I'm going to build a Nebula capable machine, I think I want it build around an i7 3930k six core. I got some preliminary ideas about components, but certainly not set in stone.

Case.................probably antec or something similar
CPU..................i7 3930k
Mobo.................gigabyte or asus
Memory...............32gb total
HDs or SSDs..........SSD system drive
Cooling solution.....water cooling, good idea?
PSU..................quiet

Machine needs to be fairly quiet.
I'm going for quality "bang for the buck" type components.
I would like it to be first and foremost a DAW capable of running NEBULA in a smooth manner, but also a decent HD video editing PC.
budget is 1000-2000$

Any component suggestions greatly appreciated.

Quote Elviz:

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Case.................probably antec or something similar

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Popular choice, but I find them too cramped too work in personally (I stress that last word).
My current prefered cases are the Coolermaster Sileo 500 or any of the Fractual Design range.

Quote Elviz:

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CPU..................i7 3930k

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Overclocking?

Quote Elviz:

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Mobo.................gigabyte or asus

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Both have great ranges at the moment. Choose a decent midrange one with the features you need, and try to avoid going for the ones with everything on if you don't need the extras as those all singing boards tend to have more issues with DPC and the such. Normally we find that a $100 - $150 will perform better for audio than a $300 board where you have to disable everything.

Quote Elviz:

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Memory...............32gb total

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As your X79 pick a board with two banks of memory (8 Slots total) rather than single bank (4 slot) revision. You'll probably never need more than 32GB but... well it's always nice to have the option.

Quote Elviz:

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HDs or SSDs..........SSD system drive

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It's a good time for it with recent price crashes. I'd point at something now, but the best value choice will probably have changed by lunchtime.

Quote Elviz:

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Cooling solution.....water cooling, good idea?

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Not really. Costs more, is noisier and has very minimal benefits over a good air cooler set up these days, unless your clocking the machine to within an inch of it's tolerances.

Spend some decent money on a pair of good quiet low RPM fans (Noctua/Sharkoon) for the front and back and fit a large tower cooler with a large slow cpu fan. Whilst you probably won't save a vast amount of money over a cheap water cooling setup it will be quieter, it perform around the same and the cash you have got left you can afford to buy some sound proofing and a drive anti-vibration box for your storage solution which will help the noise print of the box further.

Quote Elviz:

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PSU..................quiet

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Don't skimp. I prefer Enermax or Seasonic based designs but that said Seasonic rebadge their units for all sorts of other firms so it's worth reading up as the can be some bargins to be had.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Hi Pete, thanks for the reply.

I was thinking of the newer antec p280 which is 526mm x 231mm x 562mm
Is this the cooler master you were refering to? http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product.php?category_id=19&product_id= 2875

Yes I'm thinking a moderate overclock in the 4.0-4.5 range

If I was to go gigabyte, which mobo would you recommend for the 3930k?

Now about cooling, if I was to get a nivida cuda card to give Nebula a boost, what would my options be for fairly quiet cooling?

Quote Elviz:

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I was thinking of the newer antec p280 which is 526mm x 231mm x 562mm

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Ahh right. That one's a reasonable build as it's fairly open plan so by all means stick with it. It's the 1XX series I find annoying.

Quote Elviz:

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Is this the cooler master you were refering to? http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product.php?category_id=19&product_id= 2875

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Yeah, it's great for a small case. It does prove a bit tight for some coolers through, so that has to be considered in the build plan.

Quote:

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Yes I'm thinking a moderate overclock in the 4.0-4.5 range

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4.4ghz on air is quite easy and you'll get about 4.5 with a Corsair 80/100 or some such single loop cooling system but the fins on the rad are more tightly spaced and you need to add in more fans to get the pressure through it right. It means you you gain a bit of performance but at the cost of a higher noise profile. The other option is a proper loop and res solution but your looking at double the cost for maybe .2ghz increase and a load more fans.

Quote:

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If I was to go gigabyte, which mobo would you recommend for the 3930k?

