Advice on coolers & CPU for this Music Production PC

[radaget]

Hi

I'm thinking of the following build. This will be mostly used as a music production system but no doubt will get used for general home stuff, gaming occasionally etc. Please feel free to offer advice or possible alternative components. I was going to go with the 5930k CPU but wanted to ideally get the system below £1700 (didn't quite do it) and didn't think it would give me much noticeable increase in performance.

I'm wondering about the cooler. I've gone for the H60 because it's quieter, cheaper, and I wont be gaming much at all (but i will some times). I don't know if I need the H100i??

Processor (CPU) - Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor i7-5820K (3.3GHz) 15MB Cache
Case - Will be supplying Fractal R5 Define Titanium windowed version
Motherboard - Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5: ATX, LG2011, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, XFIRE/SLI
Memory (RAM) - 16GB CRUCIAL DDR4 2133MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card - 4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 970 - 1 DVI, 1 mHDMI, 3 mDP - 3D Vision Ready
1st Hard Disk - 250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk - 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
Power Supply - CORSAIR 650W CS SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Processor Cooling - Corsair H60 Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste - ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card - ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking - 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options - MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Power Cable - 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Operating System - Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence

Any comments welcome.

Oh...and are there any discount codes available?


Thank you.

 

[SpyderTracks]

You'll be paying a huge increase for an X99 build and compared to a Z97, you won't see any particular performance increase, certainly in games and most likely in your audio DAW's.

Which studio packages do you use?

 

[Spuff]

What will the nature of your music projects be?
The music I made didn't need a system half as muscular as your proposed one. In fact I never reached the processing limit of the 2.4Ghz 4 core I used, and I would always use a fair amount of plug-ins.

 

[grimsbymatt]

What will the nature of your music projects be?
The music I made didn't need a system half as muscular as your proposed one. In fact I never reached the processing limit of the 2.4Ghz 4 core I used, and I would always use a fair amount of plug-ins.

I second this. I'm still running a 3-4 year old i7-2600K and not getting anywhere near its limits. I recently helped my friend buy a PC from here for audio work and we went with the i7-4970, which is probably more power than he'll ever need, but is quite future-proofed for audio work.

As for the CPU cooler, the triple copper heat pipe will do nicely, unless you plan on overlocking, which you don't really need to.

Obviously, this all depends on what software and how many tracks and plug in/VSTi instances you plan to run, but I can run big projects with lots of plugins and instruments with no problem.

 

[radaget]

Hi all. Many thanks for the replies. I know what you mean about over spec'ing the PC but it will be used for other stuff and also...I want this to last maybe ten years and in that time I can see much more complex music VST's, VSTi's ans sample libraries coming along.

I don't want any limitations in terms of how many tracks / effects I can have so just trying to cover all bases really.

Maybe I will double check a lesser spec to save some money though...

 

[Spuff]

10 years is optimistic to hope you are up with the cutting edge. Having said that, you've been able to make just about any music you can imagine on a PC for some time now, and you still will be able to with your spec in 10 years, although nobody can say if it will be able to run the latest OS and software by then.
The processing demand of plug ins doesn't seem to have increased much for years.