How to build an Audio PC: Part 2 - Choosing components

[Music] hello I'm dr. Vincent and welcome to lots of music technology today we're gonna build an audio PC oh yes a note about specifications now this is just one of those things time marches on and technology changes there's no way that I can give you a list of specs in order to build now because in a couple of months it'll probably be completely obsolete as Intel releases something new and technology moves on and it changes however I have found in my years of experience that there are a certain amount of consistencies that you can depend upon so although I'm going to be talking about particular chipsets and particular processes those sorts of things are less important than the general ideas that I'm trying to get across because when you go to buy your bits and pieces you might find that the chipset I used the motherboard that I use no longer exists and you're gonna have to go for something else so it's no good me saying buy this motherboard I have to rather get across to you the type of motherboard that you're going to need the sort of things you need to look for when purchasing your bits and pieces so I'm not going to give you a spec list I mean I can list the spec of the machine that I'm going to build that's fine but as I say that will be obsolete relatively quickly I imagine because there's this general sort of 18 months cycle with Intel and the system I'm gonna be building today is getting on towards the end of that cycle but there's a lot to be said for using a technology which has been around a little while and one of those tensions we get when using computer technology you don't necessarily want to have the absolute latest the absolute cliff edge kind of cutting technology you want to have something that's been around a little while because it's more likely to work there's revisions all of the time coming out all the time to improve motherboards to improve stability so you don't want the beta bios you want the release number for release number five you want to have something which is going to be stable and good and one in which you know the bugs have already been ironed out that's always going to be helpful so don't get hung up on the specs don't get hung up on the specs of what I'm going to be talking about try to take away the general ideas of what I'm gonna say about it and that should absolutely help you make the right decision right so rather than talk about a list of specs you never look at those in the description I'm gonna grab all of the bits and pieces and then we can talk about the choices that I made here we are here's all the stuff with which I'm going to build my audio PC I think it's important to stress at this point that the idea behind an audio PC is one of quality and that means looking for quality components all the bits inside have to be of a decent level of quality otherwise you're kind of defeating yourself sure sure you can build yourself a cheap PC but then it's going to operate kind of in a cheap way it might be fine don't get me wrong could be brilliant you might have built a PC for a hundred quid and it's fantastic well done good job but are you really going to leave those sorts of things a chance you have to make sure that what's inside your computer is gonna be stable and of high quality and is gonna last you five to 10 years because that's what we're after after at least five years out of the computer and so high quality is a must and that tends to mean brands that tends to mean brands like Samsung like Corsair like EVGA like Intel of course like a sous or gigabyte brands like that because that comes with it a certain amount of assurance or certain amounts of quality control they will have return procedures so there's something is broken something is wrong you can return it and get something back they will have the support lines all of these factors are important when building a computer if you want it to have a you know a trouble-free experience so everything I've got here is is good high quality not necessarily the highest either you can spend as much as you like but there's no real need to as long as you aim high with good quality bits and pieces those aren't going to serve you well and as a rough estimate to build a half decent audio PC you'll probably need to spend a grand about a thousand pounds whatever it is in your currency if you want to build an absolutely awesome computer like this one actually is going to be then you're probably going to need to spend about 2 grand it depends I mean a 1,000 pound computer built like this it's gonna be fantastic two thousand pound one it's just gonna be wider and bigger and deeper and quicker that's it you have to judge these things on your budget and whatever your budget says that's going to be an awesome computer for you and for what you can do if you have more money just means as I say it gets wider and deeper and faster but all of these choices will ultimately give you a computer that can run music software and that's what we want so let's start with the motherboard then this is probably know who I see that say I was going to say no it's the most important component they're all important they all contribute they all have a role to play within the system but you have to start off with the motherboard because it's in which everything else sits now what I've got here is a motherboard from a sous-sous is a very respected motherboard making company another one is a gigabyte they tend to be the two companies that I would I would recommend I've used a sous boards now for a long long time every now and again I use a gigabyte one if there's some change or some difference which means that there wasn't an AC solution available and in all respects both of those platforms tend to do really well in the audio PC world now words of caution the biggest PC building part of the industry is all about gamers all about gamers building these massive crazy overclocked rigs and that's fine and so the industry as a whole caters to them because us specialist builders building for creative purposes a tiny weeny weeny part of the market so nobody really cares about us very much but they care about gamers so when you go onto the ESU's website you'll find stacks and stacks of stacks and motherboards called gaming this gaming that or you know fortnight this