Anyone who is experienced in these things, please look at this ( posting I have in the Computer section) and let me know if you see any issues or conflicts. I need to move on this right away and that section doesn’t get much traffic. Also posted for feedback in Gearslutz and KVR. Any other builder forums come to mind let me know. Thanks
Anyone care to offer feedback on these components ,I’d really appreciate it. Similar to a recent post but moving up to the I7-3930. Adding a cooler also.
Looks like a solid build to me. I’d check some reviews on that LIAN LI case, from what I’ve seen of LIAN LI is it’s budget stuff. Not necessarily a problem, but if accoustics are important you may want to look at a case that has dampers for the harddrives and silent fans.
The largest case you can get so you can work in it. Not sure about the SAndy Bridge as it had early issues that may be fixed now but also consider the newer Ivy Bridge.
Sound on Sound website and forum may be more help in this respect but in all other areas the build looks good to me.
Steve ,I’ve done a lot of reading over the last few months about core utilization but still no definitive real world answer.ADK has posted some great benchmarks and the 6core I7 3930 CPU does very well ,even when it’s not over locked. For me it’s a situation where I was laid off from a sales job of 14 years and a recording opportunity has landed in my lap. I just want to wow my clients when auditioning sounds and building their songs, just like I had to wow clients who were sometomes a bunch of jerks .I think some vsts are set for multi core utilization while others are yet to get there. I hope to be future proofed in this area as well as get a big boost on load times from the SSDs
Steve writes
"Ah, back to Mr M’s topic, but before stopping the hijacking "
All discussion in this area is relevant AFAIC. I’m going to have a computers under my studio desk. My current Dell is dead quiet. The new daw is a wildcard: hoping all the choices work out.
If you have a large enough case, things are a lot easier. I have used egg crate foam inside and it works wonders. Amazing really. I dry-mounted the foam inside. If you use any foam, make sure it is open cell for better absorption. And fans… toss the bushing type and go with ball bearing. Scythe makes great fans. I have 2x 120mm and they are soooo quiet. The stock setup was one 120mm brand: “Loud As Heck”
Also, if you haven’t thought if it, get one or 2 of these and install them in your external bays:
This makes backups very easy. Just insert your backup drive (no screws needed) to back up, pull the drive and there you go. It is a lot faster than firewire external boxes and cheap NAS devices.
I have a couple of these in all my computers. I always have 2 separate drives in them, all client material. When backup time comes, I pop one out, insert the backup drive then backup. Swap them back out then do the other drive. Just make sure you keep things labeled and replace the drives in the bay they came out of or Cubase will throw an error that the drive letter and file location has changed if you don’t. My backups take roughly 10-16 hours. I wonder if I can lower that somehow, but I use 1TB drives for client data and 2TB drives for backup. that are partitioned into 2 1TB partitions.
Get these too to store your backup drives in. Safe, secure and anti-static:
This site has good info on building quiet pc and a helpful forum
I’m very pleased with how quiet my two year old build came out.
Antec P182 case - sound insulation, bottom mount power supply, top and top back exhaust. Front inflow. Put in the quietest fans I could buy. Used a front panel fan controller the BIOS fan controller was lame. This is a negative pressure design i.e. the exhaust fans pull the air in. Thoroughly tracked down and sealed all air leaks, around the 5 1/4 drive bays mostly, so that all airflow is in through the filters. I did mount an input fan but I only turn it on when doing intense graphics, 3D rendering or video transcoding. A desktop gadget tracks CPU and video card temps. The fans are all mounted with stand off sound isolaters as are the disk drives. The Antec power supply is highly rated for efficiency and low noise.
Used a large aftermarket heat sink for the CPU. That one has a push/pull dual fan setup. Check out what’s available today.
The graphics card is an ASUS nVidia 550 with a copper heat sink and cooling pipes. It does have a fan but has a good built in temp sensor and fan speed controller.
With Cubase 5 I never need to turn the fans up and the PC is the quietest I’ve ever had.
