Build for Music Production / Thunderbolt 3

[Lulujam]

Hello everybody !

I'm going to build my second Hackintosh for a friend of mine, and I would like you to advise me in the choice of future components.
It will be exclusively dedicated to musical production. (1,5K€ Budget)

Regarding the cpu, I went through some threads which showed that the "k" cpu were a little overkill in terms of power consumption (and btw their temperature).

For ram and ssd, is there a particular brand or model to favor?

For the Psu, is an sfx can do the job? (500/600 or 700w )

I still wonder about the presence of a gpu. Can the 10th gen iGPU hold up for a single screen? (even if I imagine that in the future, if he wants to make a dual screen, a dedicated gpu will be necessary)

Regarding the case, I would like to find a good compromise between the size of the case and the "temperature / noise" combo. (Mini Itx or Medium Tower "not too large" case)

I am joining you the research I have already done concerning the components, feel free to tell me if i go wrong on some point.
Maybe another motherboard ?
(i7/i9, K/"non K" cpu, Itx/Atx, Aircooling/AiO, 16Gb/32Gb of ram etc...)

Thank you in advance for your feedback

Links:
CaseySJ's Comet Lake-S Working Thunderbolt 3
@WhenMusicAttacks advice
@papadiche Information for his Z490 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3

 

[WhenMusicAttacks]

Hello there, i would suggest looking at the i9 10900 ES 2.5ghz from aliexpress for best power / performance / price option , then 10900 or the 10850k depending wich one is less expansive in your area, the K is a bit faster for a lot more power, and they all can undervolt a little bit. 10850k also support faster ram, but for audio you'd go for 2666 and lowest possible timings anyway (also plays nice with macos, issues are reported with faster ram speed).

Undervolt the CPU and get a good 140mm cooler, in italy i can get Silentium PC 140mm coolers for around 35euros, and you have super silent audio setup for very very cheap that will handle whatever audio related you throw at it, Acustica Audio plugins included.

IGPU is perfectly fine for 1 or 2 screens (vision d can use thunderbolt for video out)

Crucial for SSD is my safe choiche. I had issues with Transcend 110s recently. Kingston a2000 is very cost competitive here in italy and had no issues with the one i have in my notebook.

Get 2 different ssds to have : 1 separate audio library for samples 2 separate bootable partition for backup OS and EFI , very useful for updates

 

[antieatingactivist]

Hello everybody !

I'm going to build my second Hackintosh for a friend of mine, and I would like you to advise me in the choice of future components.
It will be exclusively dedicated to musical production. (1,5K€ Budget)

Regarding the cpu, I went through some threads which showed that the "k" cpu were a little overkill in terms of power consumption (and btw their temperature).

For ram and ssd, is there a particular brand or model to favor?

For the Psu, is an sfx can do the job? (500/600 or 700w )

I still wonder about the presence of a gpu. Can the 10th gen iGPU hold up for a single screen? (even if I imagine that in the future, if he wants to make a dual screen, a dedicated gpu will be necessary)

Regarding the case, I would like to find a good compromise between the size of the case and the "temperature / noise" combo. (Mini Itx or Medium Tower "not too large" case)

I am joining you the research I have already done concerning the components, feel free to tell me if i go wrong on some point.
Maybe another motherboard ?
(i7/i9, K/"non K" cpu, Itx/Atx, Aircooling/AiO, 16Gb/32Gb of ram etc...)

Thank you in advance for your feedback

Links:
CaseySJ's Comet Lake-S Working Thunderbolt 3
@WhenMusicAttacks advice
@papadiche Information for his Z490 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3

a K cpu doesn't consume more power, it just has the capability to do so. The K variant is most likely a higher binned piece of silicon, so it is given the capability to be overclocked, and as someone else has mentioned, you can probably undervolt too. I am running my 10850K at -.050v. One can argue that even a power hungry i9 can perform a task much quicker than an i3 and not need to run full bore for as long. All modern processors are pretty efficient when idling.

You probably don't NEED something like an i9 for music production, but having extra power on tap can come in handy once those tracks and effects start piling up.

the iGPU will be more than enough to give you 2 screens.

