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  • PC Slave specs newbie

    W
    W

    Hi All,

    I've been on an iMac 2009 i5 for some time now and it's just getting to slow for handling projects so am going to take the plunge to PC Slave and VEPro5. Ideally, I'd be looking to run a template of 60-80 tracks - Spitfire, EW etc.

    Although I have a limited technical knowledge, my brother knows PC's well, so is helping with the build. Initial ideas are:

    Intel Core i5 660 Skylake 3.9 8 cores

    Asus B150-PLUS D3 Intel Skylake ATX Motherboard

    32 GB RAM (upgradable to 64)

    I was then considering 2 x 1TB SSD's to start. Are SSD's essential in a slave machine? If so, are any particular models recommended?

    I'd also need a relatively small system HD, only to accomodate Windows and VE PRo. Any recommendations? - size and brands? 

    Noise is also a consideration, my brother has suggested for @£50 I could get a few quiet fans. I'll be recording in the same room as the PC from time to time.

    Finally, is a dedicated network card a good idea, or is the standard one on the motherboard suffice?

     

    Any guidance on this much appreciated!
  • W
    W

    anybody?
  • PaulP
    VSL Team
    PaulP
    last edited
    last edited

    Hi Whitey,

    The hardware market is changing quickly, and there will always be a few opinions on the various options... I´m not a hardware specialist, but I´ll try to answer your questions as good as I can.

    We trust these guys, maybe it´s worth taking a look for you as well.

    In general: The more cores, the better, the faster the CPU, the better.

    SSD drives will definitely help with better streaming performance, and if your sample player offers shorter preload times (like VI PRO), you will benefit from faster loading times and less RAM consumption.

    There are quite a few SSD drives out there, I´d check a few reviews and tests from computer magazines and spezialized website. We like Angelbird a lot.

    You should definitely try to keep the noise level as low as possible, an investment in a good fan and CPU cooling system will be worth it.

    The standard network card on your motherboard will be fine.

    Best,
    Paul

    Paul Kopf Product Manager VSL
  • F
    F

    Hi there,

    Are the m.2 ssd's worth buying for the slave PC for sample libraries???
  • L
    L

    Hi Femmyd,

    This is my understanding of it:

    As far as I was able to see in my experience and looking at benchmarks and stats, an M.2 in s slave machine is a waste. I would advice to put the M.2 in the Main computer and stream from that one, because think about this:

    You are streaming from another computer that is connected through either 1Gbit ethernet or perhaps 10Gbit ethernet (CAT7). Now, normal Gigabit (1 Gbit) has a throughput of 125Megabytes per seconds, which means that your maaster computer will not receive data faster than that. Using a M.2 (that streams at about 1.8 - 2 Gigabytes per second) is going to bottle neck the M.2 at the link between the slave and master, reducing the transfer down to 125MB/s

    If you have a computer that can support M.2 PCIe 4X (the fastest) then you will have PCIe generation 3 and that means that even the 4 lane PCIe slot you have will be capable of transfering data much much faster than even 2 SSDs in RAID 0 (About 1GB/s), so if you have a slot for M.2, just stream from there some of your heavier sounds and libraries, so you won't bottle nek anything and you won't feel like the M.2 is not working as it should. because the M.2 would probably work as it should regardless, but your ethernet cable is not able to transfer that much data per second.

    My advice is to invest in a 10Gbit expansion card and connect the slave machines with that, because the 10Gbit data transfer is 1,250 MB/s ( 1.25 Gigabytes) which will most likely never bottle-nek while streaming a hefty amount of samples from the slaves.