New build Intel i9 10900k on Asus Maximus XII Hero Wi-Fi

For 2020 this is one of the best systems for audio, if not the best.
Everything worked right out of the box, and great for Nuendo 10.3.

I was debating between Intel and AMD for the last year, and I saw a few unhappy cases
on the AMD camp, so I abandoned the Ryzen 3950X and chose the Intel i9 10900k build instead.

After several battles with Nuendo 10.3 in Windows 7, which is no longer supported by Steinberg,
the new Intel i9 10 series system is solid in my studio, and I am relaxed, instead of “Ctrl Save” every minute
because of crashes. So far not a single crash after 2 studio sessions of test runs.

System specs:
Intel i9 10900k
Evo 970 Pro NVMe M.2 1 TB
Z490 motherboard Asus Maximus XII Hero Wi-Fi
64GB DDR4 RAM 3200MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX
Noctua Cooler HD15 double fan
Corsair case Carbide 678C
4 Noctua A14 iPPC-3000 PWM fans
NVIDIA GTX 760 2GB RAM- older card but works fine for audio
Power supply EVGA 1200 Watts 80+ Platinum (overkill but I plan a GPU card upgrade)
Triple monitors Asus 32"
UAD 1 PCI bridged with StarTech PCI Express to PCI card
RME HDSP Hammerfall 52 Channels ADAT, bridged with StarTech PCI Express to PCI card

You can barely hear if system is on or off because of the Noctua fans slow RPM.

Full system power at idle, except monitors- 130 Watts. Maximum draw 300 Watts.

I hope this helps anyone planning a build.
John

EDIT: RAM Cache III, a feature in the Asus Maximus XII motherboard, creates a RAM cache disk
(mine is set at 4GB) that allows Nuendo 10.3 to start much faster. Interesting and exciting.

Some nerdy facts:
This is not for civilians- army only:

. System reboot with no software, from “Restart” to “Windows Sound” 19 seconds
. System reboot with Nuendo 10.3 all all audio and plugins software installed from “Restart” to “Windows Sound” 39 seconds
. Nuendo 10.3 Start to Hub first time around- 14 seconds,
. Nuendo 10.3 Start second time around- 11 seconds
. Nuendo 10.3 quit first time without loading a project- 6 seconds
. Nuendo 10.3 quit without loading a project, second time around 3 seconds

. CPU temperature at idle 29°C degrees, with 23.5°C degrees ambient.
. CPU max temp while in Nuendo 10.3 with a 40 track project with many native plugins, UAD 1 jBridged 32Bit plugins,
and Waves plugins 42°C
. Motherboard temperature- steady 28°C
. Cinebench R20 performance test, all Cores at 100% at 5.1GH 75°C
. 40 track project minimum latency with 32 buffer on RME, 0.8ms latency - AMAZING, but:

Here I have to play a toggle On and Off inconsistent game with Asio Guard, because if not the CPU will redline.
Toggling the Asio Guard On and Off will quiet down the CPU spikes. But 32 sample buffers is excellent, even though
I prefer 64 on large projects.
On the previous Windows 7 with my Intel i7 3770k, I had the sample buffer size mostly at 256 or 512.

So far, after several sessions and system fine tuning no crashes no issues, but of course some old Nuendo bugs are still there.
However, no show stoppers.

This is the first time that I see the DPI display in Nuendo 10.3, and it is very nice indeed, however, I have no clue yet as
to how to change the color of the super bright Inactive Top Windows’ bars. Also, I miss the Top Transparent bars from Windows 7.

Now I am building a very large Master template, with around 300 tracks to start, with my short 30 years of experience in
Nuendo, Cubase VST and SX, and Steinberg Pro24.
Importing tracks and track settings from previous successful projects, specially difficult to tame live drums and other instruments.

I am very pleased with the Intel system overall, even though it took me over one year of homework to put it together.

Thx :+1:

cryrileg you have an i7 4770k, mine was an i7 3770k. I’m just curious what motherboard are you using?

Asus z97a
What is the price of your new system?

Here in Canada, using Amazon and Canada Computers, $3200 and I used the same video card and storage
drives (26TB all total).

Did you build this yourself?

Yes, building my own since the 90s. Might as well after 4 years of studying electronics engineering.

Awesome :slight_smile:

This is an old thread, I just upgraded my DAW to 10850K with 32GB RAM and 2 NVMe drives 1TB each.
no video card, I like intel built in graphics, no nvidia drivers to deal with, although latest studio driver for nvidia cards are not bad at all. This is with cubase 11 Pro, I must say, I can literally run hundreds of NI instances and the 10 core 20 threads CPU scales like I have never seen before. it loads all threads, more utilization higher the buffer, but we are talking relatively low buffer settings… (256/512)… Amazing CPU and Z490 Asus chipset is Amazing.

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