Reason on on new 16 core Intel

[sleeper0013]

Recently bought new PC Specifically to run the focusrite Clarett i though i would share some information on hardware and the performance of Reason on this system.

I went Intel this round for one major reason and that is thunderbolt support, but I ended up choosing this specific har ware and processor for its massive physical processor base, Overclock-ability and stable and reliable thunderbolt drivers.


i7-5960x CPU - 3.0 ghz, 20mg cache, 8core 16thread, overclocked to 4.0ghz stable. This processor had 8 physical cores. Reason will take full advantage of 7 of them. Cache is highly utilized in Reason so the 20m per core and the Overclock-ability from 2400 to a ridiculous 3200. Put this processor at the top of my list.

Asus X99-a Motherboard - chosen for its Thunderbolt support and reliability for overclocking. Has M.2 slot for new generation SSD, 12 SATA slots, supports quad channel DDR4 RAM up to 3333mhz, has one click overclocking utility for direct to stable overclock. it has wonderful sound system but considering the fact that i'm going to use the clarett this is being bypassed. This bored supports Raid for fast SSD access. This and its Papa The Asus X99-delux (delux comes with thunderbolt expansion card) are far above the competition as far as running the Haswell H series CPU.

16 gig Corsair Dominator DDR4 Quad channel RAM - i chose the 3000mhz for future overclocking support, as Asus stabilizes the BLCK biased overclocking.

Corsair h80i CPU water cooler - Had limited space in my case before i upgraded that as well so i went with this CPU radiator. the h100i will probably preform much better with a higher overclock, but i would not OC with a voltage past 1.300v with out liquid nitrogen based closed loop radiator 1.400v is impossible to cool with any thing other than a thermoelectric induction plate. good luck finding one of those.

2 corsair 120 GB SSD Force series GS - 550 read write speed, run in raid 1 mirror, giving me 550 write and 1100 read, and fault tolerance as data is duplicated across both drives. The M.2 slot SSD prices are high right now so i went with Sata for the time being. 4 Sata slots on this mb that are linked to the PCI-e but that can get up to 2.5GBs in raid opposed to the standard 1.6 with standard SATA. The m.2 can do some ridiculous 16gGBs.

2TB western digital HD - for nonvolatile storage of reason projects, and temp file and active system file storage to reduce ware on the SSDs

Asus thunderboltEX II card - this is the most stable Thunderbolt expansion card, only works on the Asus biased systems that support thunderbolt, Focusrite is currently beta testing clarett drivers for windows for this card.

Asus strix 970gtx 4gig Videocard- im using 3 monitors to split reason up for work flow this card handles them all very well with out touching the CPU, i also get max detail on games.... when not on the clock..... A hem.....

Corsair RM850 powersupply - has 70a on the +12 volt rail, need at least 25a on the +12v for Overclocking stability.

I managed to overclock this 3.0ghz CPU to 4.0ghz, overvolt at .050v for CPU offset, and 1.150v CPU OC. OC on the cache bus from 24ghz to 3.2 ghz, overvoltage at 0.025v for Cache OC, all stable. currently i am only able to clock ram to from 2100mhz to 2400mhz. The Clarett driver is in Beta, My system is definitely major focus for Focusrite as well as other x99 biased systems but i would heavily recommend an ASUS based system as they have had Thunderbolt support for more than a couple years.

I am currently running reason at 24bit 96khz resolution, 4 channels and one Bus per instrument, 2 channels and one bus per drum, on a 9 instrument mix, along side a full mastering deck with 8 channel compression and mid/side mastering, at 150 some of sample buffer and 5ms latency on A Creative ZxR audio interface. I'm excited to be getting The Fucusrite clarett 8pre next month, apparently this has less than 1.38ms round-trip latency at 24bit 192khz. this is real time monitoring as the thunderbolt interface has simultaneous 10gbs up 10gbs down bandwidth. MAC definitely is no longer king of audio, yet this system wasn't cheep. This build will be around for a long time to come as the X99 has plenty of upgrade ability. I'm sure that Intel is working on a 4ghz version with the same ridiculous overclock-ability, and faster ram support.