or shoot there or explosions or super overclocked something something or other and that's all fine but those sorts of things are a little bit unnecessary if you dig around on the website you should find a karma range of motherboards and that's what we want because we don't want bells and whistles we want good solid stability and performance we don't need overclocking which I'll come to in a bit we don't need special integrated audio or special integrated this now the other or super we don't need anything that's super we want good hard-working stuff and for a soos they have a range called prime and prime tends to be their more standard stuff now which motherboards should you get and that really invites the question as to which chipset because motherboards are based on particular chipsets chipsets designed that are on here the chipset is on the motherboard designed to running in and out and runs with a particular type of processor now generally speaking as I say these things change but generally speaking this is going to be the hardest part to get across is the motherboard and processor connection and how that works in a world out there that maybe after these have already disappeared generally speaking with Intel processors there's a number of different ranges I mean they confuse a hello everyone by calling everything an i5 or an i7 or an i3 because it's completely false it makes every processor sound like it's the same when there are distinct categories and levels of processor so at the most basic level there are two levels of motherboard and processors that interest us you can of course go as cheap as you like down the bottom end of stuff that's fine however what I would recommend is that you aim for desktop and you aim for workstation you got desktop and desktop generally means good mainstream systems that means they're talking about a chip set called the z3 90 and that chipset runs with the desktop mainstream y7 and i-5 and now I 9 processes the current range of processors that refers to are called coffee lake now none of this makes any sense I appreciate that none of this makes any sense however what we have to see is that you have a desktop system which is the mainstream system that's a good starting point for an audio PC you want to look at getting a z3 90 chips with a desktop i7 or I nine processor which are also currently called coffee lake now these specs of course are going to change so what you probably need to look for is an Intel z chipset because that number beside it will change and then an i7 and an i-9 processor which goes along with that how you match those up is in terms of how big the socket is on the motherboard this socket here because this is of a certain size and it could only compatible with certain processes and so on the z3 17 years new 1151 size socket and that's only compatible with the 1151 processes see no one's ever going to understand this stuff best thing to do it's a talk to your computer shop talk to your supplier and say I want a desktop system one that runs a good stable Asus board and a good stable i7 or i9 processor that's what you want to do then there's a level up there's a level up from that which is what I'm building today and that's called the workstation level at workstations you're tending to have more expensive motherboards of the put into high working environments rather than the desktop which is aimed at being the home PC the office PC the middle of the roads PC which can still make an awesome audio PC but with workstation you're looking at that next step up currently the chipset for that is the x2 9 9 and the processors which go along with that are the i7 + i9 skylake x-series is never gonna get you anywhere all right so let's boil this back down that's what I'm gonna be doing today I'm making I'm using an asus prime x2 99 motherboard and I'm gonna plug into it a core I line processor a skylake X processor now those things as I say these specs become unimportant really quickly so just to summarize again for an audio PC you either want a desktop system desktop system with i7 i9 or a workstation system with i7 I 9 their stock systems tend to be good mainstream performers workstation systems will be that step up higher bigger performers let's have a closer look at this motherboard what are we after on a motherboard we are after an ATX motherboard that is this size you can do it smaller you can have micro ATX or nano ATX or whatever you like however ATX is the good standard size it's going to mean that you'll be putting it in a good standard case which in terms of air flow in terms of noise which is something we'll talk about more in a minute that's going to be advantageous the other thing is that in within this size board there's no compromises nothing been miniaturized in order to make that fit onto a smaller board it has the biggest amount of bandwidth you can run through the PCI slots and it has the greatest amount of RAM that can put on it also has the most ports for drives and bits and pieces so a good standard ATX board is what you need and all that's important on this thing doesn't have to be scary processor goes here power supply goes in there memory goes into these slots hard drives go into these slots and if you have any cards which you don't really have them anymore except for the video card perhaps and they would go into these slots here the other current consideration at the moment is thunderbolt now if you want to put thunderbolt into your system you have to have a motherboard that supports it this may change internal already trying to integrate thunderbolt into the processor itself and that should hopefully make that a lot more available but currently you have to add it on as a card but you can only add it on as a card if your motherboard already supports it so you need to look into that first and it will have a port on it somewhere which says that you can plug thunderbolt into it and it's thunderbolt compatible on the back you will get audio which we don't care about you'll get USB sockets doesn't matter if they're USB a b c d g whatever it doesn't matter it will be compatible with whatever your audio is as long as it has USB 2 then it's going to be compatible with the majority of audio interfaces they'll have a network port which is great because that's always going to win over Wi-Fi and we do all know that