Build question

Whatever board you use, pay special attention to the latency figures if you are using a DAW. IIRC, Intel CPUs have better memory latency than their AMD equivalents.

One CPU that I use everyday is an Intel i7-13700KF, and it is absolutely a killer chip, and it is pretty easy to keep cool. Yes you will need a discrete graphics card, but that will take any overhead off of the processor compared to a CPU with graphics built in. More direct processing power can be dedicated to your audio streams, while the GPU card handles your graphics, reducing latency within the DAW.

For the motherboard, I would probably go with a Z790 chipset for the most flexibility, but that's just me.

spottydog10 said:

The clock speed differences are quite marked on those two, 14700f @2.1Ghz versus 14700 @3.4Ghz.
I'd imagine a fair performance difference?

Any major drawback to the B760 chipset? It's quite a bit cheaper.

https://www.ebuyer.com/1881880-asus-intel-prime-b760m-a-wifi-lga-1700-ddr5-micro-atx-gaming-motherboard-prime-b760m-a-wifi

Just re looking at that board, the blurb says for 12th and 13th generation processors. Is it compatible with a 14700 cpu?

Click to expand...

Gen14? Sure. PRIME B760M-A WIFI｜Motherboards｜ASUS Global

I admit I was looking at the "turbo" frequencies, which aren't that different between the F and the KF.

The F is a nominal 65W CPU. The KF, 125W. How that would manifest for gaming, I have no idea.

B760 vs Z790:


The BIOS manual for the board indicates that the CPU can't be overclocked by changing its multiplier (for "K" unlocked CPUs).

Looks like the Z790 natively supports more peripherals than the B760. Those may not matter to you, if you're getting a microATX board like the one you've listed. (mATX typically has fewer ports.)

You could buy an mATX Z790 board, but, as you say, they tend to be more expensive than a B760 board.

Thanks bobkn, that link explains it very well.
I wont be overclocking but have just noticed that B760 board only has 2 SATA ports unless I'm missing something and I need 4.

spottydog10 said:

Thanks bobkn, that link explains it very well.
I wont be overclocking but have just noticed that B760 board only has 2 SATA ports unless I'm missing something and I need 4.

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That's correct.

If you want 4 or more SATA ports, you can buy them


If you like Asus, there's an ASUS PRIME B760M-A AX. (I haven't compared it to the B760M-A Wifi.)

Are you gonna chase this for another 6 months?

Huh?

spottydog10 said:

Huh?

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Sorry, my mistake.

You began this thread in April of 2023. Not 2024.

What's your point?

spottydog10 said:

The clock speed differences are quite marked on those two, 14700f @2.1Ghz versus 14700 @3.4Ghz.
I'd imagine a fair performance difference?

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Yes, a 22% difference in PC Mark score generallyy translates to a fair difference in overall performance. But like I said, the difference in power efficiency (and the resulting difference in generation of heat) is fairly big also.

spottydog10 said:

Any major drawback to the B760 chipset? It's quite a bit cheaper.

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The biggest difference between Z690 and B760 is that 'Z' chipsets can overclock unlocked ('K' model) CPUs like the i7-14700K whereas 'B' ones can not.

spottydog10 said:

https://www.ebuyer.com/1881880-asus-intel-prime-b760m-a-wifi-lga-1700-ddr5-micro-atx-gaming-motherboard-prime-b760m-a-wifi

Just re looking at that board, the blurb says for 12th and 13th generation processors. Is it compatible with a 14700 cpu?

Click to expand...

Of course.

spottydog10 said:

but have just noticed that B760 board only has 2 SATA ports unless I'm missing something and I need 4.

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No, it's got 4. (See the Tech Specs link I gave.)

spottydog10 said:

What's your point?

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You want me to admit that I was mildly (I hope) twitting you about contemplating a build for a year and a half? OK. Sorry.

The Intel Gen14 CPUs may soon be less desirable, after the Core Ultra (LGA1851) CPUs become available. That doesn't necessarily mean that the Gen14 ones will drop in price any time soon. (For example: an I9-13900K costs about the same as an I9-14900K.)

If I was building a new desktop system today, I'd have to consider the AMD Ryzen 7000 or 9000 series CPUs.

I don't run a DAW, and am not competent to spec out a PC that might meet your needs. I'm just a nerdy PC enthusiast.

