Is it ok to buy a cpu which I know runs hot? Ryzen 5800X

[EnGee]

Ryzen 5800X is not that hot really! Well, in my case it is not. It is very cool actually and the fan is almost always silent. It is rare to hit 55C per core!
Ok I found it, it is called "Core Performance Boost" in the CPU Advanced Settings in the BIOS (page 25 in my Mainboard manual Aorus B550). I disabled this option and then adjusted the Fan settings to be silent (page 35). Your BIOS settings might be a little bit different but you can find the same options.

But this means you aren't getting anywhere near the advertised performance.

And what is that advertised performance?

[jamcat]

But this means you aren't getting anywhere near the advertised performance.

Well, let's be honest - you can't trust advertisements no matter what. At best it will be cherry picked to make something look better than it is. At worst it would be a straight lie.

Luckily, we don't have to trust them at all. Plenty of reviews and benchmarks online. You can also get an opinion from other users.

And my opinion would be that you don't need top of the line CPU to get work done. Something like recent i7 or i5 would be just fine.

I mean, how often do you need that kind of processing power that would warrant an extra 500$ on CPU? Because you won't notice a difference in day to day use.

I run out of CPU on every single project. At sone point I start increasing the audio buffer and decreasing the sample rate during playback. That’s on my M1 Pro. On my Windows DAW I was having to disable tons of plugins, too.

[2DaT]

I run out of CPU on every single project. At sone point I start increasing the audio buffer and decreasing the sample rate during playback. That’s on my M1 Pro. On my Windows DAW I was having to disable tons of plugins, too.

Didn't you tell earlier that you use crazy buffers like 8@96k ? That might be a problem for efficiency.

If you use increasingly small buffer sizes, you do win a bit of latency, but it's a point of diminishing returns. AD and DA converters have a latency, regardless of buffer size. It does depend on sampling rate though.

You can get from 5ms latency running 64@44.1k to 3 ms running 8@44.1k, it is barely worth it. It's a difference that it takes sound to travel 70cm.

And to benefit from that kind of latency, you basically need to play tactile instrument like a guitar. For mixing/mastering you don't need extremely low latency.

[jamcat]

I said the M1 Pro is capable of very low buffers without any drop out. But that’s only up to a certain point. Eventually you may need to increase it as your plugin count builds.

But I create entire full string sections with SWAM, and use MODO DRUM and T-RackS Tape Machines on every track. Tape Machines still isn’t native, so I have to run in Rosetta2 which has a CPU penalty. I’m really not sure exactly what a full project running natively will look like, only that it is significantly better than running on Windows/Intel. It may be that I can still keep my sample rate at 96kHz during real-time mixing.

[EnGee]

For me, there is no big difference between my PC (5800X) and my mini Mac (M1). My PC seems a little faster in general and the difference in CPU about 15% only! I could have keep doing well with my old 1600X in my PC as well! However, that because I use mainly a friendly CPU plugins and my tracks count about 10 only (drums as one track). Buffer size normally 64 but in Cubase I make it 128. Sample rate at 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz.

I was originally planning to upgrade my PC to Ryzen 5600 and AMD 6600 graphic card, but there was a big discount that time that made 5800X and nVidia 3070 worth it to have a good gaming PC. I don't know about intel CPUs, but it seems the latest generation is very good choice as well.

If it is only for music production, I highly recommend a Mac mini M1 16GB/512GB with an external 1 TB SSD like Samsung T7. It can't be more silent and space/energy saving than that! That's in case upgrading more than the CPU or purchasing a new PC.