Spec me - Audio editing rig for £2k

Evening all,

A buddy has approached me with a wish to build a PC purely for audio editing, no gaming required. The program he mainly uses is Sonar X3.

Personally this area is all a bit alien to me (combined with the fact the last generation of hardware I know anything about is the LGA775 socket!), would anyone be kind enough to spec something up? My only guess is lots of RAM and storage space is needed. No need for a sound card as everything is handled through external interfaces.

Keyboard, mouse, monitor and OS not required. Ideally he'd like to spend less than the £2k budget, but if that's what it takes then so be it.

Thanks in advance for your help all.

Haven't specced in a long while so open to corrections!

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail= £299.99
• 1 x Asus Z170-K Intel Z170 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £101.99
• 1 x Team Group Elite 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black (TPKD432GM2400HC16Q= £119.99
• 1 x Fractal Design Define R5 Midi Tower Case - Blackout Edition= £84.95
• 1 x Silverstone SFX-L 500W '80 Plus Gold' Fully Modular Power Supply= £74.99
• 1 x Samsung 1.0TB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E1T0B/EU)= £249.95
• 1 x Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler= £29.99

The RAM and storage choices depend on what he intends to do. If he uses virtual instruments then more RAM will be very useful. If not, a smaller SSD and addtional mechanical storage may be better option. The Fractal Design Case is ace with it's sound dampening, I own an R3 and it has not hampered my production.

Other thing would be, does he need a DVD drive for burning? As I know some that still do.

I'd prefer a better quality PSU, especially at that price

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Super Flower Leadex GOLD 550W Fully Modular '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply - Black= £71.99

32gb is way overkill for audio editing unless you are an electronic producer who makes music with over 300 midi synths then fair enough.

The Silverstone PSU is excellent, its not like its a cheap thing.

For an audio editing rig I would want really good disk performance to make importing/exporting large audio files a much smoother process. I might be tempted to add a PCI-E SSD in almost...

You don't need a Z or a K CPU (assuming there's no overclocking going on as it's a work machine), but the selection of other parts is pretty poor on ocuk so I can't suggest any alternatives here. The non-K chips are clocked a lot lower for not much less money, and the H and B boards aren't much cheaper either.

Thanks for the help all

Yes DVD drive would probably be needed, but they're all pretty standard (might even be able to salvage his old one actually). 32GB of RAM may be overkill but I'd rather have it pretty future-proofed than him come to me asking why the PC can't handle what he's throwing at it.

Are PCI-E SSDs still £lol? Shall check them out but he's not the most tech-savvy person in the world so asking him to save certain things in certain places might get a bit confusing.

Also as said, this machine won't be being OC'd as stability is a huge requirement.

Voxination said:

Thanks for the help all

Yes DVD drive would probably be needed, but they're all pretty standard (might even be able to salvage his old one actually). 32GB of RAM may be overkill but I'd rather have it pretty future-proofed than him come to me asking why the PC can't handle what he's throwing at it.

Are PCI-E SSDs still £lol? Shall check them out but he's not the most tech-savvy person in the world so asking him to save certain things in certain places might get a bit confusing.

Also as said, this machine won't be being OC'd as stability is a huge requirement.

Click to expand...

Eh?

They are expensive but not crazy priced in comparison with a normal SSD. As to the other bit, you install your OS on there. No need to save anything anywhere else?

Well, you might want to setup his music files on a big 2tb/3tb drive but that takes seconds to do and once its done its done!

X99 makes way more sense btw for audio production than skylake unless you were going for the i5 which is more than enough cpu for most people.

Acme said:

The Silverstone PSU is excellent, its not like its a cheap thing.

Click to expand...

Excellent? No. Good? Yes. The best PSU you can buy for £70? No.

There's the 3 year warranty which, whilst good, isn't as good as you can get for the money. It's also only 500w which again, for the money, isn't the best you can get. It's also made by Sirtec who are a good OEM most of the time

The Superflower comes with a 5 year warranty, has 50 more watts, a larger and better quality fan and is made by Superflower - a top tier OEM.

If you're spending £70 on a PSU it makes sense to get the best you can afford.

True, but I thought your post sounded a bit... "thats a crap PSU" hence my comment.

Acme said:

True, but I thought your post sounded a bit... "thats a crap PSU" hence my comment.

Click to expand...

Not crap, no. Very good in fact. Just not quite as good as the Superflower

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x be quiet! Silent Base 800 Black Case & FREE Pure Rock CPU Cooler Bundle= £99.95
• 1 x Gigabyte X99-SLI - Intel Core i7 5820K Six Core CPU & Motherboard Bundle ***£30 Saving***= £479.98
• 1 x Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/EU)= £62.99
• 1 x Super Flower Leadex GOLD 550W Fully Modular '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply - Black= £71.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C16 2666MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M4A2666C1= £89.99
• 1 x WD Red 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM WD20EFRX= £74.99
• 1 x MSI GeForce GT 710 SILENT "Low Profile" 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £28.99

I have a good reason to suggest this case, not only does it have a free cooler, it should be stupidly quiet if its windowed variant is anything to go by,

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18701023

Thanks for the extra suggestions all. Stulid that spec looks really solid, noise is quite important here so that case is spot on, good review too! Shall get things ordered.

Thanks all.

A decent usb audio interface will be required, which depending on the requirements can cost quite a lot. There are a lot of factors that you'd need to know the answers to.

How many ins and outs?
Does he need AES/EBU digital connections, plain unbalanced or balanced?
Zero Latency monitoring?
Microphone pre amp built in, with or without phantom power?

There are a wide variety available from basic focusrite or behringer kit to higher end gear from RME or Roland.

Thanks for the comments Kei, but he's already well set up with the interfaces/amps etc (all beyond my knowledge!), this isn't his first audio editing PC, just a step up from his current C2Q based system