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Thinking about it properly, I'd go with an Asus for that platform as the GB boards have been a bit more susceptable to a memory voltage controller issue that has been tipping up in certain situations. It affects all X79's but the GB's tend to be more fussy than most with it. Try and make sure that your memory is 1.35v rather than 1.5v to work around this. With the Asus one's just pick the one that matches your requirements as (unless you go with a gaming board like the Sabertooth) all pretty much built around the same controller chip options.

Quote:

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Now about cooling, if I was to get a nivida cuda card to give Nebula a boost, what would my options be for fairly quiet cooling?

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Will depend upon your final case choice but as a rough guide I would go with solutions from the following firms for the following solutions:

Case Fans = Sharkoon, Noctua, Fractual design
Heatsink/fan = Thermalright or Notura

The is of course other firms, but I'm fairly happy you could pick any of the range from any of those co's and be happy with the result. Generally if you pay more you'll get better performance with less noise, but I don't know where you want to draw a line with costs! Just as a note my preference at the moment is a Thermalright Archon cooler running in a Fractal Design XL which is a beast of a case as well as being a beast of a cooler. The case comes sound proofed and with some great fans in it and the cooler is running a 900rpm 150mm fan on it and will cool what with ease upto about 4.5ghz whilst remaining silent. To be honest if your overclocking that chip I'd go with something bigger than the Coolermaster I mentioned as it's a small case and that is a hot chip!

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

You mention "bang for the buck" in your OP. If the DAWbench numbers posted by Vin Curigliano at ADK are anything to go by, the 3960 isn't it (see link below).

At stock settings, it barely outpaces the (quad-core) 3820, whilst costing roughly twice as much.

It's easier to overclock the 3960, but doing so only gets you a ~40% performance boost (and remember it costs ~100% more).

And, as Pete points out, it's going to be hot, ergo, noisier to cool.

http://adkproaudio.com/benchmarks.cfm

"3960" above should read "3930".

@Pete, what would you recommend as a quiet cooling solution for an nvidia gtx card say around gtx 570 or so? Do you know how important those cuda cores are to acustica-audio's Nebula plugin?

@Johnsy, I probably should have been more clear, what I meant by ""quality "bang for the buck"" was the range somewhere between "bang for the buck" and super duper high end. I have seen scott's benchmarks, I think I want the extra two cores (as I'll also be using this PC for other things like HD video) of the 3930k, even if I could get more or less the same results with the cheaper 3820.

Quote Elviz:

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@Pete, what would you recommend as a quiet cooling solution for an nvidia gtx card say around gtx 570 or so? Do you know how important those cuda cores are to acustica-audio's Nebula plugin?

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Afraid I can't as I've never had a full hands on with Nebula. I just did a quick Google for "Nebula Cuda" and the is one or two posts where someone has tried testing it with extremely poor results, although he's using a Nvidia 250 card which admittedly was fairly low end even at launch.

Quiet cooling solutions? Well the thing is, is that anything powerful enough to have any kind of impact is going to require serious cooling so passives are right out of the window. The two that stick out in my mind would be the MSI Twin Frozer range and perhaps the Gigabyte Windforce series which should give you 560/570 options with some best noise profiles that you'll find in that performance range.

As for overall impact CUDA can have on workflow? I think I recall Martin W taking a look at CUDA clients a few years back when it came to market and if so (and Nebula was one of the applications on that list) hopefully he'll join us in the thread in due course to give his perspective.

From tech point of view through I have to ask are you already using Nebula heavily in your workload or is this something on the wishlist? CUDA was an interesting proposition when it launched but take up was slow due to it's single platform nature and developers kinda held off waiting for more development on the more platform agnostic OpenCL which in itself never got a firm grip on the marketplace. That coupled with a few large leaps in CPU tech in the meantime has kinda resulted in both solutions falling by the wayside and even Nvidia itself seems to have switched focus over to Tesla based solutions (hey, why sell one video card as a accelerator, when you can sell a rack full of them!!!) these days.

