Ableton Forum

Hello, I'm looking to build a PC and have about 3000$ to do it.
Can anyone give me some tips or insights into important points for
what this daw needs to thrive? Here's what I'm thinking so far.

item 1 CPU- Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor
item 2 Fan- Noctua NH-U14S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler
item 3 Board- Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
item 4 Memory- G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3000
item 5 Storage- Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
item 6 Storage- Samsung 850 EVO 2TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
item 7 Video Card- EVGA GeForce GTX 960 2GB SuperSC ACX 2.0+
item 8 Power Supply- SeaSonic 660W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX
item 9 OS- Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit

I have similar specs on my PC and I am able to run about 15 instances of Serum before I have to start freezing.

Get one of those Razor laptops that Deadmau5 is pimping. Nothing says serum and bangers more than Deadmau5.

beats me wrote:Get one of those Razor laptops that Deadmau5 is pimping. Nothing says serum and bangers more than Deadmau5.

I agree. Plus you'll save a couple grand also

For home studio build a tower, for portable go for a Surface Pro 3. I bought an ADK laptop 4 years ago and while it still kicks ass I would rather have 2 rigs since the fan noise can be heard through my mic. With a tower you can shove it out of the way and have more desk space. For a portable Dj rig a Surface is more than adequate.

For $3k you should try and get more ram though, for storage I dont think you want to use a solid state drive for samples as writing to them kills them faster, unless I'm behind on the tech. Besides, going with a fast HDD would save you a lot of money which you could use for other stuff.

Just my .02 cents

mekanism1200 wrote:For $3k you should try and get more ram though, for storage I dont think you want to use a solid state drive for samples as writing to them kills them faster, unless I'm behind on the tech. Besides, going with a fast HDD would save you a lot of money which you could use for other stuff.

Could you recommend a memory and hard drive?

And are you saying not to use an ssd at all? Do I need multiple hard drives like one for sounds and patches and whatever and one for live and my OS?

The max memory depends on the board, you have to check that Asus board to see what that is, and usually Asus hasa recommended list for memory. What I meant was using 2 or more drives but only using a SSD for your OS and programs, with an HDD for sample storage. For a HDD use a 10k rpm drive with high cache and you should be good. Since you have a larger budget you could even go with a RAID setup to either get faster read/write speeds or for reliability where half the data gets stored on each drive so if one fails you just replace the bad one and you get your files back fast.

mekanism1200 wrote: For $3k you should try and get more ram though, for storage I dont think you want to use a solid state drive for samples as writing to them kills them faster, unless I'm behind on the tech. Besides, going with a fast HDD would save you a lot of money which you could use for other stuff.

Just my .02 cents

32G of ram is more than ample, hell 16G ram would be sufficient in most cases for audio.

I think you are a little behind the times in respect to "killing" an SSD. Using an SSD to store a sample library is much better than a mechanical drive as its only reading the data. Even recording samples is simply a small amount of data compared to say video editing. And you are also not constantly writing then re-writing the data.

Modern SSD drives use some fancy logic to fragment the data over the whole SSD array so they never write in the same space constantly like a HDD typically does. It's designed to evenly distribute write data over the whole drive. I installed a small SSD in my media center 6 years ago and that is used every single day and never an issue. Get a good brand and you should be fine for years (just always make backups).

Everything else there looks just fine for a decent powered rig.

these threads make me feel like a cave man still using a six years old i7 (see signature)
which never gives me an issue -but still, i realize that i won't be able to use it another 6 years as a main studio machine.

störgeräusche wrote:these threads make me feel like a cave man still using a six years old i7 (see signature)
which never gives me an issue -but still, i realize that i won't be able to use it another 6 years as a main studio machine.

If you don't use Serum, you are a caveman.

maxkibler wrote:And are you saying not to use an ssd at all? Do I need multiple hard drives like one for sounds and patches and whatever and one for live and my OS?

Nah, get the SSD. Unless you're constantly reading/writing 24/7, it will easily last until you need to upgrade. SSD technology has improved dramatically in the last few years.

That being said, don't forget to budget in another $200 for a backup drive. This can be a spinning drive in an external case. Or if you're cool, a NAS.

jestermgee wrote:

mekanism1200 wrote: For $3k you should try and get more ram though, for storage I dont think you want to use a solid state drive for samples as writing to them kills them faster, unless I'm behind on the tech. Besides, going with a fast HDD would save you a lot of money which you could use for other stuff.

Just my .02 cents

32G of ram is more than ample, hell 16G ram would be sufficient in most cases for audio.

I think you are a little behind the times in respect to "killing" an SSD. Using an SSD to store a sample library is much better than a mechanical drive as its only reading the data. Even recording samples is simply a small amount of data compared to say video editing. And you are also not constantly writing then re-writing the data.

Modern SSD drives use some fancy logic to fragment the data over the whole SSD array so they never write in the same space constantly like a HDD typically does. It's designed to evenly distribute write data over the whole drive. I installed a small SSD in my media center 6 years ago and that is used every single day and never an issue. Get a good brand and you should be fine for years (just always make backups).

Everything else there looks just fine for a decent powered rig.

Yeah I thought I wasnt up to date on the SSD tech.

16Gb of ram is not enough, I frequently max mine out with larger projects unless I turn everything else off that uses ram. 64gb would be what I recommend for some future proofing.

hacktheplanet wrote:

maxkibler wrote:And are you saying not to use an ssd at all? Do I need multiple hard drives like one for sounds and patches and whatever and one for live and my OS?

Nah, get the SSD. Unless you're constantly reading/writing 24/7, it will easily last until you need to upgrade. SSD technology has improved dramatically in the last few years.

That being said, don't forget to budget in another $200 for a backup drive. This can be a spinning drive in an external case. Or if you're cool, a NAS.

Could you recommend an ssd to use instead of that 2tb one I feel like that might be overkill and it's over 600$.

Also does anyone have any tips for making a computer as quiet as possible? Case, fan rpm etc

I'm thinking of switching out the noctua for this https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Extreme- ... sgogeek-20 liquid cooled fan whatever