i5 based DAW running Cubase, Wavelab and Avid Studio?

[synthman]

Hi

I want to build a new DAW and it must be Gigabyte and based on the i5 to replace my current Gigabyte system that has never let me down, it just cannot run the latest versions of Wavelab and Cubase. I have seen the post by Absic and the GA-Z68-UD3P-B3 Motherboard looks great! But do I need to spend that much? I would like to keep on using Windows XP but I don't think I will get the performance from the processor and if I change to Windows 7 my Edirol DA2496 PCI based soundcard will need replacing too adding another £500+ to the cost. I also need a dual head video card that will work well with the chipset.

Any suggestions please? Will the i5 work with XP?

Thanks

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome.

I am afraid I am not the person to give you advice on the audio side of things but I can tell you that there arer many people quite happily running Win XP on an i5 motherboard. I don't know whether you are planning on using the 64 bit version of the OS but the XP version wasn't as reliable as the Win 7 one. Of course if you are only planning to run the 32 bit version you are still going to be limited by the 3.5 GB (approx) memory limit.

I expect someone with more DAW experience will come and offer advice on the audio side of things.

[absic]

Hi there,

Ah, the old chestnut of a good PCI soundcard that is now a legacy product with no drivers for Vista or Windows7. This does limit your choice a little as you have to get a motherboard with a 32bit PCI slot and believe it or not, this feature is slowly disappearing from motherboards too.
To narrow the choice a little further for you have a look at these three motherboards:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3897&dl=1#ov
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3978&dl=1#ov
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3979&dl=1#ov
which I believe would all fit the bill.

Personally I prefer to not have on-board graphics and I am currently using an ATI 6770 Graphic card on the GA-Z68X-UD3P-B3 which is happily running two monitors.

Although DM is right about the inability of 32Bit XP to run more than about 3.5GB of RAM the cost of investing in a new soundcard to gain the advantage of running extra memory is one that only you can decide. On my system, I use the M-Audio Delta 1010 with Windows7 64Bit, this allows me to currently run 16 GB of RAM which is great as I tend to use a lot of virtual synths and do a lot of processing. That said though it is not essential and I have run plenty of DAWS with 4 Gig of RAM or less.

Depending on your current processor you should see a difference running the i5 even with XP. I have been really surprised at the difference between this CPU and my AMD Phenom ii X6 1090T and don't tell DM but I am now running my Intel rig in preference to the AMD one!

Another area to consider when building your DAW, rather than investing in a new soundcard, would be to look at adding an SSD (or two) if money allows. The faster read/write speeds that these drives offer, especially when recording audio and for playback is well worth the cost involved.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi absic, I would agree with you regarding the value of a SSD or two as they probably make the single biggest impression on performance of any single upgrade. It is one of those upgrades that you can actually feel the difference which is good.

[Gloup_Gloup]

Hi synthman,

You may be make a good summary of your situation (a new topic) on this sites :

http://recording.org/daw-pro-audio/

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=198

http://forums.guru3d.com/forumdisplay.php?f=9

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Components/Video_Cards/

You receive more help about DAW. But you are again Welcome to forum, here. Of course.
Share with us your infos ...

Gloup_Gloup

[synthman]

Hi all

Thanks for the replies, I currently have the GA-Z68-XP-UD3P in my basket at Amazon but it is rev 1.0 along with an i5 2500 and 12G of Kingston KHX1600C9D3K3/12GX. I am now looking for a grapics card, cooling fan, DVD writer, PSU, HDD's and a case! I have a licence for XP pro I am hoping to put on it but if not I'll have to get Windows 7 (64 bit) and choose between the Steinberg MR816X or the Roland Octocapture soundcards I did not know if to get the UD3 with the mSATA connector instead of the UD3P, what do you think? It would save me £27. The ATI6770 looks good but I'm not sure I need that much power or do I? Any other suggestions for dual head graphics cards? I do a bit of video editing and use Corel Draw no games! Any tips on the fan, PSU etc would be appreciated too.

My current machine is a P4 2.4GHz. Gigabyte GA8P800, 2GB Kingson PC2700,80GB + 120GB Seagate Baracuda drives with an Edirol DA2496 soundcard and PCI pinnacle capture card. Cubase 5 runs but not wery well and Wavelab 7 can play files without inserts if you keep the mouse still! But up to SX3 and Wavelab 6 this machine has been rock solid (Apart from when the battery went flat ). I will take a look at the other forums too.

