PC Build for Studio One

You'll get more processing power bang-for-your-buck with an AMD CPU these days over intel. It really depends how many tracks you're planning on running and the number of plug-ins.

MSI or Gigabyte are both quality reliable MOBO's. Will you be adding any PCIE cards? Make sure to leave room in your case. Get something modern with USB 3.0 or USB-C connectors.

RAM - Corsair or Kingston are both reliable brands in my experience.

750 watts should be enough power. You need enough to power all the components - easy enough to check.

HDD's: Samsung, Seagate or WD are all reliable in my experience - I'd include a 4th to automatically back up all your 3 drives - in case any of your drives should fail. HD's are really cheap these days.

GPU - unless you plan on gaming or editing videos with your rig, I'm fairly sure that intel & amd chips come with a basic GPU on board that should suffice.

If you're building your own rig, check out the PC Master Race subreddit. They're mostly about gaming there, but are very helpful. PC Master Race - Spearheading the Second Golden Age of PC Gaming

 

Buy the fastest CPU and the most RAM you can afford. Yes AMD will give you more bang although I have always used Intel for my DAW's. AceofBassFace pretty much nailed what I would suggest.

 

The new AMD Mobos are PCIe 4.0 compatible. You can get a PCIe card that will hold 4 M.2 drives. Run one as your OS and the other 3 in a RAID5 array. Fast and redundancy in case of a drive failure.

 

Hey again Tool460002! I just ran across this discussion on the Presonus forums - there are some pros/cons to using AMD cpus it seems. Some users are having issues with UA cards, and some soundcards, others are reporting no problems at all.
Might be a good idea to stay with intel after all depending on your other hardware:

PreSonus Forums | AMD CPU | Studio One Forum Community Support

 

Save money on the computer, spend it on a good audio interface, mics, mic preamps, plugins, etc. Easy to find a computer with onbiard video that can run 2 monitors.

You don't need an dedicated video card unless you're gaming. And when you don't need 200+ watts going to a graphics card, you most likely would be fine with 550w psu, 600 would be plenty. You don't need the fastest processor or the most RAM. SSD storage is key, you need fast drives for sure. You can get a 1tb M2 ssd drive for $150. If you want an external usb drive for backups that's a good idea. But you don't need a separate ssd for the OS and audio files.

DAWs are really not resource hogs unless you're regularly working with 100+ tracks and tons of plugins. Don't overspec the computer, save the money on things that will directly improve the sound of your recordings.

 

Make sure your new computer has a firewire port then, it's not common anymore. You can get a pcie card with firewire inputs if you can't find a moboard with one built in

 

An AMD Ryzen CPU paired with the correctly socketed mobo from MSI or Gigabyte will definitely get you the most bang for the buck. Music computers can definitely make good use of CPU resources and RAM. The faster and more powerful the CPU the better your software will perform. And the more available RAM the more plugins you can host while avoiding memory paging - as well as minimizing the risk of crashing. If you can afford at least 32Gb of fast RAM I’d definitely recommend installing it. And whatever you do, don’t be tempted to overclock your CPU or RAM unless you really know what you’re doing.

Video isn’t that critical for music apps so either select a processor with a built in GPU (not all processors have one) or get an inexpensive decent quality graphics card. There’s no need to buy a top shelf graphics gaming card for a computer used exclusively for music production. And the more powerful graphics cards tend to have louder fans.

I’d suggest using an NVMe SSD to host the OS and your software since these little cards operate at system bus speeds and have almost no latency. So boot times and software loading occurs in just a few seconds. On my system I have an NVMe as my main drive, a regular 2TB SSD for working storage and a 4TB disk for long term storage.

If you’re running Windows take the time to remove anything you’re not going to use that Windows installs as well as set up the installation to use local user accounts only. You don’t need or want to set it up for a Microsoft online user account. That way madness lies.

You can also strip down Windows to stop services and features that can sap resources and get in the way of music production. Especially the “phone home” telemetry (i.e. snooping) services Microsoft wants you to have even though you can happily (and better) live without them.

Here’s a good video of what to do after you’ve built your PC. Jay can be a bit of an opinionated jerk at times. But his info is rock solid. And far be it from me (a former IT guy) to criticize too much. IT work tends to make you snarky when it comes to computer technology and make you look like you’ve just come off a three day bender.

 

I've been super happy w/ my recent build of a AMD 3900X on an Asus WS-X570 ACE w/ 2x16GB G.Skill Ripjaws PC3600 for just about anything. DAW is Magix Samplitude.

Intel's USB caused all kinds of latency w/ my Focusrite 18i20. Doesn't seem to be a problem at all w/ this build. Nothing Intel below the $1K+ price point touches the 3900 or 3950 for highly multithreaded workloads.

You will need some kind of graphics card w/ any of the higher core count Ryzen's as they don't include integrated graphics.