I would also recommend a large high quality Air cooler. Noctua is a good choice. The fans are big and quiet and you won't have any pump noise.

im using a 970 evo and have been for a while. its a good choice.

 

[scottkendall]

Hello everybody !

I'm going to build my second Hackintosh for a friend of mine, and I would like you to advise me in the choice of future components.
It will be exclusively dedicated to musical production. (1,5K€ Budget)

Regarding the cpu, I went through some threads which showed that the "k" cpu were a little overkill in terms of power consumption (and btw their temperature).

For ram and ssd, is there a particular brand or model to favor?

For the Psu, is an sfx can do the job? (500/600 or 700w )

I still wonder about the presence of a gpu. Can the 10th gen iGPU hold up for a single screen? (even if I imagine that in the future, if he wants to make a dual screen, a dedicated gpu will be necessary)

Regarding the case, I would like to find a good compromise between the size of the case and the "temperature / noise" combo. (Mini Itx or Medium Tower "not too large" case)

I am joining you the research I have already done concerning the components, feel free to tell me if i go wrong on some point.
Maybe another motherboard ?
(i7/i9, K/"non K" cpu, Itx/Atx, Aircooling/AiO, 16Gb/32Gb of ram etc...)

Thank you in advance for your feedback

Links:
CaseySJ's Comet Lake-S Working Thunderbolt 3
@WhenMusicAttacks advice
@papadiche Information for his Z490 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3

I have a 9900k I do not OC it and do not ever intend to but I like the idea that I can and for $50 more I went that route. I have an AIO water cooler and the fans are configured to shut off if the system is below 55C however, the pump is running full bore all the time. My CPU averages around 40C while doing most tasks it only heats up when gaming or renderings a project.

I would suggest 700W just because you are doing audio production and the more W you have the more likely the PSU fan will not need to run.

I would suggest no less than 32GB of memory.

As for parts if you are following Caseys build that is a good choice of hardware.

 

[WhenMusicAttacks]

a K cpu doesn't consume more power, it just has the capability to do so. The K variant is most likely a higher binned piece of silicon, so it is given the capability to be overclocked, and as someone else has mentioned, you can probably undervolt too. I am running my 10850K at -.050v. One can argue that even a power hungry i9 can perform a task much quicker than an i3 and not need to run full bore for as long. All modern processors are pretty efficient when idling.

You probably don't NEED something like an i9 for music production, but having extra power on tap can come in handy once those tracks and effects start piling up.

the iGPU will be more than enough to give you 2 screens.

I would also recommend a large high quality Air cooler. Noctua is a good choice. The fans are big and quiet and you won't have any pump noise.

im using a 970 evo and have been for a while. its a good choice.

A K cpu consumes almost double power for a measly, best case scenario (pure cpu bound app like cinebench) 12% performance increase. This is because it has slightly higher frequency (12% more) but power consumption rises almost quadratically with frequency at that point (around 5ghz).

These are the power consumption numbers when running Cinebench R15 (non avx app)
As you can see, the 10900k uses almost 3 times the power to reach just 25% more performance. So, it might be a little bit faster to complete, but efficiency is blown out of the water to achieve that.

10900 engineering sample: 110w, 2240 points

10900 standard : 190w, 2460 points

10900k : 320w, 2650 points

I recommend ES cpus for my builds, because i care about enviroment: way lower power consumption, they come with no package, no useless integrated heatsink, and a lot cheaper also. But it also bought other SKUs if they wanted them despite my advise, so had a chanche to test them.

 

[Lulujam]

Thank you for all these responses !

Hello there, i would suggest looking at the i9 10900 [...]

Yes i think i'll go for the 10900 ! thank you for this advice !

for audio you'd go for 2666 and lowest possible timings anyway

For the ram, it is better that I privilege the CAS than the frequency in music production ?

(also plays nice with macos, issues are reported with faster ram speed).

It is still up to date ? i think 2020 MacbookPro run 3733Mhz

IGPU is perfectly fine for 1 or 2 screens (vision d can use thunderbolt for video out)

Crucial for SSD is my safe choiche. I had issues with Transcend 110s recently. Kingston a2000 is very cost competitive here in italy and had no issues with the one i have in my notebook.