I suppose the point I've arriving slowly at here is if your looking to spend £250 on the card already for another reason or because you already use Nebula day to day and can't live without it then by all means go for it, but if your looking to buy the card in order to use Nebula with little previous experience of the client or with hopes of many more applications to come in the future, then I would spend a little time with client first and ensure your not putting a admittedly powerful but noisy card in there without need.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Cuda acceleration for nebula doesn't really work. It adds lots of latency and does very little (if anything) to improve performance on a modern i7 system. Buy a graphics card for games if you want but it's not worth messing around with Cuda.

@Pete, no I don't have Nebula yet. I'm probably just going to get a card that's good for HD editing, you think passively cooled cards are fast enough for that?

@Johnny, yeah that is also the impression I'm slowly getting. I saw a thread on the nebula forum where someone tested a cuda card, and it didn't seem to help the performance very much.

Quote Elviz:

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@Pete, no I don't have Nebula yet. I'm probably just going to get a card that's good for HD editing, you think passively cooled cards are fast enough for that?

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Most editing and rendoring is CPU based althrough it's still handy to have something with a bit of poke to keep it smooth whilst your working. Video editing as it happens is one market place where CUDA has made some decent inroads so probably worth checking to see what your package of choice can do in these regards (if your using anything Adobe related, your laughing). I think the only passives still out there now are 210/220/520/530 and those are all pretty lowend so perhaps I would look at the MSI Frozer at this point.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

That Frozer does look mighty nice, it doesn't even seem to be that noisy under load. I guess Twin Frozr III is the one to get, it's 7.7db quieter (than II I presume). What type of RAM would you recommend for a machine like this?

1600Mhz DDR 3 from your supplier of choice. All the branded memory (corsair/kingston etc...) tends to buy from the same ram pool anyhow so the isn't a lot in them. Samsung own brand tends to be a good choice if you can find it, but most of it gets rebadged or sold only to builders. Your probably best off just picking a widely regarded brand and going for the best warranty on it you can.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote Pete Kaine:

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As for overall impact CUDA can have on workflow? I think I recall Martin W taking a look at CUDA clients a few years back when it came to market and if so (and Nebula was one of the applications on that list) hopefully he'll join us in the thread in due course to give his perspective.

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Hi Elviz,

If you're not up to speed with Nebula you might like to have a read of my January 2012 review of Nebula 3.5, which in my opinion is a huge improvement over previous versions:

www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan12/articles/nebula.htm

Acustica Audio do now offer the entire Nebula 3 Pro engine running in CUDA format on most recent nVIDIA graphics cards, for those who want to offload some of the Engine’s processing overheads.

However, as far as I'm aware, this only currently benefits reverbs and some EQs and just like DSP hardware it also hikes up the total audio latency.

Personally I'd aim to run as many Nebula plug-ins as you can with native processing rather than complicating things by adding a possibly noisy nVidia card - there's plenty of advice on various working methods on the Acustica Audio forums:

www.acustica-audio.com/forum/index.php

Hope this helps!


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

@Martin, I read your article a few days ago, some good information. It sounds like a GTX 570 would be a good idea for me, since I'm also planing on doing HD video editing in Adobe. So that plus Nebula would make cuda worth it I think.

@Pete, what's the recommended hard disk configuration for a great DAW that also works as a good HD video edition machine? Also the MOBO BIOS post times are beginning to annoy me, do you know which board, ASUS or GIGABYTE, has the fastest post times?

Quote Elviz:

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@Pete, what's the recommended hard disk configuration for a great DAW that also works as a good HD video edition machine?

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Errr... Ok. Drive usage I don't think the is a perfect configuration, rather just what works for you and your workflow.

In the ideal world I would set up 3 drives:

C:/ SSD 240GB OS and Application install
D:/ & E:/ WD Black 1TB/2TB split in half with Sample banks (Kontact/EW etc) on the first half and the second half being used as back up/storage perhaps with my OS clones on it.
F:/ & G:/ first half I would load up with samples & second half I'd use as more storage.

For HD video I would :

C:/ SSD 240Gb OS and Installs
D:/ SSD 240GB Scratch drive for editing (to be flushed at the end of each project)
E:/ WD Black 1TB/2TB for video and project storage.
F:/ Backups etc...

