Re: Suggestions for new PC

Agharta wrote:I've seen plenty of reviews showing that the 140W TDP i9 parts are capable of consuming much more power than that at stock speeds and when over-clocked the power consumption jumps dramatically.
Seemingly gone are the days of medium range over-clocks that don't push the power consumption too much.
Here is one review:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-core-i9-7900x-skylake-x,review-33922-10.html
As I say, it's improved over time as the chips and firmware support has improved. The problem at launch is that most people (reviewers and us builders) get very little time to test and optimize pre-launch, Normally 10 - 14 days would be seen as an absolute win, although in the case of that last launch it was more like 5 - 10 days if you were lucky!
In an ideal world, we'd all get plenty of time to tweak and test our overclocks and even stock settings. I realised after launch that the settings both advised to me by Intel and the tweaking I did prior to launch, didn't take it quite as far as it would go voltage wise. Since then I've found myself able to bring the core voltages down a bit more where we can and the average temps I'm seeing have certainly improved.
We expect to see changes to the BIos auto & default settings too over the first few months and this tends to translate into improved temps too.
For instance, on the launch chips I was seeing a 140w at stock idle raising to 160w under load and maybe 170w post minor overclock.
The i9's were more like 165w idle, 175w pushed and 190w minor overclock.
I think myself (and most other people I spoke to pre-launch) were running about 10% higher voltage wise than we'd use on the current chips, if only because the first few batches wouldn't overclock without it but that has improved over time, bringing the temps down along with it.
On top of that these chips use a poor quality thermal compound under the heat-spreader which means the temperatures are higher than they need be which negatively impacts the ability to cool them quietly whilst keeping temps in check.
I was interested this week to see a news site delid and replaced the TIM on one of AMDS and the was no thermal difference. Here's to hoping that Intel pay attention...
I do wonder how relevant most CPU reviews are for DAW usage in terms of power usage and temps.
Well, maxing out your ASIO, should pretty much fully load your CPU too in a perfect scenario. Running a CPU torture test should at least give you a worst case scenario, although you'd rarely if ever hit it.
Usually it seems to be video encoding software is used when testing power consumption which typically can load all threads fully and continually leading to figures which I think a DAW will struggle to match as the load tends to have more peaks and troughs which leads to lower average power consumption and temps.
Yeah, that would be the perfect scenario! :)
On top of that some of this video software uses AVX instructions which pushes the chip much harder than most.
My early testing on the i9's was avx based and it melted the system. I had a long conversation with a few developers who laughed at my concern regarding AVX and audio. So, my concern was lessened by those chaps, and to be fair I've had zero negative feedback with AVX issues since launch.
Pete, have you done any testing of DAW power consumption?
I'll do it in general when loadtesting with AIDA or OCCT, but I haven't done a daw specific test with it for quite a few years.
mozart999uk wrote: Happy to discuss here (as long as no personal deats :lol: ) as it might be of interest to some of the others...or we can carry on via PM / email
That was my concern, I wasn't sure if you'd have the invoice details or would only have the linked personal details. Well located!
I'm still using the dark power PSU's, although the newer version, with the improved fan, so that should be fine.
The noise levels on the cooler (bequiet) and the ARchon you have there are similar too, so also shouldn't be a concern.
Case fans on yours are the Fractal basic model that ships with it. Reasonable noise levels with them, but not overly efficient. I'd certainly look to upgrade them for an i9 build, as they won't hold up to shifting that much heat.
Depending on the chip you go with, the two options I'm going with currently are:
Bequiet Silent WIngs 3 (same as the PSU)
Nanoxia N.N.V
I use the Bequiets up to around the entry level i9. Above that, I use the N.v.v's.
The Bequiets are quieter in general and move a fair amount of air.
The N.V.V's are about as loud as your current Fractals but easily shift twice as much air, so preferred for cases that need to vent efficiently.