Hi, need some advice please.

My points are:
1) silent build is the topmost priority
2) I'm not exactly on a tight budget
3) any Coffee Lake processor will do the job, but if there is no advantages regarding the heat I would go for more powerful/expensive model
4) it is worth noting that I need it for professional audio use, so the stable clocks are required, I mean I would avoid any auto power saving features.

8700K vs. 8700 non "K". They are 95W vs. 65W TDP. Will I be able to underclock/underwolt the K version so it could run at the same temperatures (or lower) as non "K" version? (but still have the extra power reserved just in case I "may" need it anytime later).

i3 8100 vs. i5 8400 vs. i7 8700 (all non "K"). Can it be that i3 8100 could be the coolest out of 3 of them or they are basically the same in this regards, since they all have 65W TDP?

Can you say anything about the ASROCK Z370M-ITX/AC motherboard? Noises? There are not so many Z370 mITX boards around, so I seem choose the only one without RGB stuff.

[mod: replaced etailer link with mfgr product page]

Welcome to SPCR.

Intel's listed TDPs are mostly for system design considerations, and may or may not represent the CPU's power use. So, if there's an i3, i5, and i7 in the same 65W power bucket, you can expect the i3 is going to be on the lower end and the i7 on the upper end.

Also, modern CPUs make heavy use of quickly adapting both the core voltage and frequency to the load needed by the application. The net effect is:
- all of the CPUs will idle with close to the same power use.
- if the application is a light continuous load (like recording two live tracks) and only partially loads a few cores, the power use will also appear the same for i3, i5, or i7 (given same cpu freq).
- K vs non-K. For loads up to the non-K's frequency limit, both K and non-K part should use the same power. One caveat - mobo manufacturers like to play games to make their mobos look better for reviews. This includes auto-overclocking and auto over-volting K CPUs..but this can be fixed manually in the bios settings...

So, what all this sums up to: size the CPU for your applications. Don't worry about the TDP/heat thing. Use decent cooling solutions and you'll be fine.

When you say professional audio:
- live mic in a studio environment?
- few tracks or many?
- few VI's or many (RAM and CPU impact)
- will you have external sound board that provides digital in/out to the PC and you don't need analog audio path on the motherboard?

mobo: more after these responses.

Delid the CPU and replace the tim for Liquid metal and you will run very cool, even cool it a very low rpms and still be fine. I just did two builds with i7 8700K, one delided and one not, and its 15C difference in load, its the best improvement you can do in terms of noise and performance.

Research your motherboards a lot, not all have good latency, in my case i had issues that solved themselves by swapping stuff around... still today i don't know what happen. AsRock taichi had issues with the delided 8700K with audio delays, stalls, freezing, and so on, i bought other memory, other motherboard, even another CPU.... and until i changed the cpu nothing seem to fixes it, now it works flawless with the new cpu. I blamed the cpu being defective or maybe the delid process something mess up, i plugged into an MSI Z370 Gaming 5 and no issues at all, runs perfect there, the mobo runs higher stock voltages, and thats the only thing that i could think off, as i never overvolted it, but since its delided it runs very cool even overvolted, at the end

Now about the motherboard, go with whatever you like, Asus has the best Software fan control Asus FanXpert3 (all headers are switchable on the bios), MSI has the best bios fan control (all headers are switchable on the bios), AsRock has very good bios fan control but you need to chose careful the fans as not all headers can control voltage control or pwm like Asus or MSI, gigabyte i have very little knowledge. If i were searching for a motherboard today, i would probably go with the sale of MSI Z370 GAMING PLUS, for $110 its tough to beat imo, its a value motherboard, but still has one NVME, dual 16x (one is 8x), and enough sata and usb ports for an average build, lacks on USB C.

Processor, i would go with 8700K and simply delid it, if you dont feel comfortable doing it, there are sellers can do it for you, usually they charge around $50 for doing the delid process or you can buy a predelided cpu that you know how fast i can run, personally on my 8700K im simply running the enhanced turbo settings and keeping all others settings of the cpu stock, this allows the cpu to go 4.7ghz on all cores at 1.25V and it undervolts/underclocks as a normal cpu does, so i dont need to keep the oc voltage as fixed.

Thank you so very much for replies.

@CA_Steve
- live playing, recording, mostly just one VI (Pianoteq plus some minor FX). It may seem an easy task, but I need it to be extremely reliable, low latency, no glitches, no anything ever.
- 2 external audio channels for recording.
- sometimes some more VI tracks, about 10. So I don't need ton's of RAM as many orchestral folks do. I plan to go for the full amount of 32 GB that mITX board can take.
- recent RME Babyface Pro owner
- I plan to do more video recording, streaming of myself playing VI (OBS). Some basic video editing from time to time. I'm using a good Logitech webcam for video, don't plan to upgrade in foreseeable future. So, again, not a very demanding task, video quality is not a topmost priority, audio is.

