New CPU and MOBO for SCOPE

[jimk]

I have a couple of Creamware cards (7 and 14 DSP SRB). I want to update to a new i7 chip and mobo. Will the soundcards work on the new hardware? Are there better MOBO than others for the i7 and Scope?

Thanks in advance,
Jim

[Sounddesigner]

Hi Jimk,

I have Core i7 920 with SCOPE working fine. My mobo is Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P. My mobo only has 2 pci slots tho, for 3 pci you may wanna look into UD4 model. I only have one scope card in my i7 system ATM but will be testing it very soon with either XITE-1 or added SCOPE Professional and UAD for multi-card set-up. So i'm still in the testing phase but all is good so far. Gigabyte mobo's seem to be most used for i7's with dsp cards from what i read on various forums. Several uad users have Asus p6t delux also. You can experiment with other mobo's if you use a cheap and affordable computer-builder who has good return-policies like - http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Inte ... figurator/

Or like - http://www.magicmicro.com/

But it's probably best you stick with mobo's that others like myself are using if you don't want a possibly long trial-and-error process. My mobo is reported by one builder to have issues with MOTU 424 PCI but that's irrelavent for me. A few builders say stay away from Intel X58 mobo's if you use pci/pcie cards also.

[clanctot]

Hi sounddesigner.

Can you tell how noisy is the cpu fan or better or quiet it is? Say compare to the intel e8500 I have which I like very much for the low noise.
I would appreciate your comment on this.

Christian

[petal]

I have Core i7 920 with SCOPE working fine. My mobo is Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P. My mobo only has 2 pci slots tho, for 3 pci you may wanna look into UD4 model.

To my knowledge, we still have to see a Core i7 Mobo with 3 PCI slots.

Please correct me and show me a link if I'm wrong.

Thomas

[kylie]

To my knowledge, we still have to see a Core i7 Mobo with 3 PCI slots.

Please correct me and show me a link if I'm wrong.

you are wrong:

http://www.alternate.de/html/product/Ma ... #tabberBox

or

http://www.alternate.de/html/product/Ma ... #tabberBox



-greetings, markus-

[petal]

It's great to be wrong

Has anybody tried these yet?

[hollo321]

hey petal im using now a ud4 by gigabyte which is 3 pci and all is working well with no issues so far. the only thing that i have to complain about it is that the pci-xpress slots share an irq with the pci1 slot. it might not be that big an issue and im not really sure how it effects performance but by whta ive read on forums irq sharing should try to be avoided and because of it im currently using pci slots 2 and 3, at least until i get another card...so maybe u should try out the asrock boards

[kylie]

hey petal im using now a ud4 by gigabyte which is 3 pci ...

umh... so the UD4 is different from the UD4P I spotted at alternate... ?!
this one has just 2 pci slots, so I skipped the gigabyte area...

[petal]

Thanks! that is good to hear

[Sounddesigner]

Hi sounddesigner.

Can you tell how noisy is the cpu fan or better or quiet it is? Say compare to the intel e8500 I have which I like very much for the low noise.
I would appreciate your comment on this.

Christian

I'm not using stock Intel cpu fan, i bought a separate 3rd party fan "Thermaltake Big Typhoon VX Gaming CPU Cooling Fan (Excellent Overclocking + Silent Proof 16dBA)". My system is not as quiet as i'd like it to be due to Case design and case-fans. It is tolerable noise partly due to not being at too loud of a level and the fact i have a desk cabinet with a door that shuts for my computer. When i shut the door the noise decreases quite a bit. My harddrive is too noisey snd it is what's most irratating. I will make my system more silent in the future but its not a big problem ATM for me. I have read posts from others who claim to have i7 systems that are quiet. You just need to buy the right Case, 3rd party CPU Fan, adjust fan speed when necessary, etc. You should'nt have too much problems getting a system that's pretty quiet if you are interested in i7's.

I've read really good reviews about the Antec Sonata case, it does'nt have too many noisey fans and is designed to be Silent.

[valis]

I've built a machine for my wife in an Antec Sonata III, it's only got 2 120mm fan slots stock, so I am not sure I'd use that if you intend to have several HD's or a lot of Scope cards. You'd probably want to mod it to have either a top-mounted 120mm 'blowhole' or a side intake...

