I currently have a custom PC I built many years ago. It is based on an Intel Core I7-4790K CPU and 32GB of RAM. Unfortunately this system is now starting to show its age and is struggling with some of my newer projects.
I produce many Dance, EDM and Trance music and I am finding some of my new vst’s such as Serum and Ozone are stressing my system to the point where they are unusable.
I have decided I need a new PC and I can’t decide on whether to go the Intel Ultra 9 285 CPU route or go with AMD Ryzen 9 9950X.
I have read lots of online forums and there are varying opinions on the various cpus but the Intel does seem the best in the bench marks I have seen, I am just worried about the issues Intel has had with its recent CPU’s and would just like some opinions from the community here to find out your experiences with the AMD’s and Intels as upgrading aint cheap anymore and dont want to end up with a PC not fit for purpose.
The Ryzen 7 9700X I have works perfectly fine. More importantly, apparently Intel are still struggling somewhat (and are expected to continue struggling for a year or two more, at least!)
Definitely AMD if you can, I got the 5950X with 64GB of RAM, barely breaks a sweat (30-40% max) with 20-30 VSTs including Kontakt with various FX plugins plus many audio channels.
I thought of upgrading to the 9950X last year, but I really see no need. Been also running the Usual Suspects emulations, no issues with them either, ran, managed to run around 25 JE-8086’s (dual layer patch) without a hitch. RAM prices are crazy at the moment though, so get as much as you can afford, 48-64GB is plenty with headroom for the near future but that will likely cost as much, if not, more than the CPU!
NVME for OS drive and apps/VSTs, and another for your Kontakt libraries and any VSTs like Nexus, makes a massive difference!
I can’t speak for the current AMD stuff as I had very bad experiences with AMD on two or three different systems years ago, so I’ve stuck with Intel since.
As for recent experience, my previous (Windows 10) system is one I built about 11 years ago, based on i7 5280K and 16 GB DDR4 RAM (ASUS X99-Deluxe motherboard), and it had been showing its age on the performance front. I generally work at 96 kHz, so that may have been part of adding to the “old system challenges”. I recently upgraded to Core Ultra 9 285K with 64 GB DDR5 RAM (ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI LGA 1851 ATX motherboard) for my Windows 11 system, and I have to say it’s been night and day. That upgrade also involved going from SATA SSDs to M.2. NVME SSDs for my system and audio drives (I’ve kept the SATA SSD for my libraries drive) and going from an NVidia GeForce GTX 1050 2 GB graphics card to an NVidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G graphics card. Suffice it to say I haven’t run into any limitations yet, and I’ve been pushing it WAY harder than I could even hope to push the older system.
Bought 8TB of NVME when it was cheap. I have my libraries on NVME, and projects/audio on SATA. That improved my workflow. Big sampled instruments can be completely loaded in an instant. For audio/projects, I don’t notice an improvement going from SATA to NVME. Maybe if you have lots of ARA edits?
To return to the subject, I have been using an Intel 13700k for a couple of years. Set to sane values, it’s plenty powerful and silent.
