Need a New DAW / Streamer