Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Electronic Music Production // Dark Arts
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Críoch
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Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Críoch »

I've been quoted E900 to get a motherboard replacement etc.. on my 2011 MBP. Its freezing & turning itself off at random times. There was a recall, which ended in Dec 2016 to fix this issue. Fuck it.. what can you do?

Its ok for the time being, but I'll have to get a replacement before the end of the year. I've had a constant headache the last few days thinking about it as I'm not flush at the minute at all. Its been a very expensive year so far.

Though I love Mac.. PC is the best option for 2 reasons; Price & Spec.

I dont not want to buy a 2nd hand mac.. nor can I afford to buy outright or get on hire purchase. Not only have the newer mac's ditched firewire ( I have a MOTU Ultralite MK3 Hybrid - USB & FW) - but they only have a couple of USB ports.

For the money I'd be able to afford, MBP's Imac's and Mac Mini's seem underpowered. The OS changes so regularly that expensive machines are being made 'vintage' all the time.. and I wont be able to afford to get them fixed. I'm guessing that a custom built PC would be essentially modular & somewhat future proof - fast intel chips.. lots of ram & quick booting ssd drives.

Budget wise - I dont need to & cant go overboard. I'd like to keep the budget below or around e1000. I could spread out the cost by purchasing parts in stages if I had a plan. My MBP will hopefully hold up for a while longer.

I know nothing about PC building or Tech so any advice / pointers would be greatly appreciated.
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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Planar »

We had a fairly recent thread on this and that advice still applies, I'll see if I can find a link. The real expensive bit of a pc is the graphics card. If you have no intention to play games on the thing you save 200-500 right there by going on-board or with a basic card. 1000 should get you at least a decent i7 with motherboard, 16gb RAM and an SSD for the OS with a monitor and case. I'd personally get another drive for your files as well. Get a decent case and you can swap and add components over time as you need to.

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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Planar »

Here's the thread, it's only a couple of months old:

http://www.subsekt.com/viewtopic.php?p=108948

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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Críoch »

Cheers M!

Will look over that thread. Appreciate it.

________

Yeah.. I figured that I could do without a graphics card. I wont be playing games & I guess that I could add at a later date if required.
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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by dippy egg »

Here's a rough guide based on what I have...

Case: £80 - I'd recommend Fractal Design. I have the Define S series and love it.

PSU: £80-100. I'd recommend Corsair or EVGA. I currently have EVGA Supernova G3 450W. I used to have a 700W beast but realised that much power isn't needed. Anything above 500W is probably only needed if you want high end gaming with 2 huge graphics cards...as long as the psu is high quality and not a shit one that come bundled with some budget cases. I would also recommend going modular here too.

SSD: £60 - 250Gb

HDD: £60 - 2Tb

CPU/RAM/Motherboard - This really is a question of how much you want to spend. When I upgrade I pull all of this out of my machine and sell it as a bundle and replace all 3 at the same time. I last did this about 3 years ago when I didn't have much money so I paid £200 for an Intel I3 3.5Ghz, cheap Asus m/b and 4Gb of RAM. I have since added more RAM but I have been pleasantly surprised with how much mileage I have got out of this budget bundle. I like to render a lot of my parts to audio to stop me fucking about too much and I rarely use more than about 60-70% cpu. This wouldn't be suitable for everyone but I can afford to upgrade to something much more powerful now but I honestly don't need to due to the way I work.

I have used maybe 5/6 Asus boards and been happy with every one of them. I don't think you really need a mega expensive board for music production, just get one with the connections you need and enough slots for RAM. CPU does all the heavy lifting so get what you can comfortable afford. 8Gb RAM will do ok if you don't use massive Kontakt sample libraries and will cost about £50. You can always add more later... You could always buy a used bundle to start with to get an idea of how much power you need then sell it on again before buying new.

Windows 10: £85 (home)

Monitor: I paid £100 for a 22" 1080 monitor which is totally decent.

Hope this helps somewhat

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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by SixOfOne »

If they are your only 2 reasons for going Windows and you love Mac I'd suggest looking at building a Hackintosh. I built one back in 2012 and found it surprisingly easy to install mac software on. The only thing you have to look out for is that the parts you pick are mac compatible, but there's a wealth of info and guides online.
For about €800 I built one with an Intel i5, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD. Still handles anything I throw at it today and I recently threw in a SSD to give it more life.