So I suppose some combination of those or one of your own choosing depending on how you work and organize stuff.

Quote Elviz:

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Also the MOBO BIOS post times are beginning to annoy me, do you know which board, ASUS or GIGABYTE, has the fastest post times?

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Gigabyte tends to Ram cycle/Check for a longer period so Asus in that instance.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Thanks for your help Pete. I put this list together, are these parts ok in your opinion?


CASE
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/cases/m/935817247/search=antec+p280/ut=d 06a567888ea306f

PSU
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/power-supplies/SS-1050XM-Seasonic-Power- Supply-1050W-ATX-80PLUS-Apfc-Modular-Cabling/m941789645.html/search=Seasonic+x-1050/ut=d06 a567888ea306f
I went high on the wattage, since I would like to have the option of adding another gtx 570 in sli in a year or two when the prices come down, thereby doubling my graphics power for cheap, while I'm running the PC overclocked at around 4.5ghz. Also I can probably carry over the case and the PSU to my next build in three to five years.

MOBO
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/motherboards/m/977724938/search=P9X79/ut =d06a567888ea306f

MEMORY
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/printer-memory/m/932614713/search=Corsai r+Vengeance+32GB/ut=d06a567888ea306f
Is this good? Is it possble to leave 4 slots open if I wanted to upgrade to 64gb later?
http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_2011/P9X79/#MSL
This is their Qualified memory Vendor List. But haven't been updated since 2011.11.28

CPU
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/processors-retail-box/m/928223449/search =i7%2B3930k/ut=d06a567888ea306f

CPU COOLING
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/cooling-fans/m/978253909/search=Noctua+N H-D14+SE+2011/ut=d06a567888ea306f

GPU
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/video-cards/m/876435541/search=gtx%2B570 %2BTwin%2BFrozr%2BIII/ut=d06a567888ea306f

SSD
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/hard-drives-solid-state-drives/Crucial-2 56B-M4-25IN-SATA-6GB/m873907636.html/search=Crucial+Real+SSD+m4+256Gb+SATA3/ut=d06a567888e a306f

HDD
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/hard-drives-solid-state-drives/WD-CAVIAR -2TB-SATA-72K-35IN/m839550285.html/search=Western+Digital+2TB+SATA3+64Mb+Black/ut=d06a5678 88ea306f

I have a UAD1 pci card, that I want to add (not crucial, if it introduces trouble) Do you think I can have the UAD1 in the pci slot while a have two gtx 570s in the machine?

Finally can I drop an eight core in this 2011 socket, when they come out?

This would put the final price around 2200$, a bit higher than initially planned, but I think I want to go the extra mile. I'll probably order the parts in the beginning of next month because of the extra expense.

Thanks again Pete, you're the best!

Quote Elviz:

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CASE
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/cases/m/935817247/search=antec+p280/ut=d 06a567888ea306f

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It'll do the job, and it's you who has to look at it all day! I'm not a fan of Antec case design but you'll find loads of people that love them so if it floats your boat then go with it. You may have to budget for extra case fans as the stock antecs are not the quietest I've seen.

Quote Elviz:

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PSU
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/power-supplies/SS-1050XM-Seasonic-Power- Supply-1050W-ATX-80PLUS-Apfc-Modular-Cabling/m941789645.html/search=Seasonic+x-1050/ut=d06 a567888ea306f
I went high on the wattage, since I would like to have the option of adding another gtx 570 in sli in a year or two when the prices come down, thereby doubling my graphics power for cheap, while I'm running the PC overclocked at around 4.5ghz. Also I can probably carry over the case and the PSU to my next build in three to five years.

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I would personally never carry a PSU over between machines unless I was taking an aged high performer and slinging it a media center, that I didn't mind loosing for a few days in the even something went wrong. For overclocked and dual 570's running under full load your looking in the 900 - 1k ball park so your maths is right for this build, althrough bare in mind all electrical components deteriate and loose effiency over the life cycle so in three years time a 1050w psu might be only capable of putting out a lower percentage of that at a constant stable wattage on all lines. I've seen more than a couple of highend systems where someones done an upgrade (motherboard/cpu/memory) after 3 or 4 years with a PSU in there that should still meet their requirements only for it to blow out the board/cards when it gets powered on! The PSU itself is fine.