we do need to be connected to the internet in order to authorize your shop where and you plug into the download updates that kind of thing now if you'd bought into the desktop level of things we'd say a Zed 390 motherboard then that's also going to have video outputs on here video ports HDMI that kind of thing because in those desktop processors you have an entire graphics engine built in to those processors on the higher level workstation side of things you do not you have to have a separate video card which is what we're going to be doing today without getting into the specifics and the specifics are down in the description then it's really hard to get across the general idea of what you're after but hopefully my rambling enough about it I'll show you what it's about so the next factor to go along with it is the processor now for this this is a flippin awesome processor it's a Core i 9 it's a I 9 9 9 oo X 3.5 gigahertz yeah there's a whole load of cause in here it's going to be flippin amazing don't have to have the biggest processor in the world processor needs to be one of the things that you absolutely factor into your budget because the more and larger and faster processor you have the more plugins you can run it's kind of that simple the more polyphony you're getting your virtual instruments and the more your system will just be able to handle so the processor is a fundamental part of your audio PC and that's the thing you need a direct your money out more than anything else because although you can of course upgrade down the line you can change your processor the likelihood is that you won't because by the time you've got to the point where you quite like to upgrade your processor say four years down the line that processor will no longer be available so you can't so it's always important to aim high and get the biggest fastest fastest processor you possibly can now the processor has to match your motherboard has to be the same thing so you see on here this says 206 6lg ato 206 6 that's the form factor of this processor and so the motherboard has to have a socket that matches that LGA 2 a 6 6 if you're doing a desktop system then it will be LGA 1151 currently that of course may change but provided that they are the same than they should be compatible again the place you get it from should be arrow answer those questions if you have any next up then is memory in this system I'm sticking in 128 gigabytes I know 28 gigabytes there's an enormous amount now I would ever need 128 gigabytes but that's what's going in this fella now I would recommend on any system an absolute minimum of 8 gigabytes of memory 8 gigabytes of RAM RAM memory same thing ok this out of here and we get this out of here ok sticks of RAM RAM looks like this I've got I'll have eight of them four aside because on the workstation platform is actually a a quad system with a memory you put four in either side and that runs with the processor again you need to get the RAM that matches your system your motherboard will tell you what sort of RAM that it takes and so by Ram that's appropriate to that now Corsair Vengeance Ram is excellent aim for a good brand and don't buy their value stuff by the decent stuff the stuff that's got heat sinks on it go for good quality Ram now the only question that really comes up is what speed ram because rams are all sorts of different speeds these time now with an audio PC you are not looking to overclock because overclocking can it can introduce instability we don't want that don't want instability so we're not looking to overclock we want to run everything fairly standard so the sort of speed you want is going to be a fairly standard end so you don't want their fastest round they possibly do you want something like two six six six round or two 400 round something along those lines when you look at what your motherboard is compatible with look at the bottom end of the speeds that it's compatible with because that'll be the non overclocked speed and that's going to be what you want so remember we're making sensible choices good high quality choices choices that are going to make sure that our system is as stable and high performance as possible but stability needs to have a higher emphasis than performance because you can have a super SuperDuper fast computer but if Cubase is falling over if Pro Tools is crashing if your virtual instruments are Wiggin out then that that powers of no use to you has to be stable stability is the key I know the major factor in your build is going to be the power supply power supply these are enormous enormous things but they are vitally vitally important and it's the one area that people often skimp on and you shouldn't because the power going into your system is one of those things which is most likely to cause it to trip up to reset - crash - freeze to not work properly is going to be an underpowered power supply so what should you do well there's tons of people out there who tell you all sorts of interesting fascinating technical details about power supplies really I'm not that interested what I have found over the years is that you just aim high you aim to spend somewhere between 80 and 100 quid you aim to get a power supply that has around 650 watts to spend and if it has a color associated with it go for a gold or platinum one don't go for a bronze one or one that's not rated at all go for one which has a rating of gold because that means that the quality and the tolerance within the power supply is as high as possible and that means you'll get uninterrupted flow of power you'll get no fluctuations it won't go up and down and won't cause any resets or any problems and it will feed and fuel all of the bits you put in your system including lots and lots and lots of drives there are calculators out there where you can stick in all your components it will tell you what sort of wattage your computer needs but they tend to be on the conservative side and actually you are always going to need more than you think and it's safer to give yourself a bit of headroom and a bit of a buffer so a 600 watt a 650 700 even or a Barb if you're building some twin CPU monster but generally speaking for a good quality safe stable absolutely awesome system 650 watt gold power supply from someone like EVGA or be quiet or Corsair or something like that