You may want to check me here, if it is not against the forum rules: https://www.youtube.com/user/PIANOPICTURES

I'm on an old i3 3220 right now which is still capable of doing all this stuff but it is on the edge.

I understand that modern i3 8100 is realistically the perfect choice for me, but since I don't plan for a new PC for years and years, maybe it is a good idea to make it a bit more future proof and to go for more powerful CPU. Also there is a chance one may need serious power for some future tasks not expected at the moment. But some saving is a good thing too. Decisions, decisions, lol.

I sure may go for i3, especially as you say it is a less hot CPU overall, compared to others. There is also some stuff, I'm not that familiar yet (turbo?), for audio you need to disable all possible automatic power management, so it needs to be at full load all the time, to avoid any clicks with audio at super low latencies. It is a common practice for ages, as far as I understand it.

@Abula
Deliding, hm. Good advice, thank you. It complicates things. Not exactly sure it is worth it. I'm quite afraid to do it myself, I see some devices being sold around for deliding, should I get one?... Really feel uncomfortable thinking about it. But I understand that it can be a big improvement.

BTW, I will write an e-mail to Intel, there is obviously something wrong with their stuff if people need to improve it themselves.

Thank you very much for your help.

@CA_Steve

I had a lot of time to think and read what you said, the manuals, etc. To my understanding what you said is, may I interpret it, just go for whatever you can afford. So to my understanding there is no advantages about i3 8100 besides the price. Again, a bit about the settings: I'm going to disable the C-States in the BIOS and will use ParkControl and Windows 10 power settings for the rest. As I was told having all the cores awake all the time will not make them consume 65/95W all the time. It is rather about 10W waste for idle states (which is very significant for, say, notebooks).

I hope I understand the situation right.

Thank you so very much for your time and help!

I'm not sure messing around with the C states, etc will impact your recordings one way or the other. But, whatever.

More important is Deferred Procedure Call Latency. It's impacted by several things, including, the CPU chipset, how well the mobo drivers are tuned, and what background s/w and other drivers are running. In general, run as few things as needed in the background when recording. I haven't seen how well the Asrock Z370 platforms do for DPC Latency...the Z270's were well tuned.

What are your plans for case and cooling? How are you planning to silently cool the CPU?

Regarding this timing issues. It is all about VST performance. Say, good audio driver and audio card can work at 2-3 ms. latency with a more or less heavy project. Now imagine that a project have a couple of VSTs playing for some time (live, not offline rendering) and then suddenly about 100 of them (maybe a bit exaggerated) need to enter. To wake all cores it may take about 250 ms. So we have some nice, very clearly audible distorting going on during this time. It is not such a big problem in other applications than audio. To be exact I did not make extensive tests by myself, but I read a lot of things around, and it seem to be a common thing overall, at least as far as I understand.

For case I'm going to do some custom open frame build from "t-slotted construction aluminum profile". I was inspired by this:
https://ru.aliexpress.com/store/product ... 2410247e6c

For cooling I choose Noctua NH-U14S, was thinking about Noctua NH-D15(S) but it is a bit too big to fit it into my build. Still have a couple of days to decide.

PSU is Seasonic Fanless 400W Platinum.

I think waking from even the C6 deep sleep state only takes tens of microseconds.... But, do what you are comfortable with.

Noctua and Seasonic, ok. Open frame - I'm guessing the only rotating fan will be the Noctua? That could work out. Given the mass of the cooler and the really low CPU load for recording a few tracks, you should be able to run at min rpm without trouble - or even fan stopped.

Abula, I got you, but I still have a doubt (as I posted on another thread). Even if you can not MANUALLY switch between PWM and DC in Chafan1 and Chafan2, yet, as the motherboard can auto-detect whether DC or PWM, it can control DC fans? Or these would be at 100% when these headers are used with DC fans?

I'm using ASRock Z370 Taichi and have a DC fan (the stock Fractal Define C 120mm ) as the exhaust connected to header CPU_OPT/W_PUMP and it does control / fluctuate the RPMs depending on different CPU temperatures that I set in the UEFI BIOS. However, HWiNFO64 occasionally displays erroneous RPM numbers like 0 as the minimum and over 60000 as the max, which bugs my OCD that sometimes the mobo doesn't supply the correct power to it. Still, whenever it happens it appears to be momentary. It could also be an issue with the sensor.

Thanks.

So do you confirm that all five headers CAN control 3-pin DC fans?

If so, I assue that only CPU fan headers and Cha_fan3 can AUTO detect whether DC or PWM, but manually you can control the speed of some fan (DC or PWM) connected on some header.

