Workstation for Sounddesign/Engineering

[Fresh93]

Hey Lads,

I'm totally new to the Hackmac/Hackintosh game and am looking for tips on configuration.

We need a powerhorse machine for professional heavy duty sound engineering, sound design and hybrid A/D mixing and mastering for our studio.

I was thinking of the following setup:

MB - Gigabyte Z490 Vision D
CPU - Core i9-10900K
Cooling - Corsair H60 (Water)
RAM - Crucial Ballistix 2666 (32GB)
Drives - 4x Samsung 860 EVO 1TB
PSU - Corsair RM 650x Watt
Acc. - StarTech.com 3 Port 800+400 FireWire PCIe
Fenvi T919 Wifi/BT 4.0 PCIe (Optional)
Case - Corsair Corsair Carbide Series 275R
Graphics - Sapphire RX 580 Pulse 8GB

Question 1) Is there a better suited Motherboard for audio application?

Question 2) Do I need even need a seperate GPU for that CPU setup if I only use the system for audio applications?

Question 3) Any recommendations for a system wide quieter cooling?

Cheers

 

[Gio321]

Hi mate,

I built a hack system for a studio 8 months ago based on the same CPU and motherboard. It's very stable with that motherboard/CPU combo and has been performing great for audio ever since.
SchmokLord's Github is a great starting point for you EFI and configs for this motherboard/CPU combo.

As the system would live in the control room, it had to be as silent as possible, so we went with a be Quiet Case (the 801/802 series), all Noctua fans for the cooler and case, overkill on the cooler (Corsair H150i series triple 120mm, with 6 Noctua fans, setup as intake on the top of the case in a Push/Pull config) and also overkill on the PSU (Corsair RM850 Watts).

The reasoning behind this overkill PSU and cooling setup is that the metal mass of a big radiator is better in cooling the CPU at stock speeds with the fans at low RPM up to 70-80% or so loads. So 6 Noctua fans at 300-500 RPM are much quieter than 3 or 2 or even 1 fan at 1000-1500 RPM. Noctua fans at low RPM in general are near silent.

Also most good PSUs operate with the fan off, up to a 40% load and at low RPM up to a 70% load. So in the case of a good 850W PSU, its fan is off up to a 400W load and near silent up to a 600W load.

This resulted in a pretty much silent system with great temps.

 

[Fresh93]

Hey Gio321, thanks for the reply. I actually finished the build with the following setup:

MB - Asus PRIME Z490-A
CPU - Core i9-10900K
Cooling - be quiet! Shadow Rock 3
RAM - Crucial Ballistix 2666 (32GB)
Drives - 3x Samsung 860 EVO 1TB
1x Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2 SSD
PSU - Corsair RM 650x Watt
Acc. - StarTech.com 3 Port 800+400 FireWire PCIe
Case - Corsair Corsair Carbide Series 275R Airflow

I'm chose the Asus motherboard because I wanted the Samsung NVME drives and read that it was more stable with them. Oriented myself from Shilo's build for Tristan with a similar setup. Had a few hickups until I got it working but fixed all major issues, appart from a wake from sleep problem I'm still having, but could be fixed in the BIOS.

The system is CRAZY fast! I attached the Geekbench score. I was working on a MacPro4.1 from 2009 up until now, so it's a hefty upgrade for me. We tried a few complex projects with impulse response reverbs and processor heavy plugins on 48 channels in Pro Tools. CPU didn't even flinch

I also chose the Corsair case because of airflow benefits and the be quiet cooler. The cooler is super quiet. Will probably change out the 120mm case fans for 140mm Noctua fans. The built in ones give off some wierd mechanical vibrating buzz, but appart from that the setup is pretty silent. A lot more silent already then our old MacPro

Since we are only using audio applications and the current GPU prices, we chose to go with the internal graphics card. Was a little trial and error. You have to let the graphics driver fail in the EFI for it to work. But now it works fine and we can stream videos in 4k with 60fps, with no trouble at all.

Super satisfied with this setup tbh. Can really recommend...

If anyone wants the config file let me know!