Is a hexacore x79 setup overkill for me?

[sprnva]

So my late 2006 MacBook (2GHz C2D, 2GB RAM) is struggling lately and I've been looking into building a hackintosh replacement (I want to stay with 10.6). I got drawn towards the power of the hexacore i7-3930k but when I started shopping around for parts I realised that x79 is a bit of a minefield. Some boards have major problems if you don't use qualified RAM. It also seems to run quite hot, and a heavy-duty cooler like that big Noctua one would necessitate low-profile RAM. Which is hard to find (Corsair only have one set and it's only 16GB). Then there's the cost...

The more I looked the bigger the dilemma got. So now I'm re-evaluating whether I'd be better off just getting a z68 board, a regular 2600K and overclocking it. I'll mainly be using Logic and Komplete, plus a host of random plugins.

Would the extra 2 cores on the 3930k really make that big of a difference over a quadcore i7 running at a higher clock speed?

[camsr]

It's the difference between 6 synths and 4 synths, to put it simply. Polyphonic synths can use multiple cores, one for each voice, if it is necessary.

[jdnz]

what about hunting around for a used dual xeon mac pro? early model ones are going for semi-sane prices and it'll give you 8 or 12 cores and still run 10.6 fine.

Avoids the whole minefield of hackintosh building

[DevonB]

Can't really comment on the Hackintosh part of the equation, but just helped a friend piece together basically the system you described; 3960k, Intel mobo w/ X79 chipset, 16GB of ram running Windows 7. Had him make sure the cooler for the CPU that it was no bigger than the LGA socket itself to not run into high profile ram hitting the cooler. Windows 7 performance numbers came back with 7.8 and 7.9 with a 160GB SSD drive. The system is plenty snappy to boot with no problems so far.

Devon

[sprnva]

Over here the cheapest I could get a Mac Pro for is 1500 euro. And that's a MacPro3,1. Five year old tech. It's just not worth it when I could build a brand new x79 system for the same money.

The hackintosh side isn't a problem, it's just trying to decide whether a quad-core would be a good daily driver or if I'd soon feel the need for those extra 2 cores on the 3930. Also, should I be looking at 16 or 32 for RAM? I know more is always better but I'm trying to find a balance between power and cost.

DevonB, what parts did you use there? Board-wise I was considering a Asus P9X79. It still has a PCI slot which could be handy. RAM and cooler are kinda up in the air due to the shortage of low-profile kits. A lot of people seem to be going with closed-loop watercooling like the Corsair H100, but I've heard they're not that reliable. A lot of the air options seem to be insanely big.

[UltraJv]

Im pretty sure you know this but only certain mobos will work 100% with hackintosh. Check compatibility before just assuming you can make it work on anything. Same is true of GFX cards and audio, PCI bus probably wont be supported on 10.6 as Macs now use PCIe. This site is quite useful :

http://legacy.tonymacx86.com/index.php? ... 71c5ee036f

[mandolarian]

A great non-interference cooler for X-79 is the Thermalright True Spirit 140. Not only does it keep up with or beat the big Noctua, it's half the cost. In the xbitlabs test it bests NH-D14 on an overclocked 3960: x-bitlabs test

No RAM bumping:



The 3930k isn't a heat monster, it's a 130watt part - the proper value for a real desktop CPU.
You'll want to select a case case with good, quiet airflow like a Fractal R4, tho.

Yes, you could go for a wimpy 77watt IVY 3770k on a Z77 board, skip the Z68, but in that case, maybe wait for Haswell.

You can also check anandtech.com for motherboard tests. One of the few to perform DPC latency checks. Here's a link to the GB X79-UD3 with 70us result:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5271/giga ... 3-review/5

[sprnva]

Hi UltraJv. I've built a few hackintoshes so I'm pretty aware of what works and doesn't. I've also started out by checking out a few x79 builds on tonymac's site to get a feel for what people were using.

Thanks for the info mandolarian. I found a cooler comparison on Tom's Hardware last night and they had a similar Thermalright cooler on test. It cleared the RAM, but obstructed the PCI-E slot (why do they jam all the slots so close to the CPU on these boards...). The really interesting part in that article was they used GSkill RAM that isn't qualified for x79 at all. I'm definitely not going the Noctua route. I don't care how awesome everyone says it is, it weighs almost a kilo. The Hyper 212 Plus came up as another possible candidate, but some people question how good a "cheap" cooler like it is at cooling a 3930k, especially if overclocking is added into the mix.