it's gonna be ideal for SSD drives SSD drives always get an SSD drive as your system drive I'll go into drive configurations later on in the build but for the moment when you're buying stuff by one SSD drive at the very least which is the one on which you will be running windows because that will massively improve the performance of your system as a whole I really like Samsung the evo range has been excellent all the way along and they just keep getting better and better and bigger and cheaper they have a pro range by all means go for that but I found the general mainstream eva range to be excellent mechanical hard drive remedies yeah what we still use them because we have a lot of samples to store we have a lot of audio and video to store so mechanical hard drives are still very much a thing the best you can get usually Western Digital these four terabyte ones are flippin awesome amazing now spindle speeds and it all sounds very boring but it's important if you are streaming samples if you are recording audio then you want high spindle speeds what does that mean it's the rpm number so if you buy a mechanical hard drive you'll have an RPM like 5 400 or 7200 you want 7 200 every time don't be tempted by the slightly cheaper 5 400 ones so for instance with the Western Digital ones they have different ranges they have a blue range and a green range you don't want those you want the black range the black ranges are 1700 ones I've also got a Seagate Barracuda one here as well which are also decent they're a bit more mainstream they seem to do the job well although they've got more confusing of late because their Barracuda range used to all be 7200 and now they seem to have change and so they're different things so you have to look very carefully at the specs to make sure that it's a 1,700 Drive very important cooling cooling is very important which is also going to be a big factor of the case and we'll talk more about this during the build but it's very important to get a really good cooler do not ever use the stock Intel coolers no don't ever use them spend a few quick you know forty quid and buy yourself a proper decent active cooling solution what does that mean it means it's an immersive heatsink like this is there's no picture on the box unfortunately really a massive heatsink with a couple of fans on and that's going to draw the heat off the processor and keep it cool and keep it stable that's what you want nice big fat huge hing sink large fans that keeps the noise down and it keeps the cooling up this is a great brand Noctua excellent all of this stuff is excellent I can highly recommend it the only thing you need to check is that this is compatible with your motherboard and is also the right size to fit inside your case finally the graphics card now shouldn't really matter so much with an audio PC you're not looking to run games necessarily although you may want to there's not any particular issues involved with graphics cards these days if you're building a proper computer with a good decent motherboard then graphics cards are not going to upset your system one way or another generally speaking I tend to go for graphics cards which are low powered or lower end of things simply because they are quieter they they are not running such high-end GPUs and so don't need all the cooling and so they either don't have fans at all if they do have fans then they are slow running and quiet and that's what you want so get a video card that suits what it is you want to do suits what monitors that you've got and be aware that the higher you go up the noisier they are going to get so this one here is a gtx 1050 I think it's got a single fan on it it's very very quiet does the job finally just a word on the case don't skimp on the case you can buy cases for 15 quid that's fine but don't spend a hundred quid on it why would you spend that well because you'll get a better quality case better quality in terms of materials that it's made from better quality in terms of the day airflow and so the efficiency of your system and also that has a massive impact on the noise and cooling of your system there are some great cases out there you're gonna have ones that look bonkers and crazy flashing lights and stuff if you wish windows in the side all that kind of rigmarole or just get something good and understated it's going to be made of a decent metal with decent acoustic stuff inside and it's going to give you the room to work again if you're trying to do all of this on a micro ATX board or a nano board or something like that then you're not going to have much room to work and air is not going to have much room to go in the heat will have nowhere to go nice big case an ATX case is going to fit everything in well gonna have room to work you better cool things in and out very easily and it's gonna make your life a whole lot easier so don't get a 20 quid plastic case get a decent one again aluminium one get one that's gonna look really nice in the environment that you're putting in now I appreciate that this appears complex but I've tried to give as much information as I can in order to help you as best as possible I think to run over these things really quickly would just leave you more confused and so I hope spending time a little bit on these and I'm going to talk about these more as we install them I hope those sorts of things are helpful but if you want a really quick summary of all of that when buying your list for an audio computer choose quality brands make sure your processor matches your motherboard there tends to be two levels there's a workstation level which is for high-end computers and that will give you the best performance and there's a desktop level which will give you great mainstream performance and both of those will work get high quality memory get high quality drives don't skimp on the power supply get a decent one of around six hundred and fifty watts that's at least gold get yourself a decent big fat cooler for the processor and don't worry so much about the graphics card get what you need and be mindful that the more powerful the graphics card the louder it's going to be

Channel: Molten Music Technology

Views: 53,340

Keywords: DAW, audio, PC, Audio PC, components

Id: OqrBsC8ueZI

Length: 26min 38sec (1598 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 19 2019