As for the cpu fan, does your board offer a 4-pin pwm connector? All of the modern machines I've got I just set the power settings to aggressively clock down the cpu & control the fans when not needing 100% cpu power, then I switch to an 'always on' profile with settings that eliminate power control and run the fans at speeds that better control the thermals. The only thing I've got in here that makes any real noise anymore is my old Xeon box's cpu fans (no pwm control) and the 15k scsi drives in that machine.

[jimk]

So, I have been in contact with ADK (Daw Builder in the USA) about a new build based around an i7, the two pci creamware cards and a couple of UAD2 cards. He asked if I knew if the creamware cards were 5v. I don't know what he means, does anybody know if the creamware cards are 5v and what does 5v mean?

He told me I am going to have to send him my creamware cards for the build in that he feels it might get complicated with the new MOBO, i7 chip, faster FSB and two Creamware PCI cards and two UAD2 cards.

Before I send this stuff off (I will be out of business for a couple of weeks) I would like to know if this is a wild goose chase?

[garyb]

the cards are 5v. be sure that the motherboard supports this.
the build is no big deal. he does need to have the right parts, which should be no issue for him.

you can also pm me.

[Sounddesigner]

I've built a machine for my wife in an Antec Sonata III, it's only got 2 120mm fan slots stock, so I am not sure I'd use that if you intend to have several HD's or a lot of Scope cards. You'd probably want to mod it to have either a top-mounted 120mm 'blowhole' or a side intake...

As for the cpu fan, does your board offer a 4-pin pwm connector? All of the modern machines I've got I just set the power settings to aggressively clock down the cpu & control the fans when not needing 100% cpu power, then I switch to an 'always on' profile with settings that eliminate power control and run the fans at speeds that better control the thermals. The only thing I've got in here that makes any real noise anymore is my old Xeon box's cpu fans (no pwm control) and the 15k scsi drives in that machine.

Your right, it's probably best to get a different case then Sonata if one will have alot of added components in the system. I read the Antec P180 was pretty quiet aswell and it has more cooling fans, but i have never listened to it or Sonata myself to verify.

My Mobo allows for control over fans, i've not tried to use it yet tho.

[valis]

So, I have been in contact with ADK (Daw Builder in the USA) about a new build based around an i7, the two pci creamware cards and a couple of UAD2 cards. He asked if I knew if the creamware cards were 5v. I don't know what he means, does anybody know if the creamware cards are 5v and what does 5v mean?

He told me I am going to have to send him my creamware cards for the build in that he feels it might get complicated with the new MOBO, i7 chip, faster FSB and two Creamware PCI cards and two UAD2 cards.

Before I send this stuff off (I will be out of business for a couple of weeks) I would like to know if this is a wild goose chase?

It's quite possible that some i7 boards are 3.3v only, so it's a good point to look out for. The keying of the slot will make it obvious, but it's a shame to purchase something and only find out after...

As for sending your cards in, since they're a legacy implementation they're somewhat picky about what they're sharing IRQ's with (common experience on these forums) so he may just want to be able to nail down all the resource sharing with that many bandwidth hungry dsp cards. It's your call how comfortable you feel with them handling the cards (and shipping) versus resolving any issues yourself once you have the computer.

[valis]

I've built a machine for my wife in an Antec Sonata III, it's only got 2 120mm fan slots stock, so I am not sure I'd use that if you intend to have several HD's or a lot of Scope cards. You'd probably want to mod it to have either a top-mounted 120mm 'blowhole' or a side intake...

As for the cpu fan, does your board offer a 4-pin pwm connector? All of the modern machines I've got I just set the power settings to aggressively clock down the cpu & control the fans when not needing 100% cpu power, then I switch to an 'always on' profile with settings that eliminate power control and run the fans at speeds that better control the thermals. The only thing I've got in here that makes any real noise anymore is my old Xeon box's cpu fans (no pwm control) and the 15k scsi drives in that machine.

Your right, it's probably best to get a different case then Sonata if one will have alot of added components in the system. I read the Antec P180 was pretty quiet aswell and it has more cooling fans, but i have never listened to it or Sonata myself to verify.

My Mobo allows for control over fans, i've not tried to use it yet tho.