The one thing I will say is I haven't updated it since I built it. I'm still running Snow Leopard as Alesis stopped updating drivers for the mixer I had. I've since bought a new interface so will be updating to El Capitan/Sierra this summer.

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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by xonetacular »

Yes. 2nding hackintosh.

Love mac os, could never justify a desktop mac. Built my hackintosh in 2012ish and it's still my current studio computer. It's not pain free to setup but with proper preparation it's not so bad. The first time I built it was super easy and worked first try, a couple years ago I upgraded the OS and it was a little more annoying but I was on older hardware which didn't help. With new things like Clover you can even update the OS from the app store without breaking it and with proper hardware it should be more pain free and you can update like a regular mac.

Thinking about upgrading it to at some point to a new mobo/cpu/gpu since my hardware is old and doesn't like sierra/clover.

I suggest https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/

the tonymacx86 hardware build guides are all good for selecting proper hardware but then dont follow their install instructions and instead do the clover setup for a cleaner install

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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by arkos »

Get the intel 7700k, it's currently the 2nd fastest single threading processor. I wouldn't use a Mac even tho I got it for free but that's just me...

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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Alume »

Try geting a silent fan and a case with damping. I built mine for 850 with no computer background just buy a simple kit and tutorial your way through. Youre smare enough.


Get a minimum of 256 ssd as shit goes gast with plugins etc. decide if its internet free or not too might change some specs.

I got a configuration from alternate that was designed for music production. I can look up the part list if you want.

Psu is very important, domt save money on that.

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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Alume »

I believe the modern i5's will do just fine. Depends on your needs

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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Leskey »

Where you live mate?

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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by CubiK Mass »

My advice is don't give apple anymore of your cash, £900 to replace a 2011 MBP motherboard, robbing £$%*$!!

£900 would build you a great i7 PC for making tunes, and you just swap out the MB and CPU every 5 years to upgrade it, SSD for the operating system is vital, improves performance massively over standard HD.

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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Críoch »

dippy egg wrote:Here's a rough guide based on what I have...

Case: £80 - I'd recommend Fractal Design. I have the Define S series and love it.

PSU: £80-100. I'd recommend Corsair or EVGA. I currently have EVGA Supernova G3 450W. I used to have a 700W beast but realised that much power isn't needed. Anything above 500W is probably only needed if you want high end gaming with 2 huge graphics cards...as long as the psu is high quality and not a shit one that come bundled with some budget cases. I would also recommend going modular here too.

SSD: £60 - 250Gb

HDD: £60 - 2Tb

CPU/RAM/Motherboard - This really is a question of how much you want to spend. When I upgrade I pull all of this out of my machine and sell it as a bundle and replace all 3 at the same time. I last did this about 3 years ago when I didn't have much money so I paid £200 for an Intel I3 3.5Ghz, cheap Asus m/b and 4Gb of RAM. I have since added more RAM but I have been pleasantly surprised with how much mileage I have got out of this budget bundle. I like to render a lot of my parts to audio to stop me fucking about too much and I rarely use more than about 60-70% cpu. This wouldn't be suitable for everyone but I can afford to upgrade to something much more powerful now but I honestly don't need to due to the way I work.

I have used maybe 5/6 Asus boards and been happy with every one of them. I don't think you really need a mega expensive board for music production, just get one with the connections you need and enough slots for RAM. CPU does all the heavy lifting so get what you can comfortable afford. 8Gb RAM will do ok if you don't use massive Kontakt sample libraries and will cost about £50. You can always add more later... You could always buy a used bundle to start with to get an idea of how much power you need then sell it on again before buying new.

Windows 10: £85 (home)

Monitor: I paid £100 for a 22" 1080 monitor which is totally decent.

Hope this helps somewhat

Yeah.. that absolutely does help man. I've been doing a bit of reading today & have seen a lot of what you've said come up regularly enough, so I can see that its good advice. I think I'll try for an i7 7700k(pricey).. 16gb ram.. SSD (without a doubt!).
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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Críoch »

SixOfOne wrote:If they are your only 2 reasons for going Windows and you love Mac I'd suggest looking at building a Hackintosh. I built one back in 2012 and found it surprisingly easy to install mac software on. The only thing you have to look out for is that the parts you pick are mac compatible, but there's a wealth of info and guides online.
For about €800 I built one with an Intel i5, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD. Still handles anything I throw at it today and I recently threw in a SSD to give it more life.

