New old computer

[Burnsjethro]

I installed the Sine orchestra player on my "music" PC but it would not launch and I was told by the makers that "the CPU is from 2007. I am afraid SINE requires processors that are from 2012 onwards."

My "work" computer is a couple of years old and has 8 GB ram so I thought I better start using this one for music, when I stumbled upon a completely refurbished computer, with 16 GB of Ram for Euro 300. The computer dates back to 2014. It's a refurbished HP Prodesk 600 G3:
Refurbished HP Prodesk 600 G3:
Specifications:

Intel Core i5-6500
16GB geheugen DDR4
256GB SSD
Windows 10
USB 3.2, 2x DisplayPort

One-year guarantee.

It does not say whether this is a 64-bit system or not.

Would this be a good PC for recording with Reaper?

[zeekat]

I'm guessing they wouldn't "bless" a 16 gig machine with 32 bit Windows. I used to run a very similar system (just with a slightly faster 6600k CPU) and it was performing very nicely, would use it a lot longer if hardware failure wouldn't kill it.

(Never tried Sineplayer tho)

[maxdembo]

Originally Posted by Burnsjethro

I installed the Sine orchestra player on my "music" PC but it would not launch and I was told by the makers that "the CPU is from 2007. I am afraid SINE requires processors that are from 2012 onwards."

My "work" computer is a couple of years old and has 8 GB ram so I thought I better start using this one for music, when I stumbled upon a completely refurbished computer, with 16 GB of Ram for Euro 300. The computer dates back to 2014. It's a refurbished HP Prodesk 600 G3:
Refurbished HP Prodesk 600 G3:
Specifications:

Intel Core i5-6500
16GB geheugen DDR4
256GB SSD
Windows 10
USB 3.2, 2x DisplayPort

One-year guarantee.

It does not say whether this is a 64-bit system or not.

Would this be a good PC for recording with Reaper?

Thats technically got better specs than the pc I use everyday, and Im still happy I'm overclocked with specific chosen parts, and dont really use that many effects or tracks tho so... YMMV, as always.

[Burnsjethro]

Thanks for these tips. Sorry, what do you mean by "was performing very nicely, would use it a lot longer if hardware failure wouldn't kill it." ?

[zeekat]

Catastrophic heatsink failure, it broke off and CPU went kaputt (looks like thermal failsafes arent prepared for that). It was an aftermarker tower heatsink with a dodgy fastening system though, so not Intel's fault

[DavidS]

I'm using a dell inspiron i5, a year old, with a 1TB hard drive (NOT an ssd)and don't do much with sample libraries, although I've downloaded a few. I use the sounds from my Korg PA arranger, and low resource free synths like Surge and Vital.

I was listening to a professional composer's take on music making hardware, and she seems to think that sample libraries use so much system resources that your standard spinning hard drive is going to be very short-lived, as it's going to be maxed out most of the time. She uses a seperate PC (with an ssd) to store and serve the samples across ethernet (I think), and on the host pc she runs her daw and projects on a second ssd. The choice seems to be that you can choose lofi, and maybe get away with it, or pay some cash for a good spec pc or two.

OK, so music is a hobby for me, but I do use my PC for work, so the hard drive suddenly expiring would not be good!

Here's a link for any budding composers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nKEXPIPdEo

[Lynx_TWO]

Originally Posted by DavidS

I was listening to a professional composer's take on music making hardware, and she seems to think that sample libraries use so much system resources that your standard spinning hard drive is going to be very short-lived, as it's going to be maxed out most of the time.

I have mechanical hard drives with over 700TB written that are still fine. Mechanical hard drives will actually outlast current SSDs, but that will change once we get into the 4TB+ realm of SSDs. Currently, you’d really want like, a 2TB M.2 drive if you want throughput and speed. For example, the Samsung 980Pro can hit speeds of 7,000 MBps read and 5,000 MBps write speed, while your fastest mechanical hard drives hit around 130MBps read/write speed, and that’s in short bursts.

If you are using 24-bit sample libraries at 48 kHz, you’ll get a MAXIMUM of around 53 parallel streams on your fastest mechanical drives before it chokes. And that’s best-case scenario without anything else taking hard drive bandwidth. With a standard SSD you’d be capable of around 208 parallel streams. On the 980Pro, you could theoretically get 2,916 parallel streams going. That’s a massive difference.

