What hit and misses did I pick for my build? Want to run REAPER and 8k capability.

[Secret Rival]

I bought all the parts for this build with beginners knowledge but I researched a lot and waited for good prices.
Mainly I want to use my focusrite audio I/o to use with REAPER but maybe even pro tools, want to record easily.
I also want to be able to use the 8K monitors, once I can afford one and to work with 8k audio/video but right now just recording - and learning to do so.
Gaming isn't really important but I intend to look into some games to see if I like gaming 1st person on my PC.


Case - Thermaltake View 71
MB - Gigabyte Z490 Vision D - $264.00
GPU - Gigabyte GeForce 1660 super - $229.00
RAM - G Skill Royal Z 32GBx2 - 2666 Mhz - $204.00 (went right up to 288$ days later)
Processor - Core i5 10500 - $230.00 (my worst mistake I think) - Darkflash Shadow PWM cooler - $19.99
M-2 Boot Drive 1TB NVMe gen 3x4 - $94.00
PSU - Thermaltake Toughpower grand 80+ 750w - $112
Fans - Thermaltake Quad 120mm - 3 for $149.00 (look great but way expensive) - Notos O120 6 fans at $15.00 each - look as good as the Quads

I think the biggest mistakes I made were the i5 and the 2666 MHz ram. maybe I should have went i7 or i9 and matched a higher speed RAM?

I want to be ready for the 8K monitors, which are fantastic! Also want to more regarding audio video work that would necessitate some upgrades.

I'm really green -BIOS is giving me a headache learning how to properly use it. I can operate the REAPER program and my Focusrite I/o at least.


I tried to buy the best parts I could at the times I bought each one, over a month and a half.
Did I do okay with my part selection for a total beginner, or what would you swap out?

 

[Caring1]

The CPU Cooler, toss that in the bin.
It looks worse than a standard Intel cooler, at least the better ones had a copper core.
Buy a decent tower cooler or A.I.O.
The CPU could be better, and you should be able to overclock that Ram, so that is fine.

 

[Rei]

I guess for videos, the 1660 Super may be fine on an 8K monitor but definitely not for gaming. Rendering a 1080p game then upscaling it on an 8K monitor will make the visuals look jagged if you don't mind that.

 

[Aquinus]

I guess for videos, the 1660 Super may be fine on an 8K monitor but definitely not for gaming. Rendering a 1080p game then upscaling it on an 8K monitor will make the visuals look jagged if you don't mind that.

I've been playing WoW on my MacBook Pro with one of the 5ks. I don't play it at 5k, I drop the rendering resolution down to around 4k and you barely notice it. 1440p is noticeable, but it's really not too bad. Depending on what you're playing, it might not matter. For example, Factorio runs great at 5k on my laptop, it's also not the most graphically intensive game either and is optimized pretty well.

In the OP's case, if he has a nVidia card, then this might be a great use case for DLSS with a card that supports it.

Edit: With that said, I wouldn't obsess over an 8k display and stick with a 4k one. I only have 5Ks because I didn't have to buy them. I personally wouldn't have bought them if given the choice.

 

[dgianstefani]

The ram is terrible. 2666 is crap. Look for 3600 32gb kit, you can get that without the flashy royal for the same price.

 

[xman2007]

The CPU Cooler, toss that in the bin.
It looks worse than a standard Intel cooler, at least the better ones had a copper core.
Buy a decent tower cooler or A.I.O.
The CPU could be better, and you should be able to overclock that Ram, so that is fine.

it actually looks more like an AMD Wraith cooler which whilst not steller is substantially better than the 5cm high 150gm blocks of aluminium that Intel ships as stock coolers, saying it should go straight in the bin is a tad harsh, and it should definitely be better than the stock cooler which isn't hard, for a non-k 65w CPU, it should do fine

 

[Rei]

I've been playing WoW on my MacBook Pro with one of the 5ks. I don't play it at 5k, I drop the rendering resolution down to around 4k and you barely notice it. 1440p is noticeable, but it's really not too bad. Depending on what you're playing, it might not matter. For example, Factorio runs great at 5k on my laptop, it's also not the most graphically intensive game either and is optimized pretty well.

In the OP's case, if he has a nVidia card, then this might be a great use case for DLSS with a card that supports it.

Edit: With that said, I wouldn't obsess over an 8k display and stick with a 4k one. I only have 5Ks because I didn't have to buy them. I personally wouldn't have bought them if given the choice.

The thing is that OP might attempt to game at an 8K monitor with a GPU that does best at 1080p or 1440p. It'll be like watching YouTube videos at 360p on 1080p monitor, if the monitor is sub-HD, then the videos jaggies wouldn't look so jaggy. For me, I don't mind this as much but if I have the mind to go full-on 8K, then I might as well get a much better GPU that can at least do 4K visuals well. For videos & films, a 1660 may do well on 8K monitor. I dunno how well DLSS works best when there is such a huge gap on rendering resolution.