I have to skip z77 for 10.6 compatibility as it doesn't support Ivy Bridge. I may end up upgrading to Mountain Lion or beyond but I'd like to start out with 10.6 so it'll always be an option for me. Case-wise I was planning on the Fractal Design Define R4.

To try and get an idea of processing ability, I had a look through Geekbench scores and compared 3930k and 2600k scores to a 2008 octacore Mac Pro. The 2600k tended to score about the same as the Mac Pro, in spite of having half the cores. The 3930k destroyed it, coming in about 50% higher. With that in mind, is Geekbench really telling me that even a 2600k build would give me the same performance as a 2008 octacore Mac Pro?

From an audio production point of view do most OS X plugins take advantage of multiple cores and hyperthreading these days? It seems a lot of people building x79 rigs are either doing it for video production, gaming or just to show off. I haven't seen too many building these as DAWs (well, apart from ProTools, but I don't plan on going down that route). This is why I'm asking if it's overkill. Considering a 2600k build would probably end up costing maybe half the price of a x79 one, would I really see the x79 used to it's maximum potential with the likes of Logic, Komplete etc. I'm sure Diva would probably love it, but I haven't sprung for that yet. I do hear Monark is a bit of a hog too.

[Throbert]

In general,- Mac or PC, stock laptop or desktop, you'lle never find any real powerful hardware inside,- it's all consumer technology.
The exceptions are the large workstations using server motherboards, ECC RAM and Intel Xeon or Sandy Bridge-E processors.

When talking about performance and the audio/MIDI world,- processor cache matters !
All affordable Intel i3 and i5 and also some i7 processors don't offer much L3 cache.
Some latest dual core procs w/ integrated GPU are NOT faster than a Core2Duo T9600 you find in older Lenovo w-series laptops.
Any socket 1155 motherboard isn't that fast as a socket 2011 mobo is and even a Ivy Bridge core i7 3770K is a consumer quad core processor, not being significantly faster than a i7 2600 or 2700K Sandy Bridge.

Socket 1366 (socket B /LGA 1366) motherboards, when they come w/ PCI slots, HAVE native PCI support,- socket 1155 mobos don't have, it's PCI-to-PCIe bridge instead which renders any formerly hi-quality PCI audio/MIDI card useless or offers crappy performance w/ PCI devices.
This is important info for the people who already own good hardware setups and don't want to buy all new.

Any socket 2011 mobo offers much more communication lanes to the processor and other hardware

When talking about the most affordable and best performance hardware,- consider a Intel Core i7 3820 Sandy Bridge-E processor (4 x 3.6GHz / 10MB L3 cache),- it's NOT much more expensive than a Intel Core i7 3770.

DIY is the way for best performance and reliability at an affordable price.
It's easy to pay someone 150 bucks to assemble the machine once the components are carefully selected.

I don't buy any stock machines anymore,- no Mac and no PC.

A.C.

[mandolarian]

Thanks for the info mandolarian. I found a cooler comparison on Tom's Hardware last night and they had a similar Thermalright cooler on test. It cleared the RAM, but obstructed the PCI-E slot (why do they jam all the slots so close to the CPU on these boards...). The really interesting part in that article was they used GSkill RAM that isn't qualified for x79 at all. I'm definitely not going the Noctua route. I don't care how awesome everyone says it is, it weighs almost a kilo. The Hyper 212 Plus came up as another possible candidate, but some people question how good a "cheap" cooler like it is at cooling a 3930k, especially if overclocking is added into the mix.

The Thermalright unit in Tom's test is the Archon SB-E, which is bigger and wider than the True Spirit 140. By at least 10mm. The Hyper 212 is great for the price, but the stock fan sucks compared to the silent TY-140 on the True Spirit. And Hyper's mounting system is not in the same league as Thermalright. Altho, on a X79 board, there's usually lots of x16 slots to choose from. Were you planning to SLI your DAW?