[Glennbo]

Originally Posted by Lynx_TWO

I have mechanical hard drives with over 700TB written that are still fine. Mechanical hard drives will actually outlast current SSDs, but that will change once we get into the 4TB+ realm of SSDs.

I have a Maxtor 250 GB drive that was in my DAW when it was a Pentium 4 that now is in a surveillance video recorder.

After doing years of music, that Maxtor drive from 2005 now records four camera streams 24/7.

That said, currently in my DAW I have two Samsung NVMe M.2 drives and they scream.

[serr]

There's so much telephone game and gaslighting...

HDDs were actually really close to fast enough for everything. This is where using multiple HDDs started as a slick workaround. The first gen SSDs were 4x the speed (back with SATA I). The concept of multiple drives to bridge that bottleneck became obsolete at that point.

SATA II... SATA III... next gen SSDs hitting over 300 MB/s...
Needing multiple drives for anything related to audio is long in the past.

The M.2 pci connecting SSDs are offering 1200 MB/s and up speeds. Recording raw uncompressed 4k video is about the only thing that might actually need that throughput. (Actual uncompressed from a pro camera. Not the very much compressed consumer HD 4k cameras.)

The comments around needing to upgrade to M.2 for anything to do with audio... This isn't your bottleneck!


Shop for single core CPU speed as always. Don't assume CPU speed keeps going up year by year. This plateaued around 2011. The popular new machines right now have circa 2001 CPU speeds (1.something GHz) but sport modern GPUs and some of the laptops have way too expensive screens for how actually useful they are. Made for browsing facebook with slick graphics and not much more. A good way to spend too much money for a poor performing audio machine.


I miss the days of getting the new computer magazines every 6 months and drooling over new machines 2x to 3x faster! On the other hand, my 2009/10 Mac Pro turned out to be an incredibly frugal purchase in hindsight!

[Burnsjethro]

Instead of buying the refurbished computer spoken about at the start of the thread, I finally decided to update my newer computer from 8 gb ram to 16 gb ram. It's really good.

I don't have many sample libraries at all and what I have a rarely use (Spitfire and just one set of samples from Orchestra tools) so I hope that will not be too much of a strain on my computer.

I am now wondering what to do with the old computer (6 gb Ram). It has had an an extra SDD internal hard drive added. Could this machine be used to offset the sample strain any way or any other purpose?

[maxdembo]

Originally Posted by serr

There's so much telephone game and gaslighting...

HDDs were actually really close to fast enough for everything. This is where using multiple HDDs started as a slick workaround. The first gen SSDs were 4x the speed (back with SATA I). The concept of multiple drives to bridge that bottleneck became obsolete at that point.

SATA II... SATA III... next gen SSDs hitting over 300 MB/s...
Needing multiple drives for anything related to audio is long in the past.

The M.2 pci connecting SSDs are offering 1200 MB/s and up speeds. Recording raw uncompressed 4k video is about the only thing that might actually need that throughput. (Actual uncompressed from a pro camera. Not the very much compressed consumer HD 4k cameras.)

The comments around needing to upgrade to M.2 for anything to do with audio... This isn't your bottleneck!


Shop for single core CPU speed as always. Don't assume CPU speed keeps going up year by year. This plateaued around 2011. The popular new machines right now have circa 2001 CPU speeds (1.something GHz) but sport modern GPUs and some of the laptops have way too expensive screens for how actually useful they are. Made for browsing facebook with slick graphics and not much more. A good way to spend too much money for a poor performing audio machine.


I miss the days of getting the new computer magazines every 6 months and drooling over new machines 2x to 3x faster! On the other hand, my 2009/10 Mac Pro turned out to be an incredibly frugal purchase in hindsight!

Interesting. This would explain why my 10 year old machine isnt really struggling (except when it comes to video editing hefty files), whereas the previous decade was updating the PC every couple of years due to it chugging away and not being able to cope with new software or a lot of effects.

It also explains why an RPi has no issue running BFD, and feels loads more like a full PC than I expected. I kinda hope it stays this way tbh, because Im not buying another desktop ever again

[Tod]

Originally Posted by Glennbo

That said, currently in my DAW I have two Samsung NVMe M.2 drives and they scream.

Aare they Gen4 Glennbo?