Memory Lanes and Motherboards - Need Help for a new rig for school!

[Locke434]

I am trying to build a new rig, for school. I know the best idea, is to wait till black friday, but distance, to how slow my current rig is impacting my homework, it's almost not worth it, in the wait somewhat.

 

Any help, thank you, early on.

 

My original rigs from 2010-2012, on a ASUS 990 3.0 FX, with a AMD 8350 with a Corsair H110i V2, which support AM4 and 2066, no TR4.

 

Strange Factors; 

 

My current rigs run a 4 x Intel SSD 540 480 gig x Adaptech Raid Card 6805E, to a PCI E 1x or 4x, don't remember, or can't tell.

I use my USB-C to power my focus-rite music recording interface. Having 2 actual Thunderbolt port would be awesome, why isn't it common or I haven't seen one?

I run 6 monitors, off 1 Double slot gaming card, and a Single slot 730 GT. I am Nvidia, and I have do not know of if workstation cards will play nice with gaming cards. Never had enough money to find out.

I have other cards, I would like to use, like a E-MU 1x music card, or 1x PCI TV Cards I have, or a nice audio card, if my USB C is taken to my focusrite unit.

I run everyl large piece of software. ADOBE, 4k. Autocad, Protools, Dragon Naturally Speaking all at once, at times.

I have a case and power easily for anything. Thermal Take WP-200 and 1200 Platinum EVGA.

I have to give the bottom slot, or 2 slots for the raid card, because of the 40mm x 40mm Fan, or have to find a water cooling solution.

 

 

I am looking at 2066, because at the end of the chip-set, I could move from a $400 I7 to a I9 on sale, and keep the same rig. 2066 seems faster than investing in a AM4 socket board.

 

Is quad ram worth it? Right off the bat? Should I get a dual, and another set black friday? Do 2 dual set operate as a quad set when 4 sticks present? What the best mhz? 32 or 64gig?

 

I am looking at high end ASUS Board, or the EVGA dark,. I do not need Bluetooth on board (having a dongle on the desk insures newest standard and closest to phone, and whatever items) or WIFI, (I always plug in)

 

So I am completely lost by, if you occupy this or that, than it shares this lane and that lane, etc. I was hoping someone else knew it at the tip of their tongue.

 

So sometimes it limits it if you use the sata. I generally don't use the onboard sata, turn it off and use raid card with 4 ssd, raid 1+0, and 2 4tb mirror and 2 3tb mirror. 

 

So if I mitigate the array, I didn't know if dual NVME in mirror will be faster, and moving the array with some copy software.

 

Why do I need the redundancy, I have limited install on certain music and other software, and I really can't lose my work. I always stayed with a 5 year warranty drive and raid 1 + 0.

 

 

 

So I pray to the computer gods and Deep Thought! I have my towel and am ready to recieve the knowledge! (Hitch Hikers Fan)

 

Thanks all, Ahead of time,

 

AKV

 

 

[Jurrunio]

hmm what "homework" are we talkling about? though your other stuff is reaching pro level.

 

27 minutes ago, Locke434 said:

I am looking at 2066, because at the end of the chip-set, I could move from a $400 I7 to a I9 on sale, and keep the same rig. 2066 seems faster than investing in a AM4 socket board.

Actually going 2066 just for the sake of reusing the cooler is a super bad idea. TR4 stuff cost so much less than 2066 (of comparable performance), it will more than compensate for a new cooler.

[Sakkura]

Yeah a TR4 platform could make a lot of sense. One downside for you is Thunderbolt is pretty rare on AMD boards in general.

[Electronics Wizardy]

42 minutes ago, Locke434 said:

Why do I need the redundancy, I have limited install on certain music and other software, and I really can't lose my work.

Rember you also need backups, raid can still have data loss

 

nvme can be much faster than any sata drive raid array, Id go nvme here.

 

If you want thunderbolt go 2066 and get a card.

 

You don't seem to need too much cpu power, so dual channel will be fine for now and you can upgrade later. Id probably go 2x8gb if you plan to upgrade soon.

 

 

[royalba94]

55 minutes ago, Locke434 said:

I am looking at 2066, because at the end of the chip-set, I could move from a $400 I7 to a I9 on sale, and keep the same rig. 2066 seems faster than investing in a AM4 socket board.

Out of AM4 vs 2066 I'd definitely go 2066 in your case as there are more PCIe lanes and everything.

 

55 minutes ago, Locke434 said:

Is quad ram worth it? Right off the bat? Should I get a dual, and another set black friday?

I see no problem running dual channel and then adding a couple more sticks later on.

