Audio production/Software Dev/Gaming PC build advice

[iowastate89]

Hi there,

My current i7950 -system seems to have gone kaput, but I've gotten a good 5 years or so from her. I was going to wait until the next generation of Intel but might need to accelerate my new system plans. I'm a few years out of researching the latest in components, and would appreciate any advice.


Uses:
- Software development, lots of VM use
- Audio studio (running ableton live, sonar x3, with lots of cpu hungry plugins; no acoustic recording so slight fan noise is ok but still like to listen through my desktop monitors)
- Gaming system, like to play high res FPS and others (such as upcoming Watch Dogs I'm sure). Not necessarily bleeding edge performance here but would like decent framerates at full 1080p
- occasional photo/video editing for family stuff
- don't really overclock much anymore, would prefer to just get it right once (family does that to you!)


Carryover components:
- Drives (boot system is 256GB flash drive, for now sticking with my 3 big storage SATA drives)
- optical bluray (almost never use it)
- graphics card (currently have MSI GTX 680 Twin Frozer, generally I upgrade every 2 years or so on graphics cards)


Current System other components to give you a range of what I've traditionally gone for:
- PSU Nexus RX-8500
- Nexus 120mm quiet fans
- Prolimatech Megahalems cpu cooler
- EVGA X58 motherboard
- Antec P180


Looking specifically for quietest/most powerful I can get basically, with a budget up to 2k; could stretch up if I needed to. Specifically I am not sure about the latest motherboard/intel combos that would work best, as well as the latest and greatest cases for quiet computing.
Specifically still learning about:
- Case? Antec P193 v3 (liked the P180, am not up to speed on the latest/greatest on quiet casing)
- CPU (leaning towards i7-4770k or i5-4670k)
- CPU cooler (unknown what fits best, I was ok with the Megahalems that I've previously used)
- mobo (Asus X79 LGA 2011; no other reason than high marks on reviews)
- quietest PSU in 600-800W range, don't think I'll need more than that


Any thoughts appreciated!

[CA_Steve]

I guess the first questions are to frame the amount of horsepower and level of quiet you need:

- Was the i7-960 running at 100% load or did it have some headroom with your apps? If there was a good bit of headroom, then the i5 should be good enough. If not, there's the i7. Wander the Anandtech Bench to see the differences.
- Do you consider your MSI GTX 680 quiet enough for your uses?

Take a look at SPCR's review of Puget Systems' P183 V3 Serenity build to get a feel for what you can aim for. If you want Antec, the P183 V3 is a good choice. If you want a smaller case, the Solo II is a very quiet case. I like the Fractal Design Define R4 - see my signature for a recent build thread.

Mobo - Haswell uses Socket 1150. So, it'll be a Z87 series motherboard.

[Doodah1]

You don't list a sound card. You'll have to take that into consideration when choosing a motherboard.

In most cases, you're probably safe if you have a USB setup. But they're on USB 2 or 3. I don't know about how good the compatibility is if your interface is an older one. Firewire audio only seems work using a TI chip. It's get difficult to find boards with PCI slots and the ones that have them may actually be too slow for audio. I'm not up-to-speed on the situation either and I may be doing some shopping to retire an old system. There are a few PCI-e audio cards around.

Good luck.

[iowastate89]

Thx for the response, I will definitely check the cases.

Tough to say on CPU , I haven't stressed it on audio, but for my development tasks I'll sometimes run applications doing number crunching or whatever that will peg multiple cores for a while. I'll check out the differences however, good references; thanks again