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To answear your question the i7 is the best but obviously the most expensive.
Depends on the use, before we know that, all other info is irrelevant.
What version of cubase? and would you consider the machine a music production machine first and foremost? Any gaming?
I have around £2000 for the full setup. You guys have some very helpful advice on here thanks.
Cubase 5.5 and i will not be gaming on the machine at all i have a Playstation 3 for that.
Good stuff, You wont need to spend anywhere near £2000.
Cubase 5.5 support above 4 cores, So a hex core would show benefits for you.
So a nice AMD 1050t or 1090t setup, Plenty of Ram and storage space, SSD OS drive, Good motherboard and sound card and you my friend will be laughing!
Unfortunately I havent the time to look up hardware for a proper spec and cost. But atleast 6gb Ram! the more the better though. I have to sleep now, early morning =)
Seems like Cubase 5.5 can use more than 4 cores so either an i7 930 or phenomII X6 1055T or 1090T.
No need for an expensive motherboard, something cheap will be fine, I'd grab a large SSD (or even a few for working on the files ), then a separate 1-2TB drive or few depending on the need for storage.
Grab a nice quiet full tower case if you got room for it, good proper sound card too.
Graphic card is irrelevant as you're not going to be gaming, I'd say something like the passive 5550 will be perfect and you can run up to 3monitors from it as well.
Definitely grab at least 2 large 24"-26" monitors as you want a lot of work space when working with music.
I don't think you can spend 2000 on it, well, you can grab 980X or some 300GB SSD but it will be stupid to do as there are new CPUs coming next year and pretty much anything above i7 930 or 1055/1090T will be silly expensive and pointless to buy ( Unless you really need all that extra power right now ).
So to sum up:
i7 930 + mobo + mem = ¬430 / 1055T + mobo + mem = ¬280
SSD = 150 for 90gb
HDD = ¬45 per 1TB
Sound card = 60 to 180 ( for professional music might want the 100+ ones )
GPU = 50
Monitors = around 120 for 22", ¬160 for 24", 240-250 for 27", preferably 2 at least.
Good case = ¬70-80 - 200
Cooling = 40+
PSU = ¬60-70
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Total = Starts from about 950-1000 for dual monitors setup with nice case, good cooling and fast large SSD and x6 1055T, up to whatever depending on your needs but I'd say this is already a beast setup and you probably won't need anything more ( apart from stuff like larger monitor or more storage or better sound card - CPU wise it has plenty of power ).
There is so much to choose from out there I'm getting myself messed up. I will be needing a top end sound card and muti monitor.
Is there a big margin between the i7930 and 1090T?
yes the i5 has the edge on the phenoms when gaming, but by what, 2-10 fps in most games?
Is 2-10 fps worth taking a dead socket, paying £50-£100 more (when you factor in motherboard price)?
Wasn't there rumours that AMD said they are keeping backwards compatibility for their new processors? Buy a cheap phenom or athlon now and later you could upgrade it to a Bulldozer processor. Or just do it simply to save some cash (enough money to spend on a better GPU or an SSD).
Like I said again, if you feeling flush go intel if you just want the best bang for your buck then go AMD.
Also the x6 is faster for everything else apart from gaming and it's a wise investment as a couple of years from now, when hexacores become mainstream they will out perform the i5 even more.
The i5 is simply a bad idea right now, atleast wait until sandybridge.