How Much CPU and RAM is Enough?

[McLilith]

Staying within the current range of AMD Ryzen CPUs, what should I consider the minimum CPU and RAM for a very solid audio workstation?

I want a system that will never choke when running at least a half-dozen cpu-intensive VSTs.

Besides VST plugins, I'll also be using the system for editing large audio files in iZotope RX 11. My current obsolete system is painfully slow when doing things like music stem separation and noise reduction operations on large files.

I'm saving money to build a computer later this year. If money were no object, I'd get a Ryzen 9 9950X and 96 GB of RAM, and be done with it. That's a lot of money though, and maybe I don't need to go quite that far to have a rock-solid audio workstation.

So, please help give me some rough idea of which AMD Ryzen CPUs I should consider, and how much RAM I should consider getting.

Thanks!

[Pictus]

The iZotope RX 11 is very CPU hungry, so the more powerful the CPU, better it is.
Ask iZotope support what would be the ideal CPU and RAM.
Depending on how much data you are reading and writing at the same time, it may
be advantageous to read from one SSD and write to another, ask the iZotope support.

[IvyBirds]

I have found when building PCs for Audio/Video production to install 3 hard drives

One for the OS, one for your DAWs and Plugins, and another for your sample libraries and working audio files

Your OS drive can be 500 GB but 1 GB can't hurt, and I would get 2GB drives at a minimum for the other two

The good news is drives are cheap these days. You also want to make sure there is always at least a hundred or more GB of free space on each of your drives, so if needed your software and Windows itself can quickly dump various temporary files as needed

Beyond that get the fastest or next to the fastest CPU you can afford with lots of cores, and I would get 64GB of RAM or if money is really tight start off with 32GB with a plan to upgrade to 64 if needed down the road

Instal your Web Browsers and any Office Type Software on your main "C:drive" also along with your OS

That way if they or windows decided to do something in the background at the worst possible time it won't create a bottle neck on your DAW/Music Software Drive, or your music files/sample library drive, all it will do is take up a core or two and use the hard drive you are not really using. You will still have a bunch of other cores to utilize and two other hard drives for your music production

Careful planning and execution from the get go on what gets installed where is important and often gets overlooked

My current PC build which I have has for a few months now has 96GB of RAM but at the present time I am pretty sure 64 GB would be plenty, that's what my last build(now a little over two years old) has and it would have no issues rendering HD Video or using Izotope RX or Ozone

Utilize external USB C SSD drives also to keep your sample library and audio file drives backed up and clutter free also

[uOpt]

I don't agree with much of that.

There's no reason for different drives anymore except if you want to keep the boot drive small for backup purposes.

Consumer mainboards usually only have 1 NVMe slots directly connected to the CPU (if you have a graphics card). So having a single large primary drive gives you the best speed.

Keeping free space is good advice.

[maanga]

When the GPU is built in the CPU, it shares the main memory, may be up to 16 GB.
Always use a dedicated graphics card.

I use 3 drives. One for the programs, One for the samples and the third for all backups.

[IvyBirds]

I don't agree with much of that.

There's no reason for different drives anymore except if you want to keep the boot drive small for backup purposes.

Consumer mainboards usually only have 1 NVMe slots directly connected to the CPU (if you have a graphics card). So having a single large primary drive gives you the best speed.

Keeping free space is good advice.

It's rather easy to find mother boards with 2 or more M.2 slots for NVME drives and of course you have SATAIII also

And in my real world testing and experience I am getting get FAR better results in A/V production with 3 drives

Even with SSD SATA III, you should be getting actual real world data transfer of 500mb (byte not bit) a second, that is plenty for both your DAW Drive and your Sample Library/Audio File folder

In my current setup I have two slots for NVME drives I use one for my OS/General Windows software drive. That is where Office Sits, my browser sits, and anything Windows related

I use the other NVME drive for my DAWs, Plugins, Photoshop, and Video Editing Software

My third drive is where all my digital assets for audio, photography, and video files reside that's SATAIII bits rated for up to 6 giga bit per second but I easily get around 500 megabytes of actual data speeds in the real world

Doing it this way Windows boots up like lightning, so do my DAWs, and so do any samples or audio files

I built a PC a few years ago that had a fast i7 processor, a good mother board, and 32gb of RAM but I went with just a single large NVME drive and the drive was a massive bottleneck

As with all things in life YMMV of course, but in my first hand experience this is the way to go

A side effect of this system is it makes it way way easier to find stuff also and maintain a good file management system including backups

[audiojunkie]

When the GPU is built in the CPU, it shares the main memory, may be up to 16 GB.
Always use a dedicated graphics card.

I use 3 drives. One for the programs, One for the samples and the third for all backups.

This is an essential one that not many people are aware of. One may ask, why do we need to buy a graphics card for music making? This here is the reason!

[audiojunkie]

I don't agree with much of that.

There's no reason for different drives anymore except if you want to keep the boot drive small for backup purposes.

Consumer mainboards usually only have 1 NVMe slots directly connected to the CPU (if you have a graphics card). So having a single large primary drive gives you the best speed.

Keeping free space is good advice.

