22 postsPage 2 of 2
1, 2
PreAl wroteEverybody has their own personal choices but from my perspective liquid cooling is more trouble than it's worth, and can be prone to accidents. PSU's and fans can be pretty quiet nowadays with SSD's that are silent, a good quiet case is also required (avoid glass).

In my view overclocking is a big no no with DAWs. Reliability should be the single most important factor, unless you also want to play Flight Simulator 2020 as well. Having a dedicated OS that only has DAW apps (and maybe video editing apps) really helps with stability and performance (so I go the multi OS/multi boot route).

It can be tempting to go mad with specs when you really don't need to (just how much horse power do you need for a DAW? You really need all those tracks and plugins running at once?). Having said that I got an i9 with 32gb, but then I like my Flight Simulator and video editing, plus it's great for software development (that's another multiboot OS).

And of course a decent backup strategy is compulsory along with a good deal of time spent optimizing the environment for latency and performance.

Anyway you have till late 2025 with Win 10. M$ may even extend it by another year if people get militant about it.


I agree 100%. The only thing with the liquid cooling is if you have a video card with fans they can kick in to high even if you are in DAW mode and be a problem with line noise and background noise while recording with a mic. With liquid cooling you have a single fan other than the PSU. I was also thinking of simply disabling the video card and using the C/GPU output when using my DAW.

I don't believe in overclocking period. If you want more speed, pay for it. Right now I have standard Kingston RAM in my i7 6700K rig. It doesn't even have a heatsink. I have never had a problem with Kingston RAM at work or at home. I've never had the CPU or case fan kick in above idle even when working with video.

I swear to all that's Holy that I will never put a stick of Corsair RAM in anything I own ever again. LOL! It has never been anything but a headache from the time I built PC's at work when I was forced to use it because it was cheap and even when I tried it in my own PC's. Their RAM and HDD's are the only things I've ever had go bad in any PC I've ever owned or wrenched on at work. Well, that and A drives. Hah. (Showing my age.).

As for DAW power, my i5 650 (or 750 can't remember now) did just fine for me. I decided to upgrade it when things went 64 bit and surprise surprise the Corsair HDD died without warning. I freeze everything as Cakewalk calls it or render to audio as Studio One calls it. I've never mixed with live instrument VST's running and even if I had the horsepower to load 50 live at once I wouldn't. It's just not a good way to work on songs during the mixing process.

As for the specs, that's the other thing that gets me. When I did benchmark comparisons my current CPU isn't all that much slower than current Gen CPU's that's why I have no problem going with a Gen 12 i5. Strictly talking framerate there is only a small percentage increase going from i5 to i9 and almost none from i5 to i7. It's not worth the extra money in my opinion for gaming and absolutely not for DAW work the way I work.

As for the dual boot thing, I've been burned by that before where something got corrupted and I couldn't get in to my DAW bootup and had to wipe my system. I've always been scared of doing that ever since but I should look in to it again. It's been a very long time since that happened. That said, the big differences between DAW and Gaming are in the BIOS setup. You want the core bursts and turbo mode and all that for Gaming and video but not for your DAW so wouldn't you have to go in to BIOS as well even with a dual boot or can that change BIOS setting too?

Shane

Intel i7 6700k || 16GB RAM || 2 x 250GB SSD's || Win 10 Pro || Presonus Studio One Pro 5.5 || Studio 1810c || Yamaha HS-80M's || ART Pro VLA II Compressor || ART Pro MPA II Reference Series Mic Pre || Blue Bluebird Mic || The usual misc. guitars.
User avatar
by PreAl on Fri Jan 28, 2022 6:02 pm
Bub wroteAs for the dual boot thing, I've been burned by that before where something got corrupted and I couldn't get in to my DAW bootup and had to wipe my system. I've always been scared of doing that ever since but I should look in to it again. It's been a very long time since that happened. That said, the big differences between DAW and Gaming are in the BIOS setup. You want the core bursts and turbo mode and all that for Gaming and video but not for your DAW so wouldn't you have to go in to BIOS as well even with a dual boot or can that change BIOS setting too?


Obviously backup backup and backup. I install Linux as a base operating system and use GRUB as a boot menu. It's pretty reliable... I've had some issues in the past, the advantage of Linux is that I can at least get access to the EFI partition for backup restore and repairs.

Windows requires a secondary BCD boot menu regardless (basic dual boot windows) and that works fine too. If I were just to use a BCD menu I would at least have a copy of Linux running on a USB stick in case I needed to access the EFI partition. I have one anyway.

I've got one copy of Ubuntu, 3 copies of windows 10 and MacOS Catalina running on one SSD. I really had to be careful about setting up partitions and installing OS's in the correct order, took some trial and error initially. Windows loves to delete files and folders within the EFI partition when installing, and sometimes requires repairing on initial setup of a new Windows OS, but once it's all up and running it's stable, even with windows upgrades.

Try QuickCPU to alter BIOS settings on startup.

Intel i9 9900K (Gigabyte Z390 DESIGNARE motherboard), 32GB RAM, EVGA Geforce 1070 (Nvidia drivers).
Dell Inspiron 7591 (2 in 1) 16Gb.
Studio One Pro 6.x, Windows 11 Pro 64 bit, also running it on Mac OS Catalina via dual boot (experimental).
Presonus Quantum 2626, Presonus Studio 26c, Focusrite Saffire Pro 40, Faderport Classic (1.45), Atom SQ, Atom Pad, Maschine Studio, Octapad SPD-30, Roland A300, a number of hardware synths.

22 postsPage 2 of 2
1, 2

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: jebbyslonar and 54 guests