stm113cw
I pulled the trigger and ordered the PC should have it tomorrow. For now I am going with it stock, though I will certainly upgrade the RAM and will look at a SSD in the next year once I seek some gear.

2 questions for you guys.

1- since I do use Dimension, Rapture, Addictive Keys for instruments and I’ve recently started using the Blue Tubes Pultec EQ models as I don’t have another Pultec style plugin. Should I just install the last SPLAT?

2- Any suggested, easy to follow, resources out there for how I should optimize this PC?

I’m really excited, my music life has been tied up in playing in cover bands for the last 7 years and very little focus on serious recording. I’ve recently left my career of playing covers every weekend behind and want to focus on writing recording, getting this PC add to that!

Thank you guys all for your help.

More RAM but not an SSD is a HUGE mistake in my opinion! I just went from 8GB to 16GB because it cost me $50 for 2 8GB sticks (DDR3 for the win!) and it made literally ZERO difference.
 
R

eikelbijter

stm113cw
... I will certainly upgrade the RAM...

More RAM but not an SSD is a HUGE mistake in my opinion! I just went from 8GB to 16GB because it cost me $50 for 2 8GB sticks (DDR3 for the win!) and it made literally ZERO difference.

 
It's not about the increase in RAM. A matched pair of 8GB sticks will work at a faster speed than an 8GB and a 4GB together.

Curious?
How can anyone here (besides the OP) say great deal when you do not know the cost? The chip alone is $300+
 
Second, 310w PSU does not seem optimal to me. Thats a high powered 8th gen intel if it's 6 cores. 
Also thats DDR4, very expensive. Add an m.2 for os and apps and use the other for storage or whatever,much better upgrade first, imho....

kzmaier
One thing I forgot for my last build was noise.  Think about silent fans and a noise suppressing case!!!

Good point. The acoustics of the machine can be more important than the performance when used for recording. Here SSD are particularly valuable as they are totally silent.  

Kev999

eikelbijter

stm113cw
... I will certainly upgrade the RAM...

More RAM but not an SSD is a HUGE mistake in my opinion! I just went from 8GB to 16GB because it cost me $50 for 2 8GB sticks (DDR3 for the win!) and it made literally ZERO difference.

 
It's not about the increase in RAM. A matched pair of 8GB sticks will work at a faster speed than an 8GB and a 4GB together.

He'd be much better off with 4GBx2 and an SSD!
 
R

A small (256GB) SSD (whatever variety) is fairly cheap these days and makes an excellent OS/Program drive. Although you could get below 128GB on that drive, you would run out of wiggle room quickly, even when junctioning sample folders to another drive. The data reads from SSDs are phenomenal in comparison to a HDD.
 
Matching RAM sticks is optimal as mentioned above.
 
As far as dedicated GPU, DAWs are not 3D intensive, and only a few plugin makers make use of optimizing audio vs graphics anyway. A dedicated GPU won't buy as much throughput as the SSD "upgrade" mentioned above. If you ever get into 3D/video/graphics, then a dedicated GPU will help a lot.
 
As far as optimization, the standard disabling of core parking and not allowing USB connections (or the machine itself) to ever sleep are big. Also monitoring things that get loaded on boot (and disabling the garbage) is advised. LatencyMon and using msconfig and/or services are all useful in that. For some things it is easier to one-off those in these forums as you load the machine up (otherwise it will overwhelm you). Win 10 seems to require less tweaking than its predecessors.