I can't confirm that all headers can unless I connect another DC fan to test the remaining 4. I don't want be unhelpful, but it's a bit of a pain to disconnect certain headers after arduous time spent in building my first PC . Except for my case exhaust and maybe PSU, all my fans are PWM. Luckily, there's a spare DC fan from the Fractal case that I can test (I'll have to note down the temperatures and RPM numbers before disconnecting them so that I can manually re-input them later).

There are a couple of parts that stand out in the manual instructions that are the same for CPU_FAN1 (the main CPU one that I have heatsink's 4-pin fan connected to) and CPU_OPT/W_PUMP (my exhaust DC fan), respectively:

Yet for CHA_FAN1, CHA_FAN2, CHA_FAN3 it states:

It feels like Abula may be correct, but I shall test for you later today after work.

Sorry lb_felipe i didnt see the update on this thread. To what i saw on AsRock Z370 Taichi and Killer, there no longer auto detect fan headers, just switchable (Asus started this, MSI followed, now seems AsRock is also), but only 2 of 5, in case of the Taichi is the CPU_OPT (WaterPump fan) and the CHA_FAN3, both on the bios have an extra line under hardware monitor that allows you to change PWM or DC, the rest of the headers (CPU_FAN, CHA_FAN1 and CHA_FAN2) are just PWM control, if you plug a 3pin fan on these they will run at 12v always.

You already was helpful. Don't bother with that. I know the pain that is plugging and unplugging stuffs into a built system. Thank you.

Don't care about it. Now it is clear. Definitely, ASRock just control two DC fans among the five headers. It is a shame since, e.g., Fractal Design Define R6 come with three good DC fans.

Thanks.

Tie the two front fans together via a splitter cable.

MSI on the other hand, has switchable headers on all slots, MSI Z370 Gaming M5 is a very similar motherboard than the Taichi, and if you want cheaper the MSI Z370 Gaming Plus is a very good option for what it offers. All should be switchable headers, you just gotta enter the bios/hardware monitor (on the standard UEFI, not the the easy UEFI) and change PWM/DC and check the smartfan control for each header, and you will be able to control all 3pin DC fans dynamically with 4 breakpoints (not restricted like Asus).

Well, felipe, I suffered a light scratch injury on my right pinkie through curiosity. It wasn't due to opening my case or the components that I unplugged and replugged, but by my fan box (admittedly this is the nicest package I have of all the parts I purchased - thanks BeQuiet!).

It's just as Abula stated before: only the CPU_OPT and CHA_FAN3 have the switchable option between DC and PWM modes. The other headers don't, but there's unexpectedly good news. It's not as hopeless as we all thought. ASRock Taichi is smart enough to detect the DC fan I connected to CHA_FAN1. I have tested so far with CPU_OPT, CHA_FAN3, and even CHA_FAN1 and they all successfully allowed me to control the different RPM levels according to the different temperature levels set in the BIOS! I can't guarantee this would work for all DC fans, but apparently it does for the Fractal Design Dynamic X2 GP12 120mm fans.

3 out of 5 headers is sufficient for me to be confident the remaining would be the same. I didn't out pull CHA_FAN2 or CPU_FAN as it would require me to pull out the RAM sticks and/or GPU and mess with my heatsink, which would be frustrating and time consuming.

Interesting, so apparently you say they are auto detect headers, ill test in 2 weeks once i go back home.

Yes. With the DC fan connected to CHA_FAN3 where my usual PWM fan is, I semi-forgot to change the mode from PWM to DC and when I booted in Windows HWiNFO64 shows it running constant at full 100% RPM. I rebooted into the BIOS, switched it from PWM to DC mode with all the settings unchanged on this header, and re-tested in Windows to see it worked with varying RPM levels on my quick stress test. This is to be expected from CHA_FAN3, but it was the same result on CHA_FAN1.

Decided to wait for i5 8500T or i7 8700T to be used with HDPlex H3 V2. There will also be some more mITX boards with H370/B360 chipsets to check soon.

I wouldn't get the T parts. No upside. The case can handle the 65W parts just fine and you won't be nerfing the CPU performance when you need it (editing video).


If going for these new chipsets, I recommend waiting 2-3 months after release to let the early firmware/driver bugs settle out...as well as see if there's any DPC latency issues.

Ok, I see. Head spinning... Thank you very much for advice. No doubt you have more experience than me in this things.

Regarding the new chipsets, either way I was still thinking about getting the ASROCK Z370M-ITX/AC. Will be able to check the DPC latency only after getting it anyways. (Googled some basic info, people say DPC latency is fine here).

This delidding stuff - still tempting, but too many doubts...

I wouldn't screw around with delidding for your needs. Just no benefit for your use case...and a good chance for screwing it up and needing to buy another CPU.

Ordered. HDPlex H3 V2, i5 8400 (65W TDP), ASROCK Z370M-ITX/AC. Will take a while to be delivered. Fingers crossed. Will make a review.

Awesome.