It's rather easy to find mother boards with 2 or more M.2 slots for NVME drives and of course you have SATAIII also

And in my real world testing and experience I am getting get FAR better results in A/V production with 3 drives

Even with SSD SATA III, you should be getting actual real world data transfer of 500mb (byte not bit) a second, that is plenty for both your DAW Drive and your Sample Library/Audio File folder

In my current setup I have two slots for NVME drives I use one for my OS/General Windows software drive. That is where Office Sits, my browser sits, and anything Windows related

I use the other NVME drive for my DAWs, Plugins, Photoshop, and Video Editing Software

My third drive is where all my digital assets for audio, photography, and video files reside that's SATAIII bits rated for up to 6 giga bit per second but I easily get around 500 megabytes of actual data speeds in the real world

Doing it this way Windows boots up like lightning, so do my DAWs, and so do any samples or audio files

I built a PC a few years ago that had a fast i7 processor, a good mother board, and 32gb of RAM but I went with just a single large NVME drive and the drive was a massive bottleneck

As with all things in life YMMV of course, but in my first hand experience this is the way to go

A side effect of this system is it makes it way way easier to find stuff also and maintain a good file management system including backups

This is all, of course, dependent upon the bus that's being used. Some cheap motherboards run some of their drives off of the USB bus, and you won't get the performance hoped for. It may take some work to find out, but when buying your motherboard, be sure to confirm that your SSD drives are all using the PCIE bus. Even better if your devices are on their own PCIE bus, and not shared with other drives.

[uOpt]

Note that I said "Consumer mainboards usually only have 1 NVMe slot directly connected to the CPU".

The first drive is the only one with top speed.

This isn't the age of mechanical drives anymore.

[IvyBirds]

Note that I said "Consumer mainboards usually only have 1 NVMe slot directly connected to the CPU".

The first drive is the only one with top speed.

This isn't the age of mechanical drives anymore.

Never said it was or that I was recommending mechanical drives

It's also not the age anymore of using budget mass market consumer grade motherboards when expecting professional results

[uOpt]

It's also not the age anymore of using budget mass market consumer level motherboards when expecting professional results

So which motherboards do you recommend that pass on more PCIe lanes from the CPU?

[IvyBirds]

It's also not the age anymore of using budget mass market consumer level motherboards when expecting professional results

So which motherboards do you recommend that pass on more PCIe lanes from the CPU?

I can't answer that question for you without knowing more about what you are trying to accomplish, how many drives you want, what is their intended purpose, what CPU you are looking for, how much RAM. Intel? AMD? How big of a power supply etc

It's not a cut and dry answer, and depends on your needs and goals for the build in the first place

[uOpt]

It's also not the age anymore of using budget mass market consumer level motherboards when expecting professional results

So which motherboards do you recommend that pass on more PCIe lanes from the CPU?

I can't answer that question for you without knowing more about what you are trying to accomplish, how many drives you want, what is their intended purpose, what CPU you are looking for, how much RAM. Intel? AMD? How big of a power supply etc

It's not a cut and dry answer, and depends on your needs and goals for the build in the first place

It is a cut and dry answer.

The consumer platforms don't have enough PCIe from the CPU to run more than one (1!) NVMe drive on the CPU (after the graphics card).

Only Threadripper, the advanced Xeons and EPYC have more.

[IvyBirds]

It's also not the age anymore of using budget mass market consumer level motherboards when expecting professional results

So which motherboards do you recommend that pass on more PCIe lanes from the CPU?

I can't answer that question for you without knowing more about what you are trying to accomplish, how many drives you want, what is their intended purpose, what CPU you are looking for, how much RAM. Intel? AMD? How big of a power supply etc

It's not a cut and dry answer, and depends on your needs and goals for the build in the first place

It is a cut and dry answer.

The consumer platforms don't have enough PCIe from the CPU to run more than one (1!) NVMe drive on the CPU (after the graphics card).

Only Threadripper, the advanced Xeons and EPYC have more.

Only it's not a cut and dry answer, you have a confirmation bias where you think everyone needs a single large NVMe drive and think that and only that is the best option, and you are looking to engage in "gotcha" questions and answers where if I don't confirm your confirmation bias you will answer like you just did

But that's simply not true, it depends on a lot a variables including costs and budgets

There are many different variables at play and if you are looking for a one size fits all answer then the answer is don't build your own PC at all, just go to the store.and buy one

My personal belief based on real world experience with Windows 11 and A/V production software like DAWs and Photoshop is to give Windows, your browsers and various Microsoft softwares their own drive. Then have all your A/V production software on another, and your digital assets like photos, samples, videos, rendered files, etc on a third

Even if you have a motherboard where all or some of those drives are sharing the same PCIE bus or are on SATA again so what. In the real world you won't take any performance hits by doing that and you could see improvements

If Windows decides to access your C drive while your DAW is also accessing your C drive and you loading and streaming samples and files from your C drive that's a lot of activity on the same drive. You will have no disadvantages by splitting them across multiple drives and you will probably save money in doing so as one big drive is usually more expensive than 3 smaller drives

From a data security standpoint if everything is one large drive you are screwed if that drive fails or gets corrupted and more than likely the drive that Windows is using will be that drive

I don't care if my Windows drive fails. While it would be a pain I can always reinstall Windows, Office, and my Browsers. I don't care if my Software Drive fails while it would be a pain to reinstall all my Adobe products, my DAWs, and my plugins that wouldn't be the end of the world, if my sample library fails or gets corrupted, or my photos, or my videos, or my rendered audio files, or my working files in a current project gets lost of corrupted that is a big deal

Since all of those are on the same drive and nothing else is, it's really simple to keep that drive backed up with no thought or effort using automated tools

Again there is no one sized fits all solution which is why it's important to approach any custom build of a PC to the needs and desires of the end user. There is no scenario where a single giant expensive drive is always going to be the simple blanket answer for everything. It could be that a single large drive makes sense for one person but then again it might not be

One thing I do know my three drives costs less than an 8 TB NBMe drive would have cost

[uOpt]

I think we agree to disagree.

I would urge you to review the DRM systems of the software and libraries you use. With a dead boot drive and a full reinstall you might lose quite a bit and cause a wait period until you can reach the original vendors. I also don't quite follow why backing up multiple drives is supposed to be easier than a single one.