55 minutes ago, Locke434 said:

Do 2 dual set operate as a quad set when 4 sticks present? What the best mhz? 32 or 64gig?

yes - Depends on the timings, you want low CAS latency combined with high MHz, a lot of the time the "faster" sets will have higher MHz but also higher CAS latency which essentially makes them the same speed as "slower" MHz sets with lower latecy. back when I got my ram I settled for DDR4 3000 with CL14 as the best speed for the money - You'll probably be fine with 32GB unless your audio application uses a lot of RAM.

 

55 minutes ago, Locke434 said:

I am looking at high end ASUS Board, or the EVGA dark,. I do not need Bluetooth on board (having a dongle on the desk insures newest standard and closest to phone, and whatever items) or WIFI, (I always plug in)

If you're looking at a high end board and want to use so many PCIe devices then I'd actually steer you towards a board like the ASUS X299 WS SAGE since it's got 7x PCIe slots which you could use later on if you did end up watercooling the RAID and GPU to make them single-slot. it also has a Thunderbolt header if you want to add a Thunderbolt add-in card. (it does have one type-c port like your current mobo - it's USB 3.1 gen2 like yours. I you most likely have no use for actual thunderbolt ports currently)

 

Also using this board you for the most part won't have to worry about things like SATA ports being disabled because of the onboard PLX chip. I'd still recommend getting a 44-lane CPU tho eventually.

 

55 minutes ago, Locke434 said:

So if I mitigate the array, I didn't know if dual NVME in mirror will be faster, and moving the array with some copy software.

I've loved having an NVME drive as my OS drive so I'd go for the NVME drives. I'd probably keep the RAID card though and still use those other drives for a quick scratch drive in adobe or something tho.

 

28 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Actually going 2066 just for the sake of reusing the cooler is a super bad idea. TR4 stuff cost so much less than 2066 (of comparable performance), it will more than compensate for a new cooler.

I agree. However some brief research into the programs he'll be using (thx to Puget Systems) they do tend to favor higher frequency/IPC rather than just more cores so he might actually benefit more from X299 for the faster speeds.

 

As Sakkura mentioned there is not Thunderbolt currently available on TR4 but I don't think that would be a big deal as he's likely not using it currently (his current mobo doesn't have it)

[WereCat]

11 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Yeah a TR4 platform could make a lot of sense. One downside for you is Thunderbolt is pretty rare on AMD boards in general.

DIY Thunderbolt on TR... 

But I am not aware of any x399 boards with a Thunderbolt port

 

[Locke434]

I do use the USB-C port alot because it powers and does data interface with my Focusrite Scarlett.

Crap USB either won't power, or if it's 10gig instead of the 40 gig, or whatever standard, it will producing like a data clipping with my audio interface gear.

I do use alot of plug-ins, and windows, I max out my current ram, but I didn't know how size and speed compare.

But if I load a project that takes like 12 gig, it would take 12 gig in my ram or newer ram? In pro-tools.

I just figure if I get into a 2066 I7, for $350, in 2 years, I could get a I9 for cheap and move up without having to change much.

 

 

Sincere thank you guys, which I could buy ya a virtual beer!.

 

Cheers!

[Electronics Wizardy]

13 minutes ago, Locke434 said:

I do use the USB-C port alot because it powers and does data interface with my Focusrite Scarlett.

do you need thunderbolt or usb? They both use the same connector and a thunderbolt device won't work with usb only port.

 

14 minutes ago, Locke434 said:

But if I load a project that takes like 12 gig, it would take 12 gig in my ram or newer ram? In pro-tools.

Yea if a project uses 12g now it will need 12g with new hardware.

 

14 minutes ago, Locke434 said:

I just figure if I get into a 2066 I7, for $350, in 2 years, I could get a I9 for cheap and move up without having to change much.

Should be able to, but in a few years a new platform may be cheaper than a old cpu.

[Jurrunio]

1 hour ago, Locke434 said:

I could get a I9 for cheap

doubt it. currently the 16core 1950X cost $712 while 12 core 7920x (I want to compare with 7900x, but prices of that seems to have gone mental) cost $1000. If i9s will be 'cheap', Threadripper will be 'cheaper'. Intel just won't win the battle of computing power for your money. That's why the only situation you should go for Intel is that your apps run well with Intel and badly on Ryzen.

 

Threadripper all get 64 PCIe lanes while Intel only offers 28 on Skylake-X i7s and 44 on the i9s. Can be useful when you have more of these PCIe cards

 

Oh, and X299 boards dont support Xeons on the same 2066 socket. You can forget about getting cheap or super high core count Xeons like on X99