 

[robot zombie]

Reaper makes pretty good use of extra cores and threads, something that comes in handy when stacking lots of live plugins/sequencing. Though latency and core oomph is still kind of king. I think the CPU itself, while not a monster, will handle that much fine. The memory speed hurts it more - hopefully you can OC it. Good on you for going for the full 32gb, though. I'm running 16gb's of ram at 3600mhz and bottle-necking on sample-heavy VSTs at times. Memory counts for a lot when it comes to DAWs, especially when you start getting up there in recorded tracks and VSTs. It starts adding up pretty fast!

All this said, it comes down to what you're recording. How many tracks, how complex the arrangements are (how many different instruments/modules and how many different things you do with them,) what sorts of plugins you use, even just your whole flow. Sometimes to know, you gotta start with what you can and see how it goes. Reaper itself is pretty lite. Like, very well-coded as far as DAWs go. It's all of the things you wind up adding on that gobble up resources. No avoiding it with recording/mixing bit-rates and hi-res vst's (lots of oversampling to insane rates - it's how they push the aliasing out and gain more 'breathing room' in the upper stretch of the audible band - the only answer is CPU power.) As far as just laying down and monitoring tracks in real time, any USB interface will do that. Plugging your Focusrite into a potato will work. I did that on a friggin Line 6 Pod Farm box (Pod Studio? IDK it was a whiiiile back.) on an Athlon 64 X2, 4gb RAM, WinXP machine 15 friggin years ago. The secret is in the onboard conversion in the box and getting around your OS's audio backend with ASIO. They handle all of the low-latency work well, and have for a long time.

What's less simple is actually playing back all of the tracks with effects and amp sim stuff going. I had to bounce things down a lot. Reaper will let you bounce quickie mixdowns and pull it back out to get around not having the resources to do everything live. So you can mixdown everything but the track you're recording to keep live monitoring with processing going and then revert back to control the full mix again when you're done. Bit of a PITA, but honestly, the software is still good and powerful. You can still get everything done without major grunt... it just takes more time and a bit of a different process. More difficult to learn that way, though. Not always having direct feedback. Sure makes you more deliberate though!

8k video, not so sure. It's not a matter of doubt - I honestly just don't know. But I have a feeling that GPU is going to be bear minimum for those sorts of applications, whatever you wanna do at 8k.

Also noticed there's no spinner. You will fill up that 1TB SSD with software stuff and project files in no time! Honestly, that might be my first consideration going forward.

 

[Secret Rival]

The CPU Cooler, toss that in the bin.
It looks worse than a standard Intel cooler, at least the better ones had a copper core.
Buy a decent tower cooler or A.I.O.
The CPU could be better, and you should be able to overclock that Ram, so that is fine.

It's doing it's job but I am thinking of adding a small A.I.O. I'm going to look for a radiator for Three 120mm fans.
Probably a Thermaltake radiator. I did but a Thermaltake UX100 CPU cooler, but that thing is huge. Put it to the side...

I guess for videos, the 1660 Super may be fine on an 8K monitor but definitely not for gaming. Rendering a 1080p game then upscaling it on an 8K monitor will make the visuals look jagged if you don't mind that.

I picked up this GPU as a placeholder for now. I couldn't go super expensive, so I just went with best deal for price. I doubt I'm going to have an 8k for a while. Things change so much I guess no matter what I do, i'll be behind the newest tech always. I saw one that was amazing though. beautiful picture, especially the reds. Would love to grab an RTX 3080 or similar but I think I'm going to have to wait until they come down in price....or save some more dough.

The thing is that OP might attempt to game at an 8K monitor with a GPU that does best at 1080p or 1440p. It'll be like watching YouTube videos at 360p on 1080p monitor, if the monitor is sub-HD, then the videos jaggies wouldn't look so jaggy. For me, I don't mind this as much but if I have the mind to go full-on 8K, then I might as well get a much better GPU that can at least do 4K visuals well. For videos & films, a 1660 may do well on 8K monitor. I dunno how well DLSS works best when there is such a huge gap on rendering resolution.

You're right, thanks. I know I'll need to upgrade my GPU before I think of doing much at 8k.
I definitely rushed this build, but I wanted to see if I could do it, especially being stuck in the house most the time these days.

