Building New PC--Should I Wait for Coffee Lake?

[TheWholeDamnZoo]

I'm about to build a new PC. Does anyone here have an opinion on whether I should go with the i7-7700k or wait for the Coffee Lake i7-8700k? It should be out in a few days, I think, so it's not really the wait time that's an issue, but more that it's a completely new product that would also require a new motherboard, both of which haven't been sufficiently battle-tested in the market. Is it safe to assume that it will be as good as advertised? (and also worth the price difference? Although the ~$85 difference is not a huge deal for what will be my main workstation for the next several years)

[miyaru]

A tough one..... Battle tested, mmmmmm. Everytime you buy a new CPU, the next week the follow up will come around. Not that fast anymore but still. I bought the i7-7700 a few month back, and cpu wise, I'm very happy with it. I don't now what you intend to do with it, but it is prettty powerfull.

The Prime Z270 series MOBO from Asus for the i7-7700(k) are very good and stable.

The adventurious me says buy the new one, but workstationwise I would say the 7700(k), altough I'm not fond of overclocking.......

[jestermgee]

I don't think it will make a lick of difference with Live.

[TheWholeDamnZoo]

Thanks, miyaru and jestermgee. Tbh, even though I've been reading about this quite a bit lately, I'm still not sure how single core speeds, multi core speeds, and overclocking relate to what I'm doing in Live. I just know that I've had some minor CPU issues with my current CPU (i5-3450) on relatively modestly-sized projects, mostly because I like to experiment with layering heavily processed synth (also, whenever I use third party plugins they seem to take up a lot more processing power than the stock Live plugins), so I'd like to have a CPU that could handle these things rather easily even in big projects. Any further thoughts on this?

[jestermgee]

also, whenever I use third party plugins they seem to take up a lot more processing power than the stock Live plugins

That will almost always be the case since some of them use large amounts of DSP/effects within them.

When you are talking multi-core speeds of 3+Ghz then a few extra cycles makes no difference (or little difference) and in many cases, doing some proper computer management to make use of the power you have works better.

- First, make sure you disable ALL power saving features in Windows and set the CPU to run at Max power
- Close anything that is not Live that the computer does not need to run. This goes for your chrome browser, you can browse facebook later.
- Ensure you have the latest audio drivers installed and play around with the buffer settings to get the best latency/performance ballance.
- Upgrade HDD to SSD for larger sample based VSTs and try and run both Live and your VSTs from SSD
- Disable unused audio interfaces if you (hopefully) have an external audio interface.

Beyond that you can upgrade to a more powerful system. I can't even compare those chips you posted, I build typically based on going for the second or 3rd most powerful processor on the market as that is where the power/price point is best. If you don't completely rule out everything else you could be $2k in the hole and right back here with the exact same issue again though.

[chaibuka]

http://techreport.com/review/32642/inte ... eviewed/14

[TheWholeDamnZoo]

http://techreport.com/review/32642/inte ... eviewed/14

Awesome. Thank you!

[Khazul]

Hmm - extra 2 cores? Might be worth waiting for if thats an extra couple of cores for the same price. Of course it might be that you can the fastest 4 core kaby i7 for the price of a medium speed coffee 6 core in which case perhpas get a kaby lake.

My obvious practical concern would be having to deal with a new chip set and the usual flakey bios that seems to accompany each new chip set at launch. They are usually fine for gamers right from the start, but for audio workstations they can be a glitchy nightmare for many weeks to months. Another reason I only tend to trust Apple more for bleeding edge audio computers and only tend to use PC for audio work when they have been through several bios updates (ie months after launch).

[chaibuka]

http://www.scanproaudio.info/2017/10/05 ... injection/