Music production and gaming PC for a friend

[Lovejoy!]

Hello all,

My friend has tasked me to find him a PC that we can build that will handle his needs to do some music production (for his job) and some gaming (not for his job). He's looking at a budget between £900-£1200 and won't need a monitor or storage spec'd with it. He isn't one for AAA single player games that push a 4090.

I've lost touch of what's bang for buck these days, so I've come here like many times in the past to make sure I'm getting him the best he can for his money

Thanks in advance.

 

[Tetras]

He's looking at a budget between £900-£1200 and won't need a monitor or storage spec'd with it

Bottom-end of budget option, can remove the M.2 drive if you don't want it.

Would advise checking that the music software plays nicely with Arc before purchase.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i5-12600K 3.70GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-69X-IN) = £149.99
• 1 x MSI PRO B760-P DDR4 II (LGA 1700) DDR4 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-MSI-03380) = £124.99
• 1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (SKU: MY-0AJ-TG) = £55.99
• 1 x Sparkle Intel ARC B580 GUARDIAN 12GB GDDR6 Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-SPK-03945) = £274.00
• 1 x Crucial T500 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01090) = £99.95
• 1 x Kolink Tranquility Silent Midi Tower Case - Black Noise Dampened (SKU: CA-03W-KK) = £62.98
• 1 x Phanteks AMP GH 750W 80PLUS Gold ATX Power Supply Modular - Black (SKU: POW-PHK-02517) = £84.95

• 1 x Arctic Freezer 36 120m Black CPU Cooler - 2x 120mm (SKU: COO-ARC-02420) = £22.99

Total: £875.84 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

 

[Lovejoy!]

thank you for that!

we can remove the storage, so that opens up some more room.

I've spoken to him and he's more comfortable with Nvidia for a GPU but is happy with intel for CPU.

if you have a choice, can you spec a £1200 or just under spec for him to consider as well please? appreciate the time.

 

[Gray2233]

Does he use any particular type of software for music? In general 32gb should be fine, but I built an audio production PC for someone some years ago and they used a type of software that (I'm paraphrasing here so don't quote me on this) emulated instruments somehow, it could end up eating absolutely massive amounts of RAM.

Could be worth bumping to 64gb if that's the case.

 

[Lovejoy!]

he uses cubase for work as he teaches music technology at a college. more RAM can't hurt in that respect, for sure.

 

[Tetras]

thank you for that!

we can remove the storage, so that opens up some more room.

I've spoken to him and he's more comfortable with Nvidia for a GPU but is happy with intel for CPU.

if you have a choice, can you spec a £1200 or just under spec for him to consider as well please? appreciate the time.

Here's an Intel CPU/nvidia option.

Note that I'm including SPDIF on the motherboards, but if you don't need that you can save money there.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core Ultra 5 235 (Arrow Lake) Socket LGA 1851 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-04177) = £261.98
• 1 x Asrock B860M LiveMixer WIFI (LGA 1851) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-04095) = £167.99
• 1 x Crucial Pro OC 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C36 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRU-02219) = £80.99
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 Twin Edge 12GB GDDR6 Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-03195) = £529.99
• 1 x Kolink Stronghold M Micro-ATX Case - Black Window (SKU: CA-068-KK) = £44.99
• 1 x Phanteks AMP GH 750W 80PLUS Gold ATX Power Supply Modular - Black (SKU: POW-PHK-02517) = £84.95

• 1 x Arctic Freezer 36 120m Black CPU Cooler - 2x 120mm (SKU: COO-ARC-02420) = £22.99

Total: £1,201.87 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

 

[Gray2233]

he uses cubase for work as he teaches music technology at a college. more RAM can't hurt in that respect, for sure.

I think the guy I built for used that, among others, he focused on virtual classical/orchestral type stuff and I was legitimately shocked at how much memory could end up being used so definitely worth it tbh. It also very much benefited from being on a fast NvME too, so if you don't have one yet I'd consider that too. From what I gather the software favours Intel and while it doesn't need a million threads many still use i9's with it and benefit, I suspect an i7 will be fine.

Stronger CPU and faster/more RAM option:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Sparkle Intel ARC B580 GUARDIAN 12GB GDDR6 Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-SPK-03945) = £274.00
• 1 x Kolink Tranquility Silent Midi Tower Case - Black Noise Dampened (SKU: CA-03W-KK) = £62.98
• 1 x Phanteks AMP GH 750W 80PLUS Gold ATX Power Supply Modular - Black (SKU: POW-PHK-02517) = £84.95
• 1 x MSI B760 Gaming Plus WIFI (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-37M-MS) = £149.99
• 1 x Crucial Pro 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C46 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRU-01085) = £149.99
• 1 x Intel Core i7-14700KF (Raptor Lake-S) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-00801) = £338.99
• 1 x Intel Core Ultra Bundle - Assassin's Creed Shadows and Civilization VII (SKU: DIG-INT-04525) = £0.00
• 1 x Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB Black CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-TLR-02724) = £29.98

Total: £1,090.88 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

I'm usually a little loathe to recommend that series of chips due to the potential issues, and he may be better off with Core Ultra, but Intel isn't my forte and I'm not finding much info on whether Core Ultra is better than Raptor Lake for Cubase as that isn't always the case.