Thanks again 

[Gloup_Gloup]

Hi synthman,

Tanks for all your infos about your projet.

Maybe you have this idea, but I add this infos : do not forgot a choose the silent (noiseless) hardware.

Like for PSU, SSD, Tower case or other case, HeatSink Fan, Fan for case, etc

Gloup_Gloup

[absic]

Hi again,

If you don't mind using a D-SUB to DVI adaptor then I have also used the Gigabyte GT430 Graphics card. http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3611#ov This is very quiet, despite the twin fans, doesn't need extra power from the PSU and works fine with Cubase and Adobe Creative Suite.

For your PSU I would look at something around 650 Watts. I would recommend a Corsair PSU because I have used these units extensively without issue.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/650w-psu-corsair-enthusiast-series-650txv2uk-85-eff-80-plus-bronze-sli-crossfire-eps-12v-quiet-fan-a
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/650w-psu-corsair-enthusiast-series-9020002-modular-85-eff-80-plus-bronze-sli-crossfire-eps-12v-quiet and personally I would spend the few extra pounds on the Modular unit as then you only need to use the minimum of power leads which helps keep things neat and tidy in the PC Case.

For CPU Cooler there are a lot of users who like the Hyper 212 from Coolermaster: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/coolermaster-hyper-212-quiet-cpu-cooler-4-heat-pipes-120mm-fan-intel-s775-am2-am2plus-am3-754-939-94
Again, on a personal level I prefer the Noctua coolers. Although they are more expensive they are practically silent and do a very good job. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/noctua-nh-u12p-se2-dual-fan-quiet-cpu-cooler-intel-775i7i5-and-amd-am2-3-compatible is a mid sized Noctua that I know performs well.

PC Cases come in all shapes and sizes and are very much a personal choice. Best advice I can offer here is to think of what you want from the case and how much room you have for it. I am using a NZXT Tempest Evo which is a pretty good case but I have also got a Fractal Design Core 3000 chassis (thanks to DM) and this is very good too. You can check out a review for this case here: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,6896.0.html

SSD/HDD are again something that you are going to buy based on your budget. Avoid the  "Green" HDD's as these tend to power down when they are inactive and can cause real issues when trying to record or playback. I have two 60GB SSD's in a RAID0 Array for my primary C: drive with a selection of other HDD's for storage and recording purposes. My main HDD's are 2 x 640GB SATA3 Western Digital Caviar Blacks and 2 x 1000Gb SATA2 Hitachi Deskstar.

[synthman]

Hi all

Thanks for the help £595 pounds on the credit card now . Went for the GV-N430OC-GL1 graphics with the Z68XP-UD3P motherboard and the locked i5 2500 processor (thought stability would be better for me) going to use the supplied fans for now. Also got the Corsair TX650 PSU and 12GB of of kingston listed above and a 250GB seagate barracuda ST250DM00 drive for starters, I'll get the solid state drive later. I also went for a Sony AD-7261S DVD writer as my previous Sony DRU drive has never let me down! I was going for a 19" rack case but in the end settled for a coolermaster Elite 335 case not ideal but cheap. I figured this would get me going again and I have the important bits and the others I can replace later as needed and when I have cleared this off the card. This is certainly way more than I need for what I do (mostly MIDI controlled synths and a couple of audio tracks) but I'm hoping this will last me another 10 to 15 years. I'm still going to check the other forums as well and hopefully it should be fairly quiet.

Thanks and have Happy Christmas and New Year 

[synthman]

Hi All

Just a quick update. The Z68XP-UDP3 with I5 and N430 graphics card is a fantastic combination. I have XP pro running and I went and got a 64GB Kingston SSD and installed all my applications on it which run super fast. Some tips I found while struggling to get it to work...

I had to use autostream to put XP SP2 with the XP Pro install disk on a new disk as it locks up without SP2.
To install Corel Draw 14 I had to disable the startup programs and non Microsoft services using msconfig.

Also I found another post saying the Z68 SATA sockets work better than the Marvel SATA sockets.

I have the SSD on SATA0 and the HDD on SATA2 as it did not appear to like the HDD on SATA1.

Thanks