PC For 2015

[dawman]

I have gone through many Scope PCI cards and builds by GaryB dating back to 2006, and really have enjoyed all of the learning and tips from guys here.
So my tip to anyone using Scope w/ Native apps is to check out the ASRock Extreme 6 Z97 boards if you are looking to build a new box this year, but only for XITE series guys.

They are bringing enterprise quality to the consumer market and have the only PCI-e 4x Connection that uses PCI-3.0 for a direct connection to the CPU.

Not a big deal for Scope DSP guys unless you are loading large templates comprised of VSL, PLAY or Kontakt.

I have been using the Samsung XP941 M.2 Ultra SSD embedded directly between the PCI-e 16x slots.
Navigating Windows and loading templates has improved drastically.
Seq. Read are 1.2GBps vrs. 500MBps on the former SATA III Bus.
Random IOps are over 110k vrs. 80k.
But the direct connection to the CPU > RAM using the latest 4790S Intel CPUs really jumped performance from the old Ivy Bridge 3770S.
Windows 8.1 SSD instructions, and the blazing fast XP941 SSD that bypasses chipsets and goes directly to the CPU has to be responsible for this.
Review site GuRu's can't explain why, but after months of them dodging my questions (reviewers get to keep their hardware reviewed) about limitations of Random IOps on SATA III, etc. I have concluded it's one of these or a combination of both.

Really doesn't matter though, what matters is that I can reboot during a gig and load in 2 minutes.
Haven't had to yet, but before now it was 7 minutes.
That's a significant performance boost and Windows in general navigates so much faster now for everything.

Treat yourselves...

Happy New Year and buy the Prime by dNa if you want a vintage/hybrid Delay...
At least treat yourself to that, it's a steal.

[jksuperstar]

I'm finally thinking of ditching my laptop for a 1U rack PC for good. I had built an old core2duo system from spare parts, but didn't use it much since the laptop was better, but its time to build something that can get me full low latency no matter what I throw at it.

Are you using this board in a 1u rack case? If so, what CPU cooler do you have?

[dawman]

Dynatron HSF. It's a great cooler, used one for a few years on the Ivy Bridge which is now a spare 1U and got the K99 (I think is it's name) since the wattage jumped up on the Haswells by 10-15 watts.

[jksuperstar]

And which CPU did you get? An i5 (since hyper threading is off anyways) or an i7? I was looking at the i7-4770, but the i7-4770S was designed for low power, and lower heat, but still similar freq, but I have some more homework to do.

Some of the i5 series seems just as worthy, but the 4770 is my measuring stick.

Also, did you put the XITE card in the longer slots? I think they have the direct access to cpu. Damn this looks nice.

[dante]

The i7 4790

[dawman]

Yepp, that' the CPU alright.
It's a nice fast/cool puppy that lets me load ZebraHZ and use tons of Oscillators.
Zebra2 which I also use now is easy on the CPU, even if you use the built in shitty FX.

But HZ (Hans Zimmer version) uses the Diva Filters that are pretty incredible, even close to the real deal IMHO, so it is strapped to a single Core and can crush one if you're not careful.

Also worth mentioning I bought the SM951 on a 16 week backorder, since OEMs get the first 6 months of production.
It is a PCI 3.0 device, M.2 2280 that goes directly to the CPU. Our XITE-1's don't get any boost, but I did notice how much faster my samples load.
Templates went from 7 minutes down to 2 minutes 20 seconds.

So after spending a bundle I have concluded that M.2 devices are King, especially if you want a super fast small low wattage 1U DAW.

With the new SM951 it should be halved again.
2.1GBps seq. reads and 350,000 IOps. The IOps is what allows samples to stream faster and take more loads. But at the end of the day we still hit a barrier so now I really think it's plain old ASIO inefficiency.

[jksuperstar]

I was thinking XITE would have faster access to RAM, since it's connected to the cpu/memory without the chipset in the way, and much less likely to conflict with IRQs. Over all, I'm hoping to run it in the lower two ULLI settings, no matter how many asio channels or modules/devices I load that use pc ram.

[dawman]

It works, as I tried that right after I found out a PCI-e 1x could run on a PCI-e 16x, but just didn't notice the advantages.
But for OS+Apps there are distinct advantages.
And for sample streaming the advantages were also noticeable but after 750 MBps it seems to take advantage of more IOps.
Which makes the ASRock Z97 a great board. The 2nd slot for sample data can be a Plextor M6e M.2 2280 SSD and that gets you 100k IOps and 775 MBps. Perfect for PLAY and Kontakt stuff.

[jksuperstar]

Here's a review I found, that shows what I was looking for (who the hell does a review of a motherboard and runs DPC Latency checker??!!). 39us for max DPC Latency means nothing is preventing some full use of the lowest ULLI settings.

...And the on board audio with dynamic range of 104.5db is really not that bad.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8045/asro ... th-xp941/6

[dawman]

Deinately a top shelf board. 16 weeks for my back ordered SM951.
XP941 is a spare in 4 months. Only 15 months of use by then, but they are so fragile looking, I am glad my spare is being replaced by a much faster newer low wattage device.

Oh btw, cleaned up the racks today and the low profile Cooler I use is a Scythe Kozuti.
Noctua has a nice design and the Dynatrons are always good, but I wanted to get the Kozuti because the fan is right where I want and doesn't impede airflow.

Cheerz, let me know how it goes.
Also, check your temps right away on the CPU if you get an i7 4790K.
Personally I would get the i7 4790S.
You can kick it up to 3.2GHz and not even see an increase in voltage or heat.

65 watts is damn cool too for such a power house.
It's right there with the K version but can't OC as high, but in a 1U you only want to rasie the voltage or OC until a certain temperature, well that's my safety tip of the day.

Ankyu

[jksuperstar]

I have read up into the 4790S, and it does keep up with the normal 4790 and even the K, except when you go into OC or turbo modes...which I was considering disabling, as we've always done for scope PCs and DAWs.

[dawman]

Turbo Mode means constantly wasting resources monitoring too. All of the extra add ons need to be disabled.
If it was Scope only sure, but ASIO apps are for the most part able to use all cores and threads, or at least have some control on affinity.
ASRock has really come a long way in the last few years, and everything they offer is storage related advancements, short trace line RAM topology like Asus uses, but their boards don't over volt everything to get better benchmarks.
Ark forums have threads 50 pages long where MSI, Gigabyte and Asus boards all need to be tweaked by Intel engineers to get temps under 100C during Prime Tests.
ASRock boards even with stock cooling scored the best in terms of temps.
Guys using small Mini and Micro designs mostly love the hot i7 4790K.
If you do need to OClock the CPU check out the Dynatrons.
But I am using 3 x instances of Kontakt, 2 for multi's and 1 as an instrument Bank, VB3, Satin, PianoTeq Pro and Zebra2 HZ.
Zebra2 uses the Diva Filters as I have the HZ version and it uses 40-60% of a core, everything else clocks along at 10-20%, and that's @ the stock 4.0 GHz.

I could easily use the newer i7 4790S later this year or in 2016 when the price drops comes before the next tock.