To try and get an idea of processing ability, I had a look through Geekbench scores and compared 3930k and 2600k scores to a 2008 octacore Mac Pro. The 2600k tended to score about the same as the Mac Pro, in spite of having half the cores. The 3930k destroyed it, coming in about 50% higher. With that in mind, is Geekbench really telling me that even a 2600k build would give me the same performance as a 2008 octacore Mac Pro?

Yep, pretty much. Sandi-B had a big IPC step and much higher stock clock from the Harpertown/Penryn Xeons. Plus, it (and 2700k) overclocks like a beast.

From an audio production point of view do most OS X plugins take advantage of multiple cores and hyperthreading these days? It seems a lot of people building x79 rigs are either doing it for video production, gaming or just to show off. I haven't seen too many building these as DAWs (well, apart from ProTools, but I don't plan on going down that route). This is why I'm asking if it's overkill. Considering a 2600k build would probably end up costing maybe half the price of a x79 one, would I really see the x79 used to it's maximum potential with the likes of Logic, Komplete etc. I'm sure Diva would probably love it, but I haven't sprung for that yet. I do hear Monark is a bit of a hog too.

There's a quite a few peeps using Logic on Mac octacore Pros with Komplete, Kontakt. Just for the heat generation or the multi-threaded productivity?

A 3930k might be overkill compared to a 2008 spec system, but 5 years later it seems barely adequate. Your budget tho, which is why I fully support spending twice as much for 50% more cores. Happy building!

[sprnva]

The Thermalright unit in Tom's test is the Archon SB-E, which is bigger and wider than the True Spirit 140. By at least 10mm. The Hyper 212 is great for the price, but the stock fan sucks compared to the silent TY-140 on the True Spirit. And Hyper's mounting system is not in the same league as Thermalright. Altho, on a X79 board, there's usually lots of x16 slots to choose from. Were you planning to SLI your DAW?

That's good to know. Throbert's post got me thinking more about native PCI and CPU cache. Now I'm thinking a server board might be a better choice for LGA2011 instead of x79. Something like the Supermicro X9SRA. I can't find anyone who has installed 10.6 on a C602 chipset, but it appears to be the server version of X79. I don't think it has native PCI but I don't have any PCI audio cards that would need to be ran native. And chances are if I do end up getting a DSP card down the line it'll be PCIe.

[Throbert]

Nope server boards aren't conducive to a good DAW. If I remember right it has to do with the cores running in parallel as opposed to series and the something I can't remember about the chipsets. You want an x79 chipset for sure.

[sprnva]

Thanks for clarifying that Throbert. I went off the server board idea in the meantime. For one thing there's no overclocking possibility and I'll need this as speedstepping and turbo mode don't work on a hackintosh.

I've found a few more P9X79/3930K builds out there so I've been looking at their RAM and cooling choices. Seems RAM shouldn't be as picky as I initially thought. While it'll cost more than a Z68/2600k build I think in the long-run it's a much better choice.

[Throbert]

Thanks for clarifying that Throbert. I went off the server board idea in the meantime. For one thing there's no overclocking possibility and I'll need this as speedstepping and turbo mode don't work on a hackintosh.

I've found a few more P9X79/3930K builds out there so I've been looking at their RAM and cooling choices. Seems RAM shouldn't be as picky as I initially thought. While it'll cost more than a Z68/2600k build I think in the long-run it's a much better choice.

The only x79 board by Asus that I see being used for OS or OSX is the Rampage IV. Are you verifying that your components are compatible with sites like,
http://legacy.tonymacx86.com/index.php? ... e036f[url]

[sprnva]

There's isn't much of a difference really. Looking through the hardware spec there shouldn't be any trouble. I'm gonna go with the P9X79 Pro. If the PCI slot on the regular P9X79 isn't native there's not much point in having it over the USB 3 header on the Pro. The Define R4 case has 2 front USB 3 ports so it'll be nice to have those hooked up. Although I'll have to see how well it works on 10.6. I only have one USB 3 enclosure and it has a crap JMicron chipset so I can only use it reliably on USB 2 (even in Windows). No loss if it doesn't work as there's enough USB 2 ports for me.

In time I may end up moving to 10.8 or beyond as the prospect of a Fusion drive is appealing. Right now I don't have any massive sample libraries that would take advantage of the faster I/O.