Single core performance or total performance?

Oodles of cores and OCing - best of both worlds!

it makes sense from a purely practical standpoint- i need to finish off projects to a deadline, and they had been started using a 32bit version of cubase, and 32bit plugins. the increased CPU horsepower lets me do that quicker / with more processing. as soon as i get time off to fine tune a x64 system i can make the switch (which is about a weeks’ worth project in itself). i made the comment however because there is a lot of misconception among daw users who either attribute too much importance to the amount of RAM installed, or to processor speeds vs DAW stablity (whilst they still use x86 software).

I clocked that machine now to 3.8 GHz and it can run 12 (!!) voices of u-he Diva in “divine” quality.

Thats far beyond what I expected even in my wildest dreams. CPU doesn’t get hotter than 66°C on air cooling (with a huge cooler), so I may try pushing the envelope a bit further. 4.0 GHz, possibly?

Stock voltage is what I want. I don’t want to kill that EUR 500,- CPU via electromigration in a few months.

Edit:

Just added two FX channels (all Diva instances sending there) with 2caudio B2… still works without hiccups (using ASIO guard, of course… doesn’t work without).

256 samples of latency.

This machine is a beast. :smiley:

I told ya it would rock!

FYI you are very safe with a .2v increase 4.4-4.5GHz all day long!

How hot can I go safely?

@ 4.2 GHz (stock voltage, not fully stable) I get around 71°C.

i am getting ~52°C @ 4.3GHz (no water cooling or anything).

as far as safe goes, i read something about 90, but i wouldn’t want to go that high up for sure.

Have you thought about using a self contained liquid CPU cooler?

Their advantages are:

a) Replaces a big lump of metal that places a lot of stress on the middle of the motherboard with a small puck.
With normal heatsinks, I certainly wouldn’t want to jar the case too much or the heatsink might come loose or crack the motherboard. They are usually only braced at their very bottom with their centre of gravity (CoG) well away from their mounting, especially with tower cases where the CoG isn’t even over the mount points.

b) Takes the heat from the CPU directly to the outside, rather than having one or more fans on the CPU heatsink throwing heat into the case, which then needs another fan to draw it out of the case.

c) Self-contained and zero-maintenance, unlike the daisy-chain piping and reservoir needed for full integrated water-cooling solutions. With the latter, I always worry what would happen if a pipe came loose because of damage or improper fitting during assembly, let alone how one adds new components into an existing piping route!

d) Some, like the Zalman I bought, actually throw some cool air on components near to the rear-mounted fan/hat-exchanger block, so it cools the rear memory sockets and bridge chip on the Asus motherboard.


Some gamers have even bought separate ones for their graphics cards. Certainly, I could just take the fan off my new N750OC video card, and use a CPU cooler, but it runs pretty cool as is.

Absolutely what I thought, too, Patanjali.

I was watercooling for years, but couldn’t manage to get my loop stable so I switched to air this time. What I’m considering now is a Corsair H100i, but I need a different case for this one, and I really have to find out what I want first, before I start this “project”.

On a sidenote: I’m running 4.0 GHz now, stable, with my “custom built” burn in test for Cubase (Diva + Aether orgy). Stable, not more than 71°C. I like it.

Why Intel doesn’t put the stock clock higher puzzles me. May be “ignorant user” issues (those guys who think that stock coolers are any good) or a question of yield.

When it comes to me all I can say is: 4.0 GHz at stock voltage seem to be fine. A solid 17.6% overclock. Perfectly reflected in Passmark as well.

Interestingly, the guy at the computer shop, who sold me the Scythe Mugen 4 I use as a temporay solution told me that customer built watercooling has falling out of favor and the closed systems you mentioned are the way to go nowadays.

i’m using this guy, apart from keeping the cpu @ around 50-55 with a 30% oveclock, it’s super silent: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608024

Just ordered a new case and that Corsair H100i. Let’s see what my malaysian i7 can do.

all new processors have thermal shut down you cant fry them…
low 80s are acceptable
I do not like the Corsair water coolers I prefer the Zalman

+1. But then I just selected on spec, though I did look at a video review of mine.

Might just have to add a new video card required as well, at least for every two mb upgrades.

I had some older video cards (nVidia and AMD based) with which I kept getting video card failed + recovered messages, even with the latest drivers.

However, I recently bought a current nVidia 750 based card so I could use my new 4K TV and the messages have disappeared.

May as well just buy a new computer without drives each time and swap them over from the old system!

Just found this article, since I am also in the process of building a new DAW. My current system is running on an i7-920 and performancewise it is close to the Phenom II x 4. How much performance boost did you get from the 4930K vs the Phenom II?

I am still debating between the 4790K vs 5930K.

A lot… with the (air cooling based right now) overclocking of 4.1 GHz I use at the moment (until I fixed my Aquaduct based loop), it’s seriously a lot.

Projects I could hardly open at 2048 samples buffer size on the Phenom I can now easily run at 128 or even 64 samples and still have processing power left for even adding more tracks.

I have this “rethinking aesthetics.cpr” - file (a song I wrote myself, as usual directly into Cubase). On my Phenom II it stuttered at 2048 samples, on my slightly overclocked 4930k I’m in the process of recording the guitar solo parts @ 128 samples with about 65% of ASIO load.

That is amazing. Did you build your DAW yourself? If I would be living in the US I would definitely buy it from Jim at studiocat, but they don’t ship to Germany.

Yes, I did.

I’m not entirely done yet building it… the watercooling is still missing, also I need an additional USB 3.0 pinheader and a fan controller - and I decided to add two more fans to the top of the case to push more air with less noise through the case, but I’d say that this incarnation of my DAW is about 80% done. Today I ordered the last bits (the fan controller and the USB 3.0 PCIe card), it should be done in a few days.

Are you running Cubase on Win 7 or Win 8? Thinking of keeping Win 7-64-Bit on my next build.

Windows 8.1 Professional 64 Bit… And very satisfied.

If you want no latency get a console. a small little console yields no latency. go for the cores.