capable of overclocking and possibly fairly future proof, with tested parts to ensure a smooth build.

Requirements: A very quiet machine. Thunderbolt and Wifi/bluetooth compatible.

Reading through to "Golden build" a few have caught my eye, especially BoomR's “Power UP” for 360/VR Production Build: GA-Z370 AORUS UG - i7 8700K - GA AORUS RX580


I have narrowed down my search and was hoping some of you could chime in with a few suggestions for the missing parts.

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Glass Midi-Tower Silver

Just because I think it looks cool!!

Motherboard ASUS PRIME Z370-A LGA1151 DDR4 DP HDMI DVI M.2 USB 3.1 Z370 ATX Motherboard with USB 3.1 for 8th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors

Or

GIGABYTE Intel 1151 Socket Z370 Chipset Aorus Gaming 7 D4 ATX Motherboard - Black

The Asus is much cheaper and both have the Thunderbolt header I require, though the Thunderbolt card for the Gigabyte has 1x extra port, which is a fairly big deal

CPU: Intel Core i7 8086K 4.0GHz Hexa Core LGA1151 CPU

Can be overclocked and I've heard it's not unusual to ramp it up to 5Ghz. I also hear that there are potentially new intel CPUs inbound, should I hold off for a few weeks?

GPU: MSI Radeon 4 GB RX 560 AERO ITX 4G OC AMD GDDR5 Graphics Card - Black

Reading through the forum it seems that this is potentially the most trouble free card I could choose.

Memory: Require at least 64Gb and don't really want to scrimp on this, any advice would be welcome

WiFi/BT: [New Version] ABWB 802.11AC WI-FI With Bluetooth 4.0 PCI-Express (PCI-E) BCM943602CS Combo Card For Hackintosh (MAC OS X) Airport Computers, Supports Hands-off

Seems to be pretty standard (I think)

Fan/Cooler: I need something very quiet and something that will enable my CPU to remain cool during my attempt to overclock (I like to tinker) Any advice would be helpful.

SSD: Looking to install at least a 1TB drive. Would you suggest I look at a separate drive for the OS? I'' probably end up creating a dual boot system so this would maybe be preferable. Is there any type/manufacturer I should go with or avoid?

PSU: Very unsure about this, really need some advice, though would assume I need something pretty nifty.

Please, if anyone could steer me in the right direction, I would be very grateful. Sorry for the massive long winded post, but I'm also doing this as a bit of a diary to help me along the way. Thank you for reading.

 

[SebErr]

Not an expert when it comes to Music Production but here are a few things to look out for:

Case

If you require a silent system then the case will be a very important part of your setup.
Steve at Gamers Nexus does very in depth case reviews and also tests them for noise.
You'll find his latest results here:
fractal-s2-noise.png

and his case reviews here:
Case Reviews

Fans

Fan setup in your case will be important too.

CPU

Intel announced their 9th Gen Coffee Lake CPUs 2 days ago. You can already preorder them with most retailers.
the 9900k will be the most powerful one. Biggest difference to the 8th gen CPUs is that the new ones have a soldered heat spreader which will help them to run a bit cooler compared to the 8th gen CPUs. If you want to go for a 8086k you should consider delidding it and replacing the stock thermal paste with Liquid Metal. This will help bring the temperatures down by up to 20 degrees. The lower temps of the CPU will allow you to run the fans at lower speeds ( -> less noise! ). There are no benchmarks yet of the new 9th gen CPUs so we don't know yet if the soldered heatspreader will perform better than a delidded 8th Gen CPU.
If I remember correctly the review embargo for the new CPUs ends 19th of october. So if you have the time, wait a week to see how the new CPUs perform.

SSD

Go for a NVME M.2 SSD (like the Samsung 960/970 EVO) as your boot drive and use a separate Data SSD for your projects or as scratch disk.

PSU

For your setup you should take at least a 500W (750W to be on the safe side) or higher power supply ( 80+ GOLD).

 

[J1mcrane]

Thank you for the information and taking the time to help.
The info regarding the case is great, I’m also in no real rush so I’m happy to wait for the newer CPUs.

 

[J1mcrane]

I thought I'd update this and post what I've chosen/ordered/pre-ordered....

CPU
Intel Core i9 9900K Unlocked 9th Gen Desktop Processor/CPU Retail
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/int...6-thread-36ghz-50ghz-turbo-16mb-1200mhz-gpu-9

Motherboard
ASUS PRIME Z370-A
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B075RJHN2D/?tag=tonymacx86-21

GPU
Radeon RX 580

Case
Be Quiet. bgw20 PC Case Black/Orange
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06WVN7T6K/?tag=tonymacx86-21

PSU

be quiet! 700W Straight Power 10 Hybrid Modular Power Supply
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/700...gold-rated-psu-with-135mm-silent-wings-3-fdb-

Fan
Noctua NH-D15
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00L7UZMAK/?tag=tonymacx86-21

WiFi/BT
ABWB 802.11AC WI-FI With Bluetooth
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00MBP25UK/?tag=tonymacx86-21

Memory
Corsair CMU32GX4M2C3000C15 Vengeance LED 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4 3000 MHz
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01HKF3ZPY/?tag=tonymacx86-21

Drives
Intel 760p 256GB M.2 PCIe Performance NVMe SSD/Solid State Drive
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/256...-tlc-3d-nand-3210mb-s-read-1315mb-s-write-205

Intel 760p 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD/Solid State Drive
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb...tlc-3d-nand-3230mb-s-read-1625mb-s-write-340k

Hopefully, all here by next week, so looking forward to getting into it!!

 

[SebErr]

A little thing to look out for.

Your z370 motherboard will need the latest BIOS to work with the new 9900k.
Check with the supplier if it gets shipped already with the new BIOS Version if not you'll need a 8th gen CPU to update the BIOS (ask a friend). as far as I know the prime z-370 A doesn't support direct bios flashing via USB (and no CPU installed).
Otherwise go for a new Z390 board.

The rest looks good and you should have a very powerful machine there.

 

[J1mcrane]

I haven't ordered the motherboard as yet so I shall check, thanks for the advice.

 

[J1mcrane]

So I'm not sure if the motherboard will be shipped with the latest BIOS and am now considering the z390, I guess as it's a new board I'm going to be a very early adopter, would anyone have any suggestions on which would be preferable in this range?

 

[J1mcrane]

So I've managed to find a board and the vendor has agreed to update the BIOS, thank you to SebErr for your input....very much appreciated.

 

[Dajjal]

@J1mcrane I think you need to consider that the Intel 9th Gen has taken a different approach with Hyper Thread and since most Soft synth actually do benefit from those virtual cores in action it may be better to maybe go with a Z390 MB and either a 8700k or 8086k since both 8/9 th Gen Intel chips are supported.If the Z390 will actually work in MacOS is not certain but my guess is eventually it will.

 

[SebErr]

@J1mcrane I think you need to consider that the Intel 9th Gen has taken a different approach with Hyper Thread and since most Soft synth actually do benefit from those virtual cores in action it may be better to maybe go with a Z390 MB and either a 8700k or 8086k since both 8/9 th Gen Intel chips are supported.If the Z390 will actually work in MacOS is not certain but my guess is eventually it will.

the 9900k (8cores / 16 threads) still has Hyperthreading. It’s the 9700k (8 cores / 8 threads) that doesn’t support it. So he’s fine with bis choice of the 9900k.