Just be fully aware of the potential degradation problems if you decide to go that route.

Edit: You might be better off enquiring over on the https://forums.steinberg.net/ site about the best platform to build a DAW on as it would help with recommending the best bang for his buck.

 

[Quartz]

he uses cubase for work as he teaches music technology at a college. more RAM can't hurt in that respect, for sure.

Does Cubase use RAM to store samples? If so then as much RAM as he can afford is likely the answer. Check out the composer Neil Parfitt on Youtube who has over 512 GB RAM on his Mac Pro. The new AMD motherboards can host 256 GB (4x 64 GB) and the Intel ones 192 GB (4x 48 GB). He might prefer to start with 2x 64 GB or 2x 48 GB.

 

[Gray2233]

Does Cubase use RAM to store samples? If so then as much RAM as he can afford is likely the answer. Check out the composer Neil Parfitt on Youtube who has over 512 GB RAM on his Mac Pro. The new AMD motherboards can host 256 GB (4x 64 GB) and the Intel ones 192 GB (4x 48 GB). He might prefer to start with 2x 64 GB or 2x 48 GB.

Cubase will scale as far as you want it to depending on use case from what I remember. You can potentially shift a hell of a lot of high volume data assets between RAM and storage, so much so it's one of the few use cases (as well as audio production at mid-higher ends in general) where Gen 5 NvME's might make sense. Ideally you want as much as possible, I mentioned helping a guy build a DAW earlier, I was lucky enough that he was clued into hardware and building stuff so knew exactly what he wanted, he just didn't know what the best parts for the money were. Ended up spending close to 8K, worked for a media company of some sort but wanted to be able to work from home every so often too. This is back on X99, he went for 128gb and a chunk of that he turned into a Ramdisk.

The OP's friend probably doesn't need that level of investment, but people really don't realise how heavy a DAW (digital audio workstation) can be on resources.

Cubase actually has its own forum: https://forums.steinberg.net/ and I think checking in there to reiterate is best, I'm happy to advise on specific parts but less so as to what is needed.

 

[Lovejoy!]

appreciate the ideas and the feedback on various bits! I've dropped him over a bunch of options and told him to have a play around with them! I'll head back with more questions, no doubt, but we'll see where he takes it from here!

thank you again!

 

[WARburton]

• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 Twin Edge 12GB GDDR6 Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-03195) = £529.99

the 4070 Super can be had for the same price

 

[WARburton]

• 1 x Intel Core i7-14700KF (Raptor Lake-S) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-00801) = £338.99
• 1 x Intel Core Ultra Bundle - Assassin's Creed Shadows and Civilization VII (SKU: DIG-INT-04525) = £0.00
• 1 x Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB Black CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-TLR-02724) = £29.98

is the PA120 upto cooling a 14700k?
i thought the heat output was the same as a 13900, the PA120 cant cool a 13900

 

[MartinPrince]

....Could be worth bumping to 64gb if that's the case.

I use Cubase and 64Gb is the minimum I would recommend with 128Gb being my preference.

 

[RamboFB]

I use Cubase and 64Gb is the minimum I would recommend with 128Gb being my preference.

Freezing tracks is always an option to help lower RAM capacity. Not something I like doing myself.

 

[Gray2233]

is the PA120 upto cooling a 14700k?
i thought the heat output was the same as a 13900, the PA120 cant cool a 13900

I wouldn't pair it with an i9 but it should be alright with the 14700, although depending on how heavily the CPU gets hit it might warrant an AiO such as an Arctic Freezer III.

 

[wildman]

if he is goign to be running projects with high number of tracks and maiking heavy use of Kontakt libraries / samples I would probably go for 64gb RAM. I recently had to go from 32 to 64 on my Audio workstation because of a few projects I was running where aorund 20 to 30 tracks out of 60ish were using a lot of kontakt libraries and NI VSTs and it was eating RAM like Homer Simpson eats Doughnuts.............

 

[RamboFB]

Hello all,

My friend has tasked me to find him a PC that we can build that will handle his needs to do some music production (for his job) and some gaming (not for his job). He's looking at a budget between £900-£1200 and won't need a monitor or storage spec'd with it. He isn't one for AAA single player games that push a 4090.

I've lost touch of what's bang for buck these days, so I've come here like many times in the past to make sure I'm getting him the best he can for his money

Thanks in advance.

Will your friend be doing any DI recording or is it mostly MIDI VSTi stuff? My point being how silent the build will be. A couple things to consider would be the case and if a AIO cooler might be better?

Even some graphics cards fans can be "whiney", is certainly worth considering on top of performance.

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