Quote Elviz:

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MOBO
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/motherboards/m/977724938/search=P9X79/ut =d06a567888ea306f

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I've used a few variants in that range, they tend to behave quite well.

Quote Elviz:

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MEMORY
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/printer-memory/m/932614713/search=Corsai r+Vengeance+32GB/ut=d06a567888ea306f
Is this good? Is it possble to leave 4 slots open if I wanted to upgrade to 64gb later?
http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_2011/P9X79/#MSL
This is their Qualified memory Vendor List. But haven't been updated since 2011.11.28

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QVL's tend to be fairly worthless these days as the memory batches change too fast. By the time they are published the exact batch of IC's and dimms on the sticks that were tested are long out of circulation.

X79 boards you want to be looking for 1.35v memory if you want to populate all 8 banks. Word of warning that whilst overclocking on those boards the jump from 4.4Ghz to 4.5Ghz requires a rather unhealthy voltage jump that when coupled with 1.5v or above memory will cause all sorts of heat caused issues that will be obscure enough to drive you absolutly insane. In fact you may have to drop the OC down a few notchs regardless if you populate all the slots, but lower voltage sticks with give you the best chance of getting the highest OC out of it.

Quote Elviz:

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CPU
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/processors-retail-box/m/928223449/search =i7%2B3930k/ut=d06a567888ea306f

CPU COOLING
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/cooling-fans/m/978253909/search=Noctua+N H-D14+SE+2011/ut=d06a567888ea306f

GPU
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/video-cards/m/876435541/search=gtx%2B570 %2BTwin%2BFrozr%2BIII/ut=d06a567888ea306f

SSD
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/hard-drives-solid-state-drives/Crucial-2 56B-M4-25IN-SATA-6GB/m873907636.html/search=Crucial+Real+SSD+m4+256Gb+SATA3/ut=d06a567888e a306f

HDD
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/hard-drives-solid-state-drives/WD-CAVIAR -2TB-SATA-72K-35IN/m839550285.html/search=Western+Digital+2TB+SATA3+64Mb+Black/ut=d06a5678 88ea306f

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All good

Quote Elviz:

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I have a UAD1 pci card, that I want to add (not crucial, if it introduces trouble) Do you think I can have the UAD1 in the pci slot while a have two gtx 570s in the machine?

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Not sure, you'll have to try it. The UAD's make some use of Nvidia chips on the cards for the processing and controlling process, and it's not unheard of for some revisions of the Nvidia drivers to get awkward with UAD's when the drivers go looking for muliple cards. That said it's been a few years since I've seen anyone try it in those combinations, so perhaps it's a long cured problem. Let me know how you get on!

Quote Elviz:

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Finally can I drop an eight core in this 2011 socket, when they come out?

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Not on the roadmap currently.

http://lenzfire.com/2011/10/intel-says-no-to-8-core-desktop-sandy-bridge-e -processors-46534/

The Xeon 8 cores are out and by all accounts from Vin's testing absolutly storming the benchmarks, althrough everytime I look at the price of them I balk.

Quote Elviz:

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This would put the final price around 2200$, a bit higher than initially planned, but I think I want to go the extra mile. I'll probably order the parts in the beginning of next month because of the extra expense.

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Sounds about right budget wise. Good luck!

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Thanks Pete, looks like everything is ready. I'm just a little confused about the memory. Could you point a link to 32gb of RAM you would recommend for this build? I would prefer to only populate 4 out of the 8 slots if possible.

A few changes to the preliminary list:

I'm going to get a ASUS GeForce GTX 670 Direct CU II 2 GB instead of the msi gtx 570 frozr. It's about 100$ more but it is better on so many levels, almost twice as fast, over 3 times the cuda cores, runs much cooler and draws much less power, 14watts idle/158watts load, 24dba idle/25dba load, measured at 100cm. Very impressive!

