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Audio Production System - $2000-$2500 Budget

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Hello,

I am looking to build the best possible system to run a DAW with multiple audio tracks, each with multiple sophisticated simultaneous plug-ins. Gaming or anything else would be secondary.

I have been doing research as it has been many years since my last build, so any insight, tips, suggestion, or idea of any kind would be much appreciated.

I have been leaning towards a system based on an Intel 3930k with a dual SDD in RAID0 configuration, 16gb ram, 1tb internal HDD for storage and a medium gfx card.

Many thanks in advance!

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Audio production can be fairly CPU dependant at times but certainly not enough to justify an i7-3930k in my opinion. I think any quad core with 8GB+ RAM would be ample. Since you have the budget though, I would go for:

i7-2600k
16GB RAM
High end SSD like Samsung 830 or Mushkin Chronos Deluxe or something

That should be more than fine in terms of performance, I'd only buy what you need here, you can save cash to put towards a couple of nice monitors (as in screens) or a couple of nice monitors (as in speakers) lol.

I wouldn't go with the dual SSD's personally because as far as I'm aware that will disable TRIM which stops your SSD's from slowing down too much over time.
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Not sure what your original budget was but I'm guessing around $2k. If so, you could get this for almost half the price. EDIT: Just noticed the title, 2000-2500 budget.

(Please excuse how similar this is to my PC haha.)

i7-2600k
16GB Corsair XMS3
ASRock Z68 PRO3-M
Samsung 830 128GB
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB
Seasonic X-560
Fractal Design Define Mini
Scythe Big Shuriken

Total: Just under $1200

That should give you awesome performance pretty close to that of the socket 2011 system for much cheaper. This would also be a nice little (VERY quiet) mATX box.

As mentioned earlier, you could then buy a couple of monitors.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

This one is nice because it's 16:10 which is a good shape for work, it's IPS too so should look beautiful. Lastly it's highly adjustable, also very nice for work. It is a bit expensive though.

Sorry for the late reply and my noobery. Here is my updated summary:


Approximate Purchase Date: Within 30 days

Budget Range: $2000-$2500

System Usage from Most to Least Important: DAW multitrack processing with multiple plugins, light gaming, photoshop, web browsing

Parts Not Required: Keyboard, mouse, monitor

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg.com

Country: USA

Parts Preferences: https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.as...

Overclocking: Maybe

SLI or Crossfire: Maybe

Monitor Resolution: 1680x1050+

Additional Comments: Need to be able to load the max amount of plugins without having to do a mix-down. That is of utmost importance. Thanks!

jmsellars1 said:
Audio production can be fairly CPU dependant at times but certainly not enough to justify an i7-3930k in my opinion. I think any quad core with 8GB+ RAM would be ample. Since you have the budget though, I would go for:

i7-2600k
16GB RAM
High end SSD like Samsung 830 or Mushkin Chronos Deluxe or something

That should be more than fine in terms of performance, I'd only buy what you need here, you can save cash to put towards a couple of nice monitors (as in screens) or a couple of nice monitors (as in speakers) lol.

I wouldn't go with the dual SSD's personally because as far as I'm aware that will disable TRIM which stops your SSD's from slowing down too much over time.


As far as I know, TRIM support is now available for dual SSDs in win7, although I can't remember the exact place I read it. Maybe somebody else can fill me in. A new monitor (screen) would be the next buy haha.
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