If your interface is Firewire you would need to add a card for that as well, I'm not aware of an X570 motherboard (or any other I've looked at recently) that included it for a bit.

Case-wise I used the Fractal Design Define R6 since it has a 5.5" bay. Really nicely configurable for 3.5 drive if you're using them or all M.2/SSD. This box altogether is pretty damn silent air cooled under heavy load while keeping stuff nice & cool:


YMMV based on compatibility of course.

 

^^^ This. And I will add a couple comments:

• Be careful about on-board video controllers. They are designed to be integrated into the motherboard and to "steal" system resources such as CPU and RAM - in order to save money. Discrete PCIE video cards can be had for reasonable prices if you aim lower (e.g. high-end video is not as important with music production as it is with gaming, and conversely, CPU/RAM are more important with music - which is why I would recommend to avoid sacrificing them with on-board video).
• Depending on how much RAM the OP is aiming for, and in order to allow for future growth if needed, I would get higher capacity DIMMs. For example, if your MOBO has 4 DIMM slots and you're starting with 16 GB of RAM, then buy 2 x 8 GB DIMMs instead of 4 x 4 GB. In other words, buy fewer and larger DIMMs and leave a couple slots open.

 

Not overkill IMO. The latest generations of plugins need a lot of CPU capacity. It you're planning on running lots of tracks with lots of plugins you should get the most expensive CPU you can afford IMO. i7 probably fine for standard rock band production but it's borderline if you're gonna use lots of CPU-hungry plugins.

My advice: i9 (or similar) if you can afford it.

 

As for RAM, I have no idea about brands but if you plan on using sample based soft synths you can add 50% to whatever amount of RAM you think is enough and PROBABLY end up with what you REALLY need.

 

If you are wanting a large spinner drive just for storage I’d use a Western digital or Seagate black 5 TB drive. Server quality drives. Definitely use the newer fast drives for recording though. I use Samsung for that.

 

As long as you get something with a motherboard that can accommodate USB 3.0, you can run the latest low latency interfaces (the new Presonus stuff is affordable and right quick). Don't forget about M2 memory. Way faster that any spinning drive and boot up is crazy quick. I'd go with M2 and a fat SSD (or a few set up as a RAID).

 

Don’t know what DAW you’re using. But if you’re shopping for a new one I’d definitely take a look at Reaper and Harrison Consoles Mixbus 32c. If you put yourself on Harrison’s mailing list you’ll soon get a significantly discounted offer for it.

 

Lots of good advice posted already - I'd mention that a GOOD ($$$) video card might be very helpful for a couple of reasons:
1) you WILL want to run multiple large monitors and
2) a great video card is essential for running the Resolve video editor (a world-class production tool which happens to be FREE for single users). Resolve relies on the GPU power lurking in your expensive video card! It also has a very good audio engine built in... and let's face it: if your songs are not finding their way into YouTube music videos, how in the heck is anyone ever going to hear them??

Another vote for AMD processors - and actually the EPYC server chips are very good bang-for-buck. The right SuperMicro server chassis (one that can accommodate the extra card slots for your video card(s)) can be very cost-effective. Servers can sound a bit like jet engines when starting up, and generally have pretty loud fans, but if you have a spot you can locate them on the other side of your studio's soundproof wall, they are quite content to sit in a 'server closet' and work their magic. I have a couple at my office which are located one floor up on the other side of a cinderblock wall, and I simply run long video cables, and couple of long (active) USB extensions - one goes to a desktop hub that runs my mouse/keyboard wireless dongle plus a couple ports for USB drive, the other runs a 16-channel audio interface. If you need more channels, you can run an RME interface in the server room, and send that out over MADI to your breakout box in the studio...

+1 for MixBus, by the way

PS: invest in a 4-bay or 6-bay NAS box and run it RAID. Look for a newer one that supports 5GB or 10GB ethernet! Then you can have a safe(r) place to store copies of all your projects, and to also stash your automatic weekly VEEAM workstation image backups. Veeam Agent FREE is another must-have...

 

I would like to add that it also depends on what kind of music you are recording. If you are recording mostly audio tracks and bussing them using minimal effect plugins a less powerful PC will do the trick just fine. The number of audio tracks is not a big deal because who uses 50 plus tracks other than guys like Hans Zimmer and Jacob Collier. But maybe you like to run with 20 guitar tracks, that's up to you to decide. You certainly can't go wrong with investing in decent outboard gear like mics and preamps. They will outlast your PC by a mile.

If you are using mainly samplers(with large libraries) and VST instruments with a lot of effects your system will be stressed. Its a drag when you have to convert VST's to audio to save CPU power. A big external HD will come in handy for backup and library storage. For example the Toontrack SD 3 libary is around 230GB. If you add a few of these HD space is taken up very quickly.
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