My current build is as sig. The i7 3770K works very well.

Ivy bridge has several advantages, not least from the DAW point of view being its much lower power consumption, which means less heat and therefore easier, quieter cooling of both the cpu and psu.

I haven't built a PC this quiet (or so low in power usage) since single core days.

Hi tlw,
Are you using water cooling or just a decent air cooler?
Am about to upgrade to a i7 3770k myself.

The Sandybridge on-chip interface is an improvement for Intel - over their older separate Northbridge interface. OTOH, AMD has had it's memory interfaces built-in to their processors for quite some years.

I like AMD, in fact, the X64 architecture we all use is AMD's design, not Intel's. Intel tried to go super-proprietary with the Itanium, but just couldn't containium. AMD did the natural (and freakin' obvious) extension to the X32 design to come up X64. I laugh every time I see one of Intel's architecture manuals and the big letter acronyms they use to make it sound like they did it. I've seen some of their early errata when they couldn't decide what to call it and had more than one name for it.

1. Let´s wait for Haswell and after that...? This platform is really nearby to "what we called at the moment" mobile (laptop) processor...and Intel sets here on a fixed CPU on the mainboard...also right now with SB.
  2. That does not mean that there will be absolutely no LGA version of this cpu-line-up after Haswell, later when the first versions are running in laptops. 
3. No one said that the LGA-System is dead after Haswell.

...anyway...

Right today. I´m perfectly happy with my config...absolutely no problems, crackles and other bad issues.
I don´t need to tune my 2600K higher than now, even if I could..;)

I won´t and could´nt say anything to AMD, ´cause my last AMD machine was an DualCore AMD 64 4800 X2...than came CoreDuo2...
...and I never turn back to them...
Two years ago i was thinking about the 6cores from AMD...but SB was on it´s way with better performance...

I hope ASUS and Gigabyte waltz in and start making their own CPUs

They might better go into manufacturing jumbo jets. The MB manufacturers are assemblers. They could not even begin to design a CPU with the people they have the money to buy. And if they could find a design, they can not come up with the multiple billions of dollars that it takes to build a fab plant.

Intel is a more formidable monopoly than Microsoft. If they say their chips come soldered in, then the enthusiast assembled PC is dead. A lot of little portable bright and shiny toys is the world of the future. Time for Cakewalk to start re-writing Sonar to run on a smart phone.

jrmunday


Hi tlw,
Are you using water cooling or just a decent air cooler?
Am about to upgrade to a i7 3770k myself.

Air cooled. I don't like the idea of mixing plumbing with electronics, or the complexity and maintenance. From what I've seen (and heard) many water cooling pumps and radiator fans are pretty noisy in any case.
 
I designed this PC from the ground up with power and lack of noise in mind. I'm fussy about components and stress-test and temperature monitor everything once built so I don't get nasty surprises later. Stress testing is something anyone building a PC with non-standard cooling should do - mistakes can be expensive.

To go into the gory details:

The bits not in my sig are:
Seagate 460W fanless PSU (in lower rear of case).
cpu cooler is a Noctua NHC14, using a single Noctua 140mm fan between cooler and cpu, which also cools the m/b around the cpu.
Graphics card is a Sapphire fanless HD7750.

Case is a Fractal Design Define R4, using the two fans supplied with it as case fans at front and rear (I rubber mounted them rather than use the supplied screws). The Fractal Design isn't cheap, but it's well designed and built, very solid, damped, vibration free and very nice to work with.

All fans run at 5 volts, fixed speed, for DAW usage.

Idle cpu temps across the cores are between 16 and 30 degrees C  - like most multi-core cpus no two cores ever agree about the temperature, especially at idle :-/.

Using Prime95 64bit to push all cores to 100% @ 3903.89 MHz for 5 minutes takes the maximum cpu core temp to 76C where it seems to pretty much stabilise, ending the test drops the temps back towards idle in a second or two. Cpu throttling should cut in at 105 degrees but I've never managed to get it anywhere near that.

Under real world conditions (i.e. not stress testing), pushing a 3770K to 100% across all cores and holding it there would take some doing.

With fans at 5 volts the PC is just audible in a pretty quiet small room, measuring about 30-32dBA at around 1 metre, checked with an expensive UK-government issued, correctly calibrated decibel meter my (civil-servant) wife uses for work. Basically not really distinguishable from background noise. Increasing the fans to 7 volts adds a fair bit of of cooling but doesn't add much noise.