1000$ - cpu
250$ - motherboard
254$ - 16 gig Ram
340$ - video card
240$ - 2/SSDs
120$ - 2tb HD
100$ - Thunderbolt card
120$ - CPU radiator.
120$ - powersupply

[JiggeryPokery]

I was looking at the 5960 for a new workstation, but for the sake of a few months, decided it makes sense to hold off until the Broadwell-E, which may even be out by April. Skylake is odd with only 20 lanes of PCIe, so that's out if one wants dual gfx. And anyway, Haswell is pretty old on the 22mm process.

So instead I've just built an i5 HTPC, with an Asus strix 960. I probably over-specced for HTPC, but wanted to future-proof against a 4K screen in a year or three, and at least I can play the odd game or two in comfort in the meanwhilst . I wouldn't have a SATA SSD again: they're actually pretty rubbish. I had an M100 and more recently an Evo Pro in the old beastie, and while they're an improvement on HDDs, the gain isn't really that much, so I thought I'd just go straight for an SM951 PCIe M2 now and hang the expense, and it's quite literally twice as fast, without the dicking around with RAIDing 2 drives that together would probably cost about the same.

[gak]

Damn spoiled kids, get off my lawn!!!!



I simply cannot afford it, but jelly I am.

[Jmax]

I think my computer just started crying

[Last Alternative]

That's a lot of money and pretty cool but are you making music?

[Ostermilk]

Fascinating.

[Chizmata]

is that one of those things which with you can type letters and see things that happen in other places?

[JiggeryPokery]

That's a lot of money and pretty cool but are you making music?

That's quite a derogatory remark, imo. He clearly says he is, or at least, that's why I got from his statement "I'm running Reason..."

Why does it matter to you how much he or anyone spends on the tools they need to do their job? A high specced machine bought now will easily last until the 2020s. Some of us need to run more than a few Thors; there's DX12-era gaming, and including the advent of 4K desktop screens; HD and UHD video production. So one looks at the cost as perhaps $500 a year over a 6-year lifetime: my current 965 dates from 2010 and still runs Reason and DX11-era games well, but I just can't do video or screenrecording without at lot of swearing so I'm now considering my needs for next few years moving into the UHD/HBM/DX12 eras, and I think maximising cores with plenty of PCIe lanes would be a good investment. So the top-end Intel it has to be.

If you need that functionality, you're not going to be doing those on the $100 Skylake you got stuck in that crappy 500 bucks PC from Walmart!

Time is money.

Moar Power! is also money, but at least spending it upfront gives more Time later and cuts down on the Swearing

[Noplan]

The good thing about reason is that it does not require a high-end monster. I am running reason on my 5 year old 400 € PC and I never felt to upgrade my system.

[DiZo]

not real now with rack extension, i have a i7 and its hard when i have tracks only with RE's

[Noplan]

not real now with rack extension, i have a i7 and its hard when i have tracks only with RE's

Thats a good point, but i just dont use REs and safe my money for some high-class cocaine.

[4filegate]

Ready Steady Go! it would be interesting - http://www.reasontalk.com/viewtopic.php ... tress+test

[Last Alternative]

That's quite a derogatory remark, imo.

