Non-gaming PC question

[dani72]

I'm looking at buying a new PC as my current one is 7 years old. I don't use my PC for gaming. Most of what I do involves music as I'm a bedroom DJ and I mess around with Acid Music Studio. I also do some basic video editing.

My question is about cases. A lot of the cases available here seem to be gaming ones. Would that be a problem for me? Do they have special features that would be wasted on me? Can anyone recommend a good case for a high spec (i7 6900k, at least 32g ram) PC? I read reviews of some of the cases that weren't entirely positive.

My other question is around graphics cards. I know I don't need a powerful card but I don't want to go too cheap as I do watch & edit videos. Is there a minimum spec I should go for?

Also is 64g ram every really necessary or would it be overkill? I have quite a high budget but ideally I'd like to keep it under €3,000 and don't want to waste money unnecessarily.

Any help on the above would be appreciated.

 

[Oussebon]

A case that says 'gaming' is also perfectly viable for non-gaming uses. It's just plastic and metal to hold the bits together after all It's just a marketing thing I think, perhaps 'gaming' cases are more likely to have LEDs in the fans that light up like a spaceship - but there's no hard and fast rule. The Fractal R5 is a decent case for most uses including yours.

An i7 6900k is (as you will have seen) incredibly expensive. While I guess you've already checked, as I'm not familiar with Acid Music Studio I'll ask if you're sure it takes advantage of all those cores and threads? If it doesn't, a CPU with fewer but stronger cores (e.g. 6700k) might actually perform better.

As for graphics cards, what video editing software do you use? Some software can't use gpu acceleration so there's not much point to having an expensive one at all if there's not gaming being done.

As for RAM, it depends again on the demands of Acid Music Studio, but for 'basic' video editing 32gb is likely to be more than enough.

 

[dani72]

As for graphics cards, what video editing software do you use? Some software can't use gpu acceleration so there's not much point to having an expensive one at all if there's not gaming being done.

Thanks for all the info. I mostly use Microsoft Movie Maker & Nero Video.

 

[Oussebon]

From googling, Nero Video does seem to make use of GPU accelerated encoding. http://www.nero.com/eng/support/ (system requirements section) though I can't tell you how much benefit, whether it prefers CUDA to AMD's GPUs, or what.
There are google results from 2014 discussing a problem where GPU acceleration for Nvidia cards apparently stopped working for some users, but this seems answered on the above webpage with this remark:

• For Nvidia Cuda enabled graphics cards below series 600 make sure to install a driver version before version 340.43

So it's likely a non-issue for new PCs these days as we're several families of GPU on from that now.

 

[dani72]

An i7 6900k is (as you will have seen) incredibly expensive. While I guess you've already checked, as I'm not familiar with Acid Music Studio I'll ask if you're sure it takes advantage of all those cores and threads? If it doesn't, a CPU with fewer but stronger cores (e.g. 6700k) might actually perform better.

Thanks for all your help. One question on the above. Would the i7-6850k be a good choice? It has less cores so might be more suitable. I was hoping to get an as up-to-date processor as possible because this is going to be a PC to last me a long time. The 6700k was released last year whereas the 6850k was released in Q2 of this year.

 

[Oussebon]

i7-6900k be a good choice? It has less cores so might be more suitable

Less cores than what? The i7 6900k is an 8 core CPU with 16 threads, which is a lot.

While it's more recently released than the 6700k it's not inherently better. They're CPUs for very different tasks, and have different architectures.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1729?vs=1543
So in multithreaded benchmarks the 6900k obviously does a lot better. But in apps that depend on strong single threaded performance, the 6700k smashes it despite being cheaper.

If you don't know whether your software makes use of all those cores and threads you should really find out before spending £100s more on something that might actually perform worse.
You might try asking here: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/showtopics.asp?forumid=1

I know nothing about music or digital music creation but downloaded and installed ACID Xpress 7 and the trial of ACID Studio 10. As you can see from my sig I have an i7 3770k, which is a 4 core CPU with 8 threads just like the 6700k but several years older (and slower). It seems there are two situations where multiple cores can be used - 1) rendering the music and 2) playing the music with upto 2 seconds buffered in advance. I set it to the max 2 seconds and here's what I found:

Acid Express playing back sample project "let them stare" with 10 tracks (max 2 second buffer used):

(Note that the biggest spike right at the start there is due to me opening task manager, not playing the music)

I then rendered a music project twice (one of the sample ones called "storm warning" with about 16 tracks to it?) in ACID Studio 10, first as a 96,000Hz 24bit Stereo FLAC file, then after as a 192,000Hz 24 bit Mono PCM (AIFF). These represent the two clusters in activity in the chart below.



