AMD Ryzen 3rd gen. ZEN 2 processors for audio PC

[VitaminD]

Wow PC cases don't have mounting for optical drives (dvdrw/CD/bluray) anymore lolz .. I guess it's obsolete ? I'm kind of on the fence about a case I was looking at an realized no DVD 5.25 Bay ? Crazy . Apparently no one uses dvd or cd or Blu-ray ?

It is becoming a little more difficult to find them, but they are still out there.

Look at the Fractal Design Define R5 or R6
https://www.fractal-design.com/products ... -r6/black/

I'm running an R5 (number is the generation, bigger the newer) and have been pleased. It is big and heavy, but the sidepanels and the front are sound dampened. The chassis itself is very adaptable (modular). It fits a Full ATX board and there is a space behind the motherboard for cable management.

Oh and a 5.25" bay for DVD drive.

[nusound mind]

I'm considering b/t a 3800x or a 3900x. 3800x has slightly better base clock but 3900x 4 more cores. Any thoughts on this?

I use lot of softsynths, some cpu guzzly, ie: Repro's, Diva, Diversion, other ones less heavy but still intensive if pushed. Use some samples, mainly drum one shots but a few sample based vst's (not Kontakt) and typically a fair amount of fx plugs, some of them high cpu.

Would 3950x be worth thinking about for that matter? Building from scratch. Price is of some object, but performance takes priority over cost if a more expensive chip is significantly better terms of cpu hit. Guess time will tell re: 3950x but any thoughts of 3800x vs 3900x would be appreciated. Thanks.

[DJ Warmonger]

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AM ... 3493vs3598

Indeed you're getting 100 MHz more with 3800X, which gives minimally better single-thread performance. If you build from scratch, it may be worth it. It's difficult to saturate all 8 cores unless you run many tracks and never bounce synths to audio.

[ozonepaul]

Would 3950x be worth thinking about for that matter? Building from scratch. Price is of some object, but performance takes priority over cost if a more expensive chip is significantly better terms of cpu hit...

Yes it would, the 3950x seems to significantly over perform the 3900x.
Watch this:


I'm eagerly waiting for some test results from Kaine at ScanProAudio.

[nusound mind]

Thanks guys, I'll check those links. Maybe a motherboard first would be best and I'll hold tight on the new Ryzen chips until more is known about how they perform for audio production.

[e-crooner]

Cool, even my 2-year old ASrock motherboard supports that new monster chip, if I do a BIOS update. But it would probably be overkill for my needs, and I would have to get better RAM modules, too.

[nusound mind]

Looking at that first link the 3800x is what I might be leaning to at this point based on the single core performance. 3950x double the cores (and threads?) but bigger disparity b/t base clock's compared even to the 3900x. Which is weird, wouldn't you want better base clock the higher the model? I guess most people are concerned about gaming so maybe single core ghz performance less of an issue running games.

[arrakeen]

I wonder if there is there a future where I can go Ryzen with my UAD Apollo 8 Thunderbolt? Only just considering after watching Linus vid.

[pljones]

My main issue going forward is low profile case support - had a hard time find a thin enough fan with a high enough heat dissipation. Hopefully that'll improve over time.

[Scotty]

delete

[nusound mind]

Any thoughts as to what's a good motherboard to go with these new Ryzens? I'm leaning Asrock in case I want Thunderbolt at some point; otoh Gigabyte, MSI, etc. have some that look tempting. I'll Err on the side of higher price I think, just in case; though not high-est price, as some of those top top end ones seem redundant and a bit much in terms of pricetag.

[DJ Warmonger]

Any thoughts as to what's a good motherboard to go with these new Ryzens?

I run all my beefy system on old, small Asus PRIME B350M-A - the only limitation is that SATA ports are shared with M.2 lines so can't install SSD along DVD drive, which turned out redundant. I already have RAID10 on it, though.

[legendCNCD]

For some reason these seem quite high as a starting latency for me? I have ~40µs on this X79...
https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph14880/dpc.png

[Pictus]

For some reason these seem quite high as a starting latency for me? I have ~40µs on this X79...
https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph14880/dpc.png

The DPC depends on the BIOS/Windows settings/tweaks...
The machines in those tests are not optimized for audio...
From what I see at gearslutz, no problem...
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpos ... count=8722
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpos ... tcount=149
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpos ... tcount=847

[legendCNCD]

For some reason these seem quite high as a starting latency for me? I have ~40µs on this X79...
https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph14880/dpc.png

The DPC depends on the BIOS/Windows settings/tweaks...
The machines in those tests are not optimized for audio...
From what I see at gearslutz, no problem...
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpos ... count=8722
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpos ... tcount=149
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpos ... tcount=847

Good good.