Also the CPU must be at least C2 stepping, which they probably are at the time I buy.

The C2's entered the supply chain back in late Jan, so they should be everywhere by this point.

Yeah, some of the Asus cards can be a good choice, althrough I've not had a hands on with that one before. The benchmarks and tests online look very promising through.

Memory wise... errr no I can't I've just realised that the still arn't any and we've either been running fully populated 64gig at 1.5v and not overclocking or only running 32G or with 4 slots loaded and overclocking. I can only see 1.35v on 2X4G packs currently listed, sorry!

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

@Pete, check out this LINK to see/hear how incredible quiet the asus card is (second video). It thoroughly beats all the other cards in low noise. The only thing I heard is that you have to be careful with the TOP version of the card, as some have had stability issues.

I also found out that the RAM needs to be low profile, as to not conflict with the noctura cpu cooler. About the RAM, is what you're saying that I need 1.35v if I want to overclock (in the 4.0 to 4.4 GHZ range) if I'm not overclocking 1.5v is fine? If so, wouldn't 4 sticks of this, http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Vengeance-Profile-PC3-12800-CML8GX3M2A1600C9 W/dp/B005DKZK84 moderatly overclocked, be ok for 32gb?

Thats the exact memory you want! It's still pretty rare in the channel so your lucky to find it, but yeah, that's the stuff.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Thanks Pete, I'll update this thread in about a month when I have the money for the build.

Hello!

I'm so glad I stumbled across this thread. I'm looking to do something very similar to the OP in relation to Nebula/HD editing, although it is more a case of upgrading my setup rather than getting a complete new build.

Firstly, here are my system specs as things stand -

Mainboard: Asus P6X58D-E
Chipset: Intel X58
Processor: Intel Core i7 960 @ 3200 MHz
Memory: 12288 MB (3 x 4096 DDR3-SDRAM )
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 210
Hard Disk: Western Digital WD800AAJS-22L7A0 ATA Device (80GB)
Hard Disk: Seagate ST325062 0AS SCSI Disk Device (250GB)
DVD-Rom Drive: HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30
Monitor Type: Philips PHILIPS 107B4 - 15 inches
OS: Windows 7 Professional Professional Media Center (64-bit)

There are various things I need to get (including a new monitor for HD editing) which I won't go into here, but it terms of the important stuff, I was thinking -

Video Card: GTX460 - has some CUDA support I think, so maybe useful for the reverbs etc. that Martin talks about above...
HD: I was thinking a WD Black 1 Terabyte for data. Do I really need a SSD drive for Nebula/HD?
CPU Cooler (I have the stock cooler at present, and I doubt it'll be able to cope with Nebula/HD stuff
Perhaps faster/more memory.

So really, in reference to Nebula (I'm aware that you have to render/freeze trks, and at the moment there is no way around this) would that be a decent enough system for Nebula to work well? Although, I'm not sure which version to go with just yet - the Pro or the Server edition. I'm thinking that the (local) server edition enables you to slave some of the CPU load off somehow/somewhere...outside of say Cubase. Or something. I don't really understand it that well yet.

Regarding HD, I'll be shooting with a GH2 using the AVCHD codec, so hopefully the above should be enough for that.

Thanks in advance for any input. Particularly like to hear from Martin, as I know (I've seen him on the Nebula forums ) he has an extensive knowledge of working with Nebula.

Thanks again,

Chris

Quote russianpolecat:

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HD: I was thinking a WD Black 1 Terabyte for data. Do I really need a SSD drive for Nebula/HD?

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Absolutely you do! Have you ever loaded a Nebula preset? Takes forever on a standard drive. SSDs are cheap enough now you can pretty much do everything on them other than backup / general storage.

Really? I guess so then. I'm looking to get Nebula in a couple of weeks - never tried it. To clarify, do you mean an SSD for the OS? Because the Nebula libraries themselves are huuuuuuuuuge are they not (if you've got loads of consoles etc.) .

Thanks!

