PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

hi Folks,

I'm running my old Pulsar I and II cards in parallel on an older Dell Optiplex 760 system, which has been ok in Win7. I'd like to upgrade to the latest Scope software, but need a somewhat newer and faster computer. The problem is, finding one with 2 available PCI slots for the 2 pulsar cards.

Can I get any recommendations on motherboards / workstations / towers that might work for my needs? I'm using a dual monitor system right now with Analog / DVI options, so having that extra video output really helps too. Estimating, according to Sonic-Core's advice that 16 G RAM + 500G SSD would be nice, along with Windows 10.

Thanks for any suggestions. It's the PCI slot issue that's hard to find a good match for on eBay or Facebook marketplace etc.

Gary

Hey there,

If you do want a motherboard with support for modern CPUs and native >1 PCI slots, you seem to be best off with industrial motherboards. (See multiple threads in the "Tech Talk" section.)

Alternative is to use PCIe->PCI adapters, see recent thread for this.

Final option is to use a dual machine approach, with an older HP/DELL or similar workstation as the SCOPE PCI host, and then all your modern, fancy plug-ins and software on a non-PCI machine interfacing via ADAT to the SCOPE machine (using something like an RME interface in the 'modern' machine).
This, though, requires a multi-KVM approach, which is not ideal, but it probably gives you the best stability vs modern software flexibility. But not as integrated as above, and probaly also with a higher total power consumption.
(There are threads about this on Tech Talk too).

There are plenty of options available in workstation class. vendors like Supermicro, MSI, AData and others have boards with PCI slots. You will need to settle for CPU's a few generations back, but on newegg sorting the motherboard list by PCI slots to see boards with 3, 4 & 5 PCI slots shows 3 pages of results.

I have 7/6th generation motherboard :
3xPCI (Gigabyte - GA-Z170-D3H)
Intel i7 7700k
32gb ram (Corsair VENGEANCE LPX DDR4 RAM 32GB 3200MHz CL16 Intel XMP 2.0)
nVidia GT710 Silent
Windows 10 64bit Pro
Steinberg Cubase 14 pro
Scope 7.0

THANKS GUYS. I did finally get a guy on Facebook marketplace to build one for me for under $300, including Win10 Pro:
Motherboard: AsRock H97 Pro4
16GB ram
1TB SSD
2TB SATA

looks like it's got the right socket set, so I'm trying out 5.1 before I upgrade to Scope V7.

5.1 driver under Win10 will be an issue, and having to run Scope as Administrator can be a tad frustrating. Recommend Scope 7