So it seems it didn't make use of all logical cores (i7 quad core has 8 logical cores due to hyperthreading) despite the help file stating that:

Select this check box and drag the Track buffering slider if you want to adjust
the amount of audio that is prerendered ahead of the cursor position.

When the check box is selected, a separate processing
thread is used to render audio from tracks. On multiprocessor or multicore
computers, a thread will be created for each logical processor.

When the check box is cleared, a single processing
thread is used to render audio from tracks and busses.

And there being more than sufficient tracks for each to be assigned to a different thread.

It also doesn't seem to distribute the load very well across the 4 cores anyway during rendering (note the sharper spikes on the first core), which suggests (to my admittedly inexpert view) that it benefits from stronger per-core performance rather than necessarily benefitting from more cores. It's possible that it only distributes threads to physical cores, or that it just doesn't really take advantage of more than 4 cores anyway.

The 37 second clip to 13 seconds to render in the AIFF format.

If you want to compare what a music project render time is like on your PC vs mine I'd happily give that a go if the file was available to download.

It looks like even an older i7 quad core finds this pretty trivial to run though. You can see how little of a care my CPU and RAM seemed to have running it. :/

Hope this is of some interest anyway.

 

[dani72]

Less cores than what? The i7 6900k is an 8 core CPU with 16 threads, which is a lot.

Wow thanks for the detailed response, you've been extremely helpful.

What I meant re. the above was that the i7-6850 has less cores (six) then the i7-6900k (eight) and is about €500 cheaper so might be more suitable. I guess from what you're saying the extra cores are pointless for what I use my PC for.

I also found this online: http://wccftech.com/intel-kaby-lake-q3-2016-cannonlake-2017/ It looks like the i7-6700k is going to be updated later this year so maybe if I wait until then I could get a bang up-to-date processer that still suits my needs.

 

[dani72]

Is this the right spec for me?

I'm buying a new PC and I want to make sure I get the right specs. I wont be playing any games on it. I'll be mostly using it for DJ mixing (with Mixmeister) and video editing (with Windows Movie Maker & Nero Video). I also mess around with Acid Music Studio some times and I use Goldwave a fair bit. This is my potential spec:

Case
FRACTAL DEFINE R5 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Six Core i7-6850K (3.6GHz @ MAX 4.3GHz)
Motherboard
ASUS® RAMPAGE V EXTREME/U3.1: E-ATX, USB 3.0, SATA 6 GB/s
Memory (RAM)
64GB HyperX PREDATOR QUAD-DDR4 3000MHz X.M.P (4 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 960 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP (Special!!)
1st Hard Disk
2TB WD BLACK 3.5" WD2003FZEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
M.2 SSD Drive
512GB SAMSUNG SM951 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2150MB/R, 1550MB/W)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
16x BLU-RAY WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW & SOFTWARE
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET (€145)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H80i GT Hydro Cooler w/ PCS Liquid Series Ultra Quiet Fans (€119)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (€12)
Sound Card
Creative Sound Blaster ZxR 5.1 PCI-E Soundcard (€238)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS 802.11 AC1900 1,300Mbps/5GHz, 600Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD (€66)
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

I hadn't originally planned on getting the Rampage Extreme motherboard but as the graphics card takes up two slots I was unable to have a wireless network card & a sound card if I went for the cheaper USB 3.1 board. I was considering the i7-6700K processor but since it was released last year I'd rather get one that's more up-to-date (this PC has to last me a long time). I had thought about waiting for the new Kaby Lake processors to come out but I've read some reports that they may be delayed until next year and I cant wait that long to get a new PC (my current one probably wouldn't last until then). I was planning on using the SSD for the windows installation as it would be quicker to load up.

Any advice/suggestions re. the above would be appreciated.

 

[Oussebon]

This may get merged with your existing thread: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?49608-Non-gaming-PC-question
I already touched on the release date having absolutely nothing to do with the suitability for a given purpose, the 6700k being much more powerful for some tasks because of how the CPUs are different families with different architectures. It's like buying a pickup truck that came out in 2016 over a people carrier that came out in 2015 - it's not the date that's important, it's whether you need to carry goods or people. That's not to say you shouldn't get i7-6850K but don't buy just because of the date as you not only might you be wasting your cash of features you don't need, you might be getting something worse for your intended use.

From googling I get the impression that despite claiming multi-core support, a lot of audio programs really are single threaded for a lot of their purposes. So I'd reiterate the recommendation to find out what your software benefits from before picking your CPU.

 

[Rakk]

This may get merged with your existing thread: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?49608-Non-gaming-PC-question

Yep, it's been merged