Overall, it's a quiet enough PC that it barely registers on mics so long as they aren't close and pointing directly at it. Otherwise, it's lost in the background.

3D apps/games need more cooling (mostly for the gpu), so I just ramp up the fans to 12volts. And it's still quieter than an off the shelf PC. It's also very quiet electrically and Telecaster pickup friendly, though that's always a bit of a matter of luck.

Quite an improvement in every way over the 100+watt processors and power hungry graphics cards of the last few years. It even uses less electricity :-)

On the subject of the future of the PC generally, I noticed Microsoft's website was suggesting/advertising assorted integrated "single unit" PCs for Windows 8. Kind of Wintel iMacs.

I suspect the future of the PC probably is towards less "industrial" looking setups and towards "decor friendly" smaller integrated units. May not be a problem in the end, so long as they can do the job at the right price. The DAW market may not be huge, but there are plenty of people needing fast, quiet computers besides us.

Whatever the next decade brings it's going to be interesting. A DAW on a smartphone? Why on earth not if (once!) the technology allows?

slartabartfast

I hope ASUS and Gigabyte waltz in and start making their own CPUs

They might better go into manufacturing jumbo jets. The MB manufacturers are assemblers. They could not even begin to design a CPU with the people they have the money to buy. And if they could find a design, they can not come up with the multiple billions of dollars that it takes to build a fab plant.

Intel is a more formidable monopoly than Microsoft. If they say their chips come soldered in, then the enthusiast assembled PC is dead. A lot of little portable bright and shiny toys is the world of the future. Time for Cakewalk to start re-writing Sonar to run on a smart phone.

The MB manufacturers have a lot more talent than you might think. Despite China's relatively inexpensive labor pool, it takes quite a lot of effort to design a motherboard, do it in a reliably design, and have it also make economic sense. You wouldn't want to confuse the hordes of laborers working in electronic assembly plants with the engineers that design those products. As it stands, the huge Chinese market is where a lot of future upside is going to be - and the home team there seems to be winning it. (Which was true here once upon a time...)

Microsoft's problems ares related to the fact that it is a aggressive, big fish and it just plain outgrew its aquarium. It has no growth potential - it fills its own universe completely - but like all business, that's just not good enough. Greed needs an infinitely expanding universe.

Apple's not making its bucks on the Mac, it's making it's money on trinkets. Sure, smartphones and tablets are useful, but the phone you bought two years ago is now sitting in a desk drawer collecting dust along with the one you bought the yeqar before that... (I've lost count of the number...) Apple is nothing revolutionary (never has been), despite its attempt to paint itself that color. It's all marketing, poser-ing, and toll collection via the i(take a 30% cut)Store.

Apple's conundrum is what to do next? Just like Microsoft - it see the ecosphere it's in being filled up, and it's premium pricing model drying up. (Never works after market maturity). So it's trolling for the next 'big-thing', and trying to grab all the marbles it can now by suing everyone in sight. It's scared, you can believe that.  The most important thing to note is that market maturity doesn't necessarily mean something is going away. It has to be replaced by something better, first. Computer technology may seem like a whirlwind, but actually it's been going on for near 70 years.

..my 39.5 cents...

The short answer is "depends on your budget"...
 
That said, for those who honestly want the "best bang for the buck" or "sweet spot", I'd say there are two:
 
-- i5 2600K is a hot commodity, about $100 cheaper than the next one I'm going to mention, and easily meets the needs of most DAW users -- especially if you're not above overclocking (This chip overclocks really well.... so you're getting way more CPU speed than you paid for).  Downside is, no hyperthreading (That may or may not make a difference to you, depending on your DAW of choice and how you use it).
 
-- i7 2600-2700K is the 2nd gen "improved" i7, arguably the most popular, because of its price to value ratio.... Just look at this thread.... and see how often the 2600K is mentioned.  BTW, supports hyperthreading.
 
I've included the 2700K because recently seen it on sale for the same price as its little brother.
 
 

arachnaut


I am also quite happy with Sandy Bridge and i7-2600K, at least for a few more years.

I just read this today about the future of Intel sockets:

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/26/intel-kills-off-the-desktop-pcs-go-with-it/

agree with you , I use it