Quote russianpolecat:

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Really? I guess so then. I'm looking to get Nebula in a couple of weeks - never tried it. To clarify, do you mean an SSD for the OS? Because the Nebula libraries themselves are huuuuuuuuuge are they not (if you've got loads of consoles etc.) .

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No they aren't that big, mine is just over 10gb. Not too much out of a 256gb disk. I leave a lot of libraries on the OS disk (ones which I want to load up super fast).

Quote johnny h:

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No they aren't that big, mine is just over 10gb. Not too much out of a 256gb disk.

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Agreed - I've got absolutely LOADS of Nebula libraries installed on my PC, and the total dent in my hard drive is still only just under 27GB.

To be honest, I also find it counter productive to have too many installed, as you can get bogged down in choices

Sometimes restraint can be the order of the day


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

Yeah, thanks Martin. Now that I've got Nebula, I can see that 30 - 40 gigs should be more than enough.

Chris

Remember also that the bigger the libraries the longer they will take to load, and beyond a certain time this can get frustrating.

Beware of getting hooked on some of the 192kHz Nebula libraries if you want to remain sane

Even if you run them at 44.kHz their loading time will get even longer due to the added conversion time


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

Quote Martin Walker:

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Remember also that the bigger the libraries the longer they will take to load, and beyond a certain time this can get frustrating.

Beware of getting hooked on some of the 192kHz Nebula libraries if you want to remain sane

Even if you run them at 44.kHz their loading time will get even longer due to the added conversion time

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Bare in mind getting a SSD is a real game changer in how a computer functions. Scrolling through Nebula presets or large sample libraries is mind numbing tedium on a mechanical drive. In terms of how a computer feels, its the most important upgrade to get.

Agreed - an SSD can indeed be a game changer, especially with Nebula


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

Yes, I'm going to order one next week and do a fresh OS install. Will it help with Asio do you think or is it just a case of improving workflow times?

Mostly with the loading time of larger projects - I doubt that you'll be able to notice (or indeed measure) any improvements with your ASIO drivers unless you are already approaching the maximum number of simultaneous audio tracks or streaming sample voices that your hard drives can manage.


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

So the machine is finally finished, everything is running very smooth, snappy and quiet. The only thing that irritates me is the PSU fan on the seasonic which seems to be running all the time. Not that it's noisy, but it's louder than both the asus gtx 670 and the cpu, go figure. Anyone know how to slow it down? (this happens both when the PC is running normal and over-clocked via the TPU switch)

One lame thing about the plain Asus p9x79 is the fact that it doesn't have a USB3 header on the board, I knew this before buying the board but wanted to save the money, so I'll have to run the cable for the USB3 ports on the front of the Antec p280 case to the back USB3 ports once I order a special cable. Other than that, an awesome machine.

The DPC lantecy is running at a nice low 20-50us.

Pete, the Memory frequency in the Bios is set to 1373MHz, shouldn't I set that at 1648MHz since it's 1600 DDR3 RAM?

Quote Elviz:

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So the machine is finally finished, everything is running very smooth, snappy and quiet. The only thing that irritates me is the PSU fan on the seasonic which seems to be running all the time. Not that it's noisy, but it's louder than both the asus gtx 670 and the cpu, go figure. Anyone know how to slow it down? (this happens both when the PC is running normal and over-clocked via the TPU switch)

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Which PSU did you go with in the end? If it was the Seasonic 1050 you indicated before, have you tried changing the cooling mode via the switch?

http://www.seasonicusa.com/NEW_X-series_1050-1250.htm

Quote:

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One lame thing about the plain Asus p9x79 is the fact that it doesn't have a USB3 header on the board, I knew this before buying the board but wanted to save the money, so I'll have to run the cable for the USB3 ports on the front of the Antec p280 case to the back USB3 ports once I order a special cable. Other than that, an awesome machine.

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You can get a 1X PCI card with a USB 3 header for the front panel for about 15/20 quid.

Quote:

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Pete, the Memory frequency in the Bios is set to 1373MHz, shouldn't I set that at 1648MHz since it's 1600 DDR3 RAM?