Get 2 different ssds to have : 1 separate audio library for samples 2 separate bootable partition for backup OS and EFI , very useful for updates

Cool ! So I won't add GPU
Thx for advice for two ssd !

I would also recommend a large high quality Air cooler. Noctua is a good choice. The fans are big and quiet and you won't have any pump noise.

I have an AIO water cooler and the fans are configured to shut off if the system is below 55C however, the pump is running full bore all the time. My CPU averages around 40C while doing most tasks it only heats up when gaming or renderings a project.

I would suggest 700W just because you are doing audio production and the more W you have the more likely the PSU fan will not need to run.

I would suggest no less than 32GB of memory.

I still don't know if I take aircooler or aio haha
Does the pump of an aio really make a lot of noise or is it negligible? (knowing that there'll be no sound recording in the room of the build)

Is 600w enough without gpu ? think about Corsair SFX 600 (Plat) or Corsair SFX 700 (Plat)

for the ram, i'm gonna ask my friend if he gonna run a lot of plugins with sample. If not, maybe 16 is enough ? (More synth or drum that Orchestral things)

As for parts if you are following Caseys build that is a good choice of hardware.

that's the thing...

i don't know if i'm gonna follow this guide because it's a big motherboard and with no gpu, make no sense to me.
however, if i choose the z490 from Asrock (Phantom Gaming), does the process could be the same as the z390(Phantom Gaming) one ?

My first build was on it and there's still a guide for the z390. And in my first post i linked a post that show that his build with his z490 and the thunderbolt 3 work properly.

What do you think ?

Thank you very much for the answers you have already given to me !

 

[hughythomas]

Heya mate

I run a professional busy recording studio in UK centered around a hack thanks to CaseySJ's 'Golden Build' here on tonymacx86.com.

The Gigabyte Vision D might be the best bet in your situation (especially as this is what Casey has so his guide and EFI will work straight out of the box).

You would need to ideally pair that with 32GB of ram and a 10900K.

Samplerates matter - I work at 96/24 so definitely need all the power I can get although I appreciate most pros I know work at 44.1/48 so YMMV.

One thing I would say is stress testing the machine once built is absolutely critical if you want a quick and reliable build. I've always in the past not bothered but took the time for this rig and can comfortably run a Logic Pro X project at 96/24 with loads of 3rd party plugins, sample libraries and crossfades going although workflow is important.

I always bounce off all my tracks once edited as I find LPX sucks up a lot of resources dealing with crossfades across multiple regions and channels unless you commit to bouncing in place.

Best,

Tom

 

[scottkendall]

I still don't know if I take aircooler or aio haha
Does the pump of an aio really make a lot of noise or is it negligible? (knowing that there'll be no sound recording in the room of the build)

Is 600w enough without gpu ? think about Corsair SFX 600 (Plat) or Corsair SFX 700 (Plat)

for the ram, i'm gonna ask my friend if he gonna run a lot of plugins with sample. If not, maybe 16 is enough ? (More synth or drum that Orchestral things)

No the pump makes like zero noise the one I have, it is the fans on the Radiator that I have set to turn off. If I changed the bios out on my Video card or tuned it to shut the fan off at sub 60C my system would be silent for most tasks.

Sure 600w would be fine since you are not using a GPU but at the same time you may decide in the future that you want a GPU or you may decide that the system is much easier to configure with a GPU rather than IGPU.

I think 32GB is the least amount of memory you should run in any rig currently that is just my opinion and you can likely get by with just 16GB but when building a new system I always try and get more then I think I need.

that's the thing...

i don't know if i'm gonna follow this guide because it's a big motherboard and with no gpu, make no sense to me.
however, if i choose the z490 from Asrock (Phantom Gaming), does the process could be the same as the z390(Phantom Gaming) one ?

My first build was on it and there's still a guide for the z390. And in my first post i linked a post that show that his build with his z490 and the thunderbolt 3 work properly.

What do you think ?

Thank you very much for the answers you have already given to me !

Like I said above about the power supply and the memory it is always better to have the potential to add rather than to limit yourself because you do not think you will need it currently. Plan for the future!