The one thing I will say is I haven't updated it since I built it. I'm still running Snow Leopard as Alesis stopped updating drivers for the mixer I had. I've since bought a new interface so will be updating to El Capitan/Sierra this summer.
Several years ago I did consider that my next computer might be a Hackintosh, but the combo of 'regular' self-build pitfalls AND potential compatibility issues / future interference from Apple, made me a bit reluctant. I need to check back in with that scene before I start buying anything.

I guess right now, my thinking would be leaning towards the PC as I feel like I would have a bit more control over the Windows XXX than OSX. They've gone through 9 different OSX versions since I bought my first Mac. I'd be worried that there might be restrictions to the software that I want to use in the future cos I cant update OSX, blah, blah, blah.. I dunno. I'll definitely look into i more. Forgot about it TBH, so cheers for reminding me :)
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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Root »

I recently updated my pc, mounted a new motherboard + cpu. You really don't need to go for an intel cpu if you are not a gaming crack that needs a hundredth of a second precise frame calculation. I got the amd 8350 (130€) which is in the second generation now very stable and fast. only thing it needs a bit more power, but that's worth it. Compared to the intel cpus it shure is a bit slower, but yeah, during the last 4-5 years there were no real progresses in this, so you don't need the newest and most expensive. I run with this and 8gb ram ableton live and can load huge amounts of plugins, play 5 Hardware synths at the same time, without any struggle. SDD is a must!
:geek:

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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Críoch »

xonetacular wrote:Yes. 2nding hackintosh.

Love mac os, could never justify a desktop mac. Built my hackintosh in 2012ish and it's still my current studio computer. It's not pain free to setup but with proper preparation it's not so bad. The first time I built it was super easy and worked first try, a couple years ago I upgraded the OS and it was a little more annoying but I was on older hardware which didn't help. With new things like Clover you can even update the OS from the app store without breaking it and with proper hardware it should be more pain free and you can update like a regular mac.

Thinking about upgrading it to at some point to a new mobo/cpu/gpu since my hardware is old and doesn't like sierra/clover.

I suggest https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/

the tonymacx86 hardware build guides are all good for selecting proper hardware but then dont follow their install instructions and instead do the clover setup for a cleaner install
Hey.. thanks for that. Yeah.. you've basically echoed the concerns that I had in my head about Apple complications. Ok.. so that makes complete sense now regarding updates. Read something earlier about 'waiting for the hackintosh community to report on comparability with updates..' - I understand now; hardware issues. FFS.

Cheers! Will definitely click those links & read up.
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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Críoch »

arkos wrote:Get the intel 7700k, it's currently the 2nd fastest single threading processor. I wouldn't use a Mac even tho I got it for free but that's just me...
Was looking at that one on the charts alright. Currently is the fastest.. but who knows, it might be a bit cheaper by the the time I get to sort everything out.

BTW.. If I got a mac for free, I'd definitely use it. Free is certainly nothing to be ashamed of :D
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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Críoch »

Alume wrote:Try geting a silent fan and a case with damping. I built mine for 850 with no computer background just buy a simple kit and tutorial your way through. Youre smare enough.


Get a minimum of 256 ssd as shit goes gast with plugins etc. decide if its internet free or not too might change some specs.

I got a configuration from alternate that was designed for music production. I can look up the part list if you want.

Psu is very important, domt save money on that.
Yeah.. I'd really appreciate that config if you had it & it wasnt too much trouble. I'd definitely like to see it & use it as a comparison.. or to test pricing it up on various sites - see if I can do it haha. I may only be smart to a point; its still fucking daunting :lol: :lol:
Alume wrote:I believe the modern i5's will do just fine. Depends on your needs
I'll see how fast the cash goes.. but hopefully I'll be able to get the fastest of whatever it'll be.
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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Críoch »

Leskey wrote:Where you live mate?
Republic Of Ireland
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Re: Building a Music PC in 2017 - Advice / Spec / Prices

Post by Críoch »

CubiK Mass wrote:My advice is don't give apple anymore of your cash, £900 to replace a 2011 MBP motherboard, robbing £$%*$!!
My thoughts exactly. Fucking right! :lol:
CubiK Mass wrote:£900 would build you a great i7 PC for making tunes, and you just swap out the MB and CPU every 5 years to upgrade it, SSD for the operating system is vital, improves performance massively over standard HD.
Indeed - This may do me a favour in the long run..
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