The minimum system requirements for a Steinberg UR44 are pretty minimal. (2GHz Intel Core or AMD equivalent, 4GB RAM, 1.2GB HD space.) For Cubase 13 Pro (is that the highest end version?), is more demanding, but not much so by current standards.

bobkn said:

The minimum system requirements for a Steinberg UR44 are pretty minimal. (2GHz Intel Core or AMD equivalent, 4GB RAM, 1.2GB HD space.) For Cubase 13 Pro (is that the highest end version?), is more demanding, but not much so by current standards.

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DAW software has a lot higher minimum system requirements. The recommended specs greatly depend on what exactly it is that you use it for.

• Recording
• Music production
• Mixing and mastering (with how many plug-ins, what plug-ins, and how many tracks)
• Composing (with how many virtual instruments, and how many tracks are being composed in real-time); composing while using a separate machine for recording is not uncommon BTW.
• Hybrid DAW
• ...

The biggest thing to remember about using a DAW is being able to handle the track latency. Simply put, this is the time difference between what you have recorded and are playing back and what you are playing in real time. For example, if you have laid down a drum track and are adding a guitar track along with it, you play the drum track back and play along with the drums. The problem is that there will be a bit of latency in the drum playback. It's on the order of milliseconds, but it does make a difference. Because of this latency, your guitar track could be slightly delayed by this latency. You play along with what you hear, but if the drums are 32 ms behind in your ear, the guitar will be recorded (according to your ear) at the right time, but on playback, you will find that the guitar is recorded late by however many milliseconds comprise your latency figure. This latency figure scales up with the number of tracks you have playing back whilst recording new information and can cause serious problems in your mix.

There are ways to mitigate this, and most DAWs have a method at reducing this latency, but it is not perfect. You can only get it to be so low.

In my personal experience with my own DAW (Ableton Live), I found that I had more latency issues when I was using an AMD system. I currently use an Intel system for my DAW and I find the latency easier to deal with and mitigate. The latency starts out to be lower value, and I can tweak from there. The best latency I could get on the AMD system was 31 ms. With my Intel rig I can get 18 ms when playing a single track back and recording a new one beside it. As I mentioned above, the latency scales up with the number of effects and tracks used, so having a decent amount of cores helps too.

I will say that my Intel i7 4790K greatly outperforms my AMD Ryzen 5800X when used with a DAW and the i7 has fewer cores (but 8 threads). I don't know much about the new AMD offerings in the AM5 socket series. They may actually be better, but I think that you might have to chat with someone using one of these new AMD systems and a DAW and see how the latency figures match up with a comparable Intel CPU to really make a good comparison. I can only relate my experience.

I wish that @fireberd were here. He's an expert in this stuff.

Thanks for the input chaps.
With regard to DAW configuration I've been running them for a few years and I'm fine with the specs that are needed.
As I haven't built a pc for a couple of years it's the hardware, chipset/CPU/memory that I'm a bit behind in.
The Z90 boards seem quite expensive and the B760 and even the H610 although a bit older appear to be fine for what I need.
But... I don't want to penny pinch and miss out on a feature that I may need at some intermediate point in the future.

spottydog10 said:

But... I don't want to penny pinch and miss out on a feature that I may need at some intermediate point in the future.

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Some audio gear requires Thunderbolt 4, but that's about the only real reason I can think of. So, if you don't need USB4/Thunderbolt 4, the PRIME B760M-A WIFI is probably going to be the best choice.

Thanks HDMI, I wont be needing Thunderbolt any time soon, the UR44 with Cubase 13 Pro works very well.
The Asus link does say 4 SATA ports but the picture on Ebuyer of the board only shows 2, I've emailed them for confirmation.

spottydog10 said:

Thanks HDMI, I wont be needing Thunderbolt any time soon, the UR44 with Cubase 13 Pro works very well.
The Asus link does say 4 SATA ports but the picture on Ebuyer of the board only shows 2, I've emailed them for confirmation.

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Manual:


4 SATA ports. 2 on the board facing up, 2 in a block facing the rear. The later may not be conspicuous in a picture.

Thanks Bobkn, not seen them like that before.

spottydog10 said:

The Asus link does say 4 SATA ports but the picture on Ebuyer of the board only shows 2, I've emailed them for confirmation.

Click to expand...

bobkn said:

facing the rear

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Facing the front actually.

hdmi said:

Facing the front actually.

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Front of the case, yes, assuming that the I/O ports are in the back of the case. (There are a few cases where the board is oriented differently.)

I think of that as the back of the board. Maybe I'm unique in that.