Reaper makes pretty good use of extra cores and threads, something that comes in handy when stacking lots of live plugins/sequencing. Though latency and core oomph is still kind of king. I think the CPU itself, while not a monster, will handle that much fine. The memory speed hurts it more - hopefully you can OC it. Good on you for going for the full 32gb, though. I'm running 16gb's of ram at 3600mhz and bottle-necking on sample-heavy VSTs at times. Memory counts for a lot when it comes to DAWs, especially when you start getting up there in recorded tracks and VSTs. It starts adding up pretty fast!

All this said, it comes down to what you're recording. How many tracks, how complex the arrangements are (how many different instruments/modules and how many different things you do with them,) what sorts of plugins you use, even just your whole flow. Sometimes to know, you gotta start with what you can and see how it goes. Reaper itself is pretty lite. Like, very well-coded as far as DAWs go. It's all of the things you wind up adding on that gobble up resources. No avoiding it with recording/mixing bit-rates and hi-res vst's (lots of oversampling to insane rates - it's how they push the aliasing out and gain more 'breathing room' in the upper stretch of the audible band - the only answer is CPU power.) As far as just laying down and monitoring tracks in real time, any USB interface will do that. Plugging your Focusrite into a potato will work. I did that on a friggin Line 6 Pod Farm box (Pod Studio? IDK it was a whiiiile back.) on an Athlon 64 X2, 4gb RAM, WinXP machine 15 friggin years ago. The secret is in the onboard conversion in the box and getting around your OS's audio backend with ASIO. They handle all of the low-latency work well, and have for a long time.

What's less simple is actually playing back all of the tracks with effects and amp sim stuff going. I had to bounce things down a lot. Reaper will let you bounce quickie mixdowns and pull it back out to get around not having the resources to do everything live. So you can mixdown everything but the track you're recording to keep live monitoring with processing going and then revert back to control the full mix again when you're done. Bit of a PITA, but honestly, the software is still good and powerful. You can still get everything done without major grunt... it just takes more time and a bit of a different process. More difficult to learn that way, though. Not always having direct feedback. Sure makes you more deliberate though!

8k video, not so sure. It's not a matter of doubt - I honestly just don't know. But I have a feeling that GPU is going to be bear minimum for those sorts of applications, whatever you wanna do at 8k.

Also noticed there's no spinner. You will fill up that 1TB SSD with software stuff and project files in no time! Honestly, that might be my first consideration going forward.

Thanks robot zombie, appreciate the REAPER input. Those programs are tough to learn from scratch, so much to take in. I'll keep your post in mind. I appreciate everyone that had something to say. I know I made some mistakes, but at least i'll have a few spare parts around. I guess i'm starting my pile


I have time on my side. This is done and working great. I'll just have to upgrade the RAM and move up to an i7 or i9.
....then work on cooling as I save for a serious GPU. Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[Rei]

I picked up this GPU as a placeholder for now. I couldn't go super expensive, so I just went with best deal for price. I doubt I'm going to have an 8k for a while. Things change so much I guess no matter what I do, i'll be behind the newest tech always. I saw one that was amazing though. beautiful picture, especially the reds.

You're right, thanks. I know I'll need to upgrade my GPU before I think of doing much at 8k.
I definitely rushed this build, but I wanted to see if I could do it, especially being stuck in the house most the time these days.

Yeah, I think you should stick with 4K monitor for now if you wanna stick with 1660 Super. Or at least what I mean in my previous comment is get a a 2060 or 2060 Super. I think you could get a 2060 Super for $350 or get a used 2nd hand for under $300 if you're lucky.
And like @robot zombie said: Unless you already have plenty of other storage device, you'd wanna get an HDD as your use case could fill up that SSD really fast.

 

[Secret Rival]

Yeah, I think you should stick with 4K monitor for now if you wanna stick with 1660 Super. Or at least what I mean in my previous comment is get a a 2060 or 2060 Super. I think you could get a 2060 Super for $350 or get a used 2nd hand for under $300 if you're lucky.
And like @robot zombie said: Unless you already have plenty of other storage device, you'd wanna get an HDD as your use case could fill up that SSD really fast.

I was wondering if by 'spinners' he meant HDD
I have a bunch of HDD's due to collecting movies and music. I like the Seagate 10TB Backup plus, as of now I only have two
6TB versions as my largest, but as soon as the price goes down from $204, i'm on it. $158 was it's lowest - last Christmas (!)

Seagate Backup Plus Hub 10TB External Hard Drive - Newegg.com

Buy Seagate Backup Plus Hub 10TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive STEL10000400 with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

I was intending on using the M-2 only for programs and boot up, but that TB will go quick, none the less.



Thanks again for all the good input!

 

[joemama]

This GPU is definitely not gonna run 8k gaming well, you have no idea what GPU performance 8k gaming requires.

 

[Rei]

This GPU is definitely not gonna run 8k gaming well, you have no idea what GPU performance 8k gaming requires.

Already been addressed throughout this thread.