Antec cases aren't too bad, this was actually MORE case than she needed. It was only $20 more than the other case I was looking at though and her old one wouldn't take the mini-ATX board I got for her (inexpensive integrated ATI graphics board for Win7 & web surfing, plus a bit of light gaming with me.) So for the average user it's more than enough and has a nice PSU to boot. But for someone that can afford more and will have more than 1 moderate DSP card you'd want to beef up the cooling. Also some application of sound matting would probably be in order.

Both of those do apply to the P-180 (which you mentioned) and the built-in soundproofing & intake filtering appealed to me, but the integrated PSU was the main reason I didn't ge tit (I prefer PC Power&Cooling psu's due to never having any fail on me outright.) Good value for someone who wants it, I keep returning to Lian Li cases myself. I went for a PC-G70 the last time I bought a case (about 2 years ago) and enlarged the side intake hole to 120mm to blow onto the PCI slots, and added an extra 120mm blowhole on the top since my Xeon boards use RAM that runs extremely hot. If I bought a case today it would probably be the Lian Li V2100 series. It's a bit pricey for the casual home studio perhaps but the way they separate their cooling compartments does help and the build of their cases beats any Antec or Coolermaster I've seen (I did check an Antec p180 & CM Cosmos in person and even with the soundproofing they felt like they were not as thick & sturdy as my lowly PC-G70).

As for your onboard thermal control, if you aren't always running the machine to 80-90% on the cpu's potential it would be worthwhile to enable it. Just check afterwards with the DPC Latency Checker to make sure the speedstepping isn't causing interrupts that will hurt your PCI bandwidth (not sure on the i7 boards.) Also for proper 4-pin PWM support you need every fan connected to a 4-pin header to be a 4-pin PWM, or it won't work. Most current core2 & i7 boards support at *least* the cpu fan being 4-pin, and that's where the real gains are. 40C with stock cooling in most systems with thermal management enabled is what I've seen, and the i7's ability to clock cores up & down as needed usually means that the fan doesn't even need to speed up until the system is under a real load. Even my 1 year old Xeon (harpertowns / core2quad era) is quieter than my wife's tiny AMD box set to workstation/quiet profile in BIOS. And my cpu temps never go over 50C (the ram is ALWAYS over 50C though! silly fb-dimms).

[jimk]

I spend about one half an hour on the phone with Gary B and he talked me out of upgrading at the current time. My real issue is the 2 gig APP ram limit in XP and I don't know what I was thinking about going i7... other than to be ready for 64 bit which WHO KNOWS when it will actually by useful in DAWs (between hardware and software). So, it makes sense to wait.

I do want to thank Gary B for his time and I really appreciated his time on talking me through my concerns. He is a great guy (you probably already know this) and very knowledgeable as well.

I do have a theory in that I might buy a SSD (256 GB) for sample libraries and then set the DFD settings to use as little RAM as possible since the data should stream from the SDD very quickly and in my own warped mind, just might be a work around to having more (sample library data) available to me in the 32 bit world.

Thanks again Gary.

[Neutron]

actually i was thinking of getting some small and fast SSD because i just got NI Maschine and while it loads single samples fast enough loading multisamples can csause a dropout it does not feel like hardware when that happens. (monome feels like hardware although its running software in your computer maschine is very good and extremely fun to use, but loading big stuff causes a drop out)

maybe i have to wait till the chinese come out in force. right now we are looking at some really clunky and expensive things like the super talent. soon enough a PCI-E card will be about the price of a hard drive but be able to do 1GB/sec

by the way maschine is one of the "good ones" when it comes to attached USB hardware/softwware devices

good ones:
Monome
Virus TI
Maschine

Bad ones
Bahringer BCx2000
Novation xio

[garyb]

@jimk-

[valis]

Neutron I haven't looked at Maschine enough to know if it's intended to be more like an MPC or Rompler, but certainly for live performance of prepared material SSD's are probably serviceable. It seems to me that the latest OCZ Vertex drives are showing firmmware improvements & getting close to the X25 performance at a more reasonable cost. I still wouldn't use them for anything that has heavy writes until the current MLC tech improves, but for playback of existing sample libraries I think the vertex may be a good option.