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TPU will have downclocked the ram when it overclocked the multiplier for the FSB. The RAM will probably only be able to manage about 1620Mhz at best with this type of overclocking, so the TPU drops the multipler ratio in order to get more perfromance out of the CPU. I'd leave it if its currently stable, the extra CPU performance will probably be worth more to you than the extra speed on the RAM.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Yes it is the Seasonic 1050. I am aware of the extra switch and what it does, but it doesn't seem to make a difference what position it's in. The PSU fan will be off for the first 4 minutes after cold start then it will come on, but when it does it will be spinning fast and a bit too noisy for my taste. Before it comes on the system is dead quiet. The PSU is cold when you touch it so I don't see how heat could be an issue. DO you know if there is anything in windows7 64bit or the asus p9x79 bios that could affect this fan?

I might do the 1X PCI card with a USB 3 header, but do you think it would work to pull a special cable from the antec280 usb3 header cable to the usb3 ports on the back of the case?

Hmmm....

Having given up trying to make head or tail of the 3 lines written about the psu power/cooling profiles in the manual (cheers Seasonic) I've moved onto the SPCR review. Have a read of this page to see how it should be behaving and to give you some background before I continue:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1239-page5.html

So hybrid or normal mode. Well your spec will be pulling somewhere around 300W so the SPCR suggested 200w load before the fan kicks in means that it won't make much difference either way but perhaps normal mode might be better to prevent fan rev'in up and down... either way the indication is that you shouldn't be experiencing more than 16db of noise under 590w and the is no way on earth (unless you've snuck in a high gfx card as well) that you'll be hitting those lofty hights on a DAW.

So all said and done whilst the maybe a gentle (and I mean gentle) whisper level purr in the background if you put your ear next to it, you shouldn't however be hearing it to the extent you appear to be in usage at your normal working position.

It does indicate that it has thermal control on those units rather than via a voltage control (first thing I thought was the control cable was't connected, but he isn't one at all) and you've indicated its running cool. So I'm tempted to say that perhaps the is a problem with the tempture measurement diode causing it to ramp up full pelt when it shouldn't be.

Why have I jumped to that conclusion? Well the isn't anything in the bios or in windows that should impact this as the isn't any bios control over it as far as I can tell. As mentioned the is no board connector to control the psu, and the doesn't appear to be anything to load measure on the board side and the psu manual doesn't indicate that it does it internally either.

It claims it shouldn't spin up to full until it clears the 600w mark and whilst it indicates that it doesn't load read in the psu but works off thermals, the temps I'd expect at 600w to trigger this internally would be hot enough that you'd feel it when you touch the PSU and you've indicated it doesn't really get warm.

So best guess is that the temp diode in the PSU could be playing up and causing it to go from zero to full whack when it gets a little warm. I could be very wrong, but its only thing that ticks the boxes I can think of right now and its a hard one to work out without the system sat in front of me.

And yes the cable will work. The card will be more tidy and won't take up one of the rear ports like the cable will, but either way of doing it is valid.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote Johnsy:

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You mention "bang for the buck" in your OP. If the DAWbench numbers posted by Vin Curigliano at ADK are anything to go by, the 3960 isn't it (see link below).

At stock settings, it barely outpaces the (quad-core) 3820, whilst costing roughly twice as much.

It's easier to overclock the 3960, but doing so only gets you a ~40% performance boost (and remember it costs ~100% more).

And, as Pete points out, it's going to be hot, ergo, noisier to cool.

http://adkproaudio.com/benchmarks.cfm

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Just noticed this up top as I read back through.

I didn't see that in testing and Vin @ AAIVM hasn't tested the 3820's AFAIK. My own benches puts the 3820 around the same level as the 3770 + 10% and 20% behind the 3930. I've raised this with Scott (ADK) and he mentioned he was going to do a re-test as one of his staffers had run the benchmarks and as we were/are all in the process of updating from the old to new tests the was a margin of error in that the new one appears to be scaling diferently from the older one. I was looking at doing a retest with the new extended tests going back a generation or two but time so far hasn't permitted it.