 

[robot zombie]

We have to consider all uses alongside the budget level. The 8k is for video editing, too. So running and 8k display at 4k for things like games would be a compromise on both performance and quality, but how acceptable that is comes down to how much a person wants to spread the compromise, and in which direction. The 8k display capability could be more important than the gaming performance. It sounds like gaming isn't the primary concern anyway. Nobody in their right mind would buy an entry-level CPU to go with an 8k display just to try out games. No offense to the OP! Just pointing out that it starts to make more sense if that 8k display isn't just for gaming.

Come to think of it, is that even an uncommon thing? I mean, in a more general sense. I don't recall anyone batting an eye at people "buying-in" with a really affordable, accessible, usually slightly older card and then working out an upgrade when there's an established range of new options that have settled into a steady price line with clear performance... I've done it. It can make sense when you're trying to put together a setup that's not exclusively for gaming. You can make a clear decision later, with knowledge of what an upgrade in that area of performance is worth. By then, the card has gone down a little in value, but in the range of solid, persisting entry-level cards, you're not out that much. And people will continue buying them used for some time. Though quite often I think people just hold onto that card. It becomes useful for troubleshooting, or a later time when you just need a GPU in a machine.

 

[Secret Rival]

The 8k thing is something I only considered after seeing a monitor in Micro Center. It was certainly lust at 1st sight.
By then I had already bought and put together most of my build. And I did realize when I bought my 1660 super that it had capabilities for one
5k, or two 4k.....and nowhere near close to 8k! I really wanted just to get some conversation going on what I need to do to get up to snuff for the time when I make the move to an 8k monitor....knowing full well that by the time I do that, there might be even better options on the market.

I wanted the Thundebolt 3 capabilities, but I think going Intel was a mistake just because of T/3. I wanted the PCIe 4.0 which apparently intel has no chip for! So even though I think I got one of the best motherboards for the year, I can't even take advantage of that. I like the idea of building an AMD/Ryzen model in the future - I know this stuff costs big bucks, but I already have enough of everything else I like, so I can indulge this new interest of mine and hopefully learn as much as I can. I do have a touch of the OCD that makes it hard to read crazy detailed instructions and absorb them right away, so I know i'm gonna make mistakes. That's why i'm here!

MY build is what it is, and I think it does great and I'm happy with it. But going forward at least I know I am going to need a really (!) good GPU
and at least for this 1st build I will also need to swap the core i5 and the 2666 RAM out.

Now if I can only find some places to learn more of the basics of BIOS. CMOS and whatever else that I'm shaky with. Spending a lot of time trying to learn what I need to know, but it is tough without a starting point. I'm glad for this site and the helpful members. It will be a big help.

 

[Rei]

I wanted the PCIe 4.0 which apparently intel has no chip for! So even though I think I got one of the best motherboards for the year, I can't even take advantage of that.

As it is right now, there are no consumer hardware & prolly too few prosumer hardware that could take good advantage of PCIe 4.0, so you really aren't losing much without PCIe 4.0. I think PCIe 4.0 exist right now on the consumer market is for future-proofing the tech but by the time that there are plenty of hardware taking good advantage of PCIe 4.0, you'd prolly be due for an upgrade to a new motherboard with PCIe 4.0 anyway. ATM, the performance difference between PCIe 3.0 & PCIe 4.0 for current hardware is not significant enough to warrant an upgrade.

 

[John Naylor]

The video editing usage will determine the build needs. For video editing, (based upon Premier's needs) pending what happens with the new Ryzen CPUs, today I'd be looking at 10900KF.

Here's our starting Videographer Build ... by "starting" we mean, this is what we 'd like t have ... mow lets [pare it down to what ya can afford

Phanteks Evolv Case (or User prfernce)
Seasonic Focus Gold
Intel 10900KF
Scythe Fuma 2 / Swiftech H360 / Custom Loop
MSI Z4590 Unify
2 x 16GB - 3000 CAS 15 ... 3200 / CAS 16 or better
(2) Samsung Pro SSDs (2nd scratch drive)
(2) Seagate SSHDs
GFX card to meet gaming needs

 

[Secret Rival]

Thanks again for all the replies and critiques, which were certainly justified.
I'm a beginner but I've completed 2 builds so far with no problems.

I want to start another build and it is pretty extravagant and I am going to need help with the water cooling
portion....among other things . I'm going to buy the T.T. Core P7, with the right and left extensions for Radiators/resevoir.

I want to use Thermaltake parts, but never have done water cooling. The pacific brand reservoir looks okay, and I will need 480mm Radiators
for 4 Riing Quad fans. Maybe someone can point me to a thread that will help me to get a start on how to plan this out.
Thank you, and be well, stay well.