Derogatory isn't what I was going for. I was skimming thru the forums last night after work in a short period of time and I guess what I said was pretty short and vague so here's what I meant by my words:
1) "That's a lot of money..."
I busted out a calculator since they itemized the parts and including that, and considering the Clarett and monitors, he spent almost, if not more than $4k which is a TON of money! Much more than I would spend on a computer in my class of society. There's nothing wrong with that either. Hobbies are expensive and if I had the money I'd probably do the same. After all, I actually bought the Focusrite Clarett 2pre with high hopes and excitement but had to send it back when I learned what Thunderbolt really is, and how it's still in beta for Windows for God's sake LOL. I mean they don't even try to make sure people are aware of that. For all I knew, Thunderbolt is some kind of enhanced Focusrite chip or transformer in the Clarett. Really sux because of course I am not equipped for it.
2) "...and pretty cool..."
As I said, I would totally build a top-of-the-line smokin' machine too if I could. I quickly researched the parts they got and was blown away at how nice things are getting. Honestly I'm a little jealous and although what they bought is far more advanced than necessary for running Reason.. or pretty much anything right now, I dig the idea that it'll hold up for a long time (as long as the parts last that long) for newer technology & computer spec demands in the future. I really only give it 5-7 years before it's obsolete but such is the nature of technology. It's still a badass computer and will be for a while.
And also I dropped a pretty penny on my last computer build too. Enough to put me in the hole for a bit! And it's still running strong. So I know what it's like to wanna have the latest greatest reliable tool for the job.
3) "...but are you making music?"
My question makes sense if you think about it. I speak from experience, other musicians' testimonies, watching my musician friends, and looking at the music forum over time: Where's their music they always talk about? Most of us are too lazy, scared, busy, broke, inexperienced, stubborn until perfection is reached, etc. to actually finish anything. For whatever reason, we keep buying gear with big plans but never see them thru. Obviously this doesn't go for everybody but I am certainly guilty of it, on account of the disappointing length of time I've taken to put out my debut album. I have my reasons but it actually is coming soon. I'm fed up with myself for taking so long. Procrastination only leads to dying in vain.
My point in asking that was of hopeful interest that they haven't, or don't, become a victim of this 'new-gear-syndrome' and it never leading to releasing music.
I hope no one was offended and I hope I explained myself well enough. I'm here to be a beacon to my fellow musicians. That is all.

[EnochLight]

Recently bought new PC ...i7-5960x CPU ...Asus X99-a Motherboard... 16 gig Corsair Dominator DDR4 Quad channel RAM... Asus strix 970gtx 4gig Videocard

It's official: I am an envious, jealous, mofo of that build. Well done, sleeper0013 - looks totally bad ass! Should give you years of service, handle plenty of RE's, and be a great production machine in general.

[Ostermilk]

I like this setup too, but for Audio I don't have requirement for Thunderbolt as there are many direct to PCIe card and pre-amp setups that perform as well as Focusrite are claiming for their promiseware interfaces, it's different on a Mac as you need Thunderbolt to get access to the PCIe bus, it might be handy to have Thunderbolt on a PC for other tasks though even if I can't personally see a need.

I'd have probably gone for silent cooling (Noctua) and PSU as well. I also thought the 5960x was an 8 core processor but I suppose saying it is 16 core makes my current processor an 8 core one so if I can state that my CPU has twice as many cores also then that's fair enough... .

I agree with JP also that with Broadwell on the horizon the bang for buck CPU ratio may work out a bit better in a few months than it currently is.

This bit perplexed me a bit too;

2TB western digital HD - for nonvolatile storage of reason projects, and temp file and active system file storage to reduce ware on the SSDs

Did you just mean somewhere to plonk the stuff you've done on but wanted to make it sound more grand?...

But that sure is a good chumk of an i7 brute to enjoy, I just hope you don't have to endure the onboard Soundblaster for too long before those Thunderbolt drivers materialize.

[4filegate]

desktop workstation experience has shown www.apc.com UPS Uninterruptible Power Supply - or it's done "AFK" away from keyboard

[EnochLight]

desktop workstation experience has shown http://www.apc.com UPS Uninterruptible Power Supply - or it's done "AFK" away from keyboard

derpa.JPG (41.58 KiB) Viewed 1806 times

[4filegate]

derpa.JPG

This fixed now. Thanks.

Kenni, you can delete this thread thread above if you're reading

[kitekrazy]

Last I heard the Clarett did not have drivers for PC.

[sleeper0013]

Any machine can run Single channel instruments, with no master deck, at 44.1k. I'm Going for resolution and low latency. no less that 50 channels and buses, a mastering deck, that is running 2 4-dynes, Mid/side mastering with 2 soft tube FETs, buscam buss compressor, retro and onyx limiter, All real time. And yes i'm making music, I'm doing a marry had a little lamb remix then i'm gonna sell all my shit on Craigs list.

[sleeper0013]

clarett for PC is in beta, im going to be joining the beta team when i finally get my clarett next month.