Why isn't my computer flying?

Hi all

I built my own PC after researching components that many people are using in their audio computers.

I have an i7 6800K overclocked at 38MHz, which is watercooled, sitting on an ASUS X99 Deluxe II; 64Gb Gskill 3200MHz RAM and ASUS 1080 GTX Strix.
My samples are on 1Tb EVO SSDs and I record to 7200rpm HDDs. I have Cubase Pro 9.0.20 installed on my OS SSD. I have done BIOS and Windows 10 optimisations as outlined by Steinberg and still my PC seems to struggle. The BIOS and drivers for the cards are the latest ones. I ran Latencymon for over two hours and it stayed in the green.

I read an article on Scan Pro Audio Intel i9 7900X First Look | Scan Pro Audio which is about the new i9 7900X. They used Dawbench to put it through it’s paces and found it flies in comparison to my 6800K. In the article, it shows a Dawbench polycount for the 6800K of 1680 at a buffer setting of 256. I thought mine would be similar but I was shocked when mine struggled to hit a measly 220. There must be something I am doing drastically wrong for there to be such a huge discrepency between Scan’s figures and mine. I’m flumoxed!!

Any ideas?

If 38MHz is a true statement, then that is your problem! Are you sure you don’t mean 3800MHz, or 3.8GHz?

I remember when no computer could clock as fast as 38MHz.
H

if I’m correct its the chipset that really helps

do some research in that area

I might be wrong as I read it once a while ago

I want to run Cubase on Server 2012 R2 and I’m researching that idea now :slight_smile: 196gigs of ram 4 - 20core processors

You’re probably not going to like this answer, but when it comes to building DAW PCs I think it’s not just a matter of putting together a bunch of components that should work … it’s also the skill, experience and (let’s face it) sheer luck of getting a combination that really works well.

This is also not what you’ll want to hear, but my personal philosophy for audio computers is:

– bigger is not always better for audio
– never overclock anything
– never be a “first adopter”

So, for example, my most recent build is an i5 6600 (because it’s enough for me) Z170 (I was actually too early on that, but the latest BIOS has ironed things out) and everything runs at stock speed, does not require cooling and is completely silent. I don’t play games but if I did, this wouldn’t be the computer I’d use, so I recommend deciding whether you want a DAW, or a gaming computer.

Following on from that, Cubase doesn’t need much graphics power, so try removing the 1080 and using the Intel graphics instead, and doing a clean install straight to Windows 10 1703.

PS My first music computer was clocked at 2Mhz. I could only dream of 38Mhz … :mrgreen: