Upgrading our Studio-PC (Audio)

[Leooh]

Hi guys,

since it gets more and more frustrating to mix with our current "Band-PC", we are thinking about upgrading. We currently have a AMD A8 7650K, so as you can imagine the setup is pretty old. At home I have a Ryzen 5 2600 that is capable to run all of our projects butter smooth, so performance wise it should be in that ball-park. We also don't have a big budget, so price-performance is key.

At the same time I don't want "noisy" USB-ports, so the Mainboard should not be the cheapest option available. I had issues with my USB-ports in the past and it sucks.

Since we currently still have DDR3, we probably need to update this as well, since there are not B450 boards with DDR3-Support.

 

So what I'm thinking of is:

MSI B450 Tomahawk Max

AMD Ryzen 5 3600

G.Skill Aegis DIMM Kit 32GB (DDR4-3200)

 

What do you think of this setup? Is there anything that might be better from a price-performance standpoint? I personally think the RAM is pretty expensive, maybe we can save some money here. We don't need high clock-rates, but we do need 32GB because of the amount of plugins in our projects.

I also still need a GPU, that supports 3 1080p Monitors and is rather quiet. Everything else is irrelevant, since we don't use it for any kind of video-editing or gaming on this PC

I need to check what PSU is installed in our PC currently, but since we don't need a big GPU, I don't think this is a problem.

Sound-Quality of the Mainboard is also irrelevant, since we have a external Audio Interface (via USB).

 

Any feedback is greatly appreciated 

 

Budget (including currency): up to 400€

Country: Germany

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Audio Engineering (Studio One)

We will reuse PSU, Case and HDD/SSD

 

 

[Downkey]

you have the budget for it :shurgs:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	€184.99 @ Caseking
Motherboard	ASRock B550M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	€103.78 @ Computeruniverse
Memory	Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory	€83.99 @ Amazon Deutschland
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€372.76
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-04-08 14:18 CEST+0200

 

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, Downkey said:

you have the budget for it :shurgs:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	€299.99 @ ARLT
Motherboard	ASRock B550M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	€103.78 @ Computeruniverse
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€403.77
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-04-08 14:15 CEST+0200

 

They need RAM as well. They currently only have DDR3.

[Downkey]

1 minute ago, FakeKGB said:

They need RAM as well. They currently only have DDR3.

ye i edited it

[AnotherGlenn]

27 minutes ago, Leooh said:

We will reuse PSU

Might not be a good idea, though, depending on what you currently have.

PSUs can generate electrical noise, and depending on your motherboard, voltage regulator or Surge protectors (if you use those), Amplifier, Audio Interface, MIDI controllers, etc. the noise might leek into the finished product. I know it's very rare for this to happen, but if you do not have a good PSU, the chances of this happening increases. If your current PSU is well made, with good enough components, that will not be a problem, but it's worth looking into it. 

[Leooh]

Thanks for your input! What about a GPU? Just need to have support for 3 1080p monitors, so probably a really cheap one will be fine.

1 hour ago, AnotherGlenn said:

Might not be a good idea, though, depending on what you currently have.

PSUs can generate electrical noise, and depending on your motherboard, voltage regulator or Surge protectors (if you use those), Amplifier, Audio Interface, MIDI controllers, etc. the noise might leek into the finished product. I know it's very rare for this to happen, but if you do not have a good PSU, the chances of this happening increases. If your current PSU is well made, with good enough components, that will not be a problem, but it's worth looking into it. 

Good point! Will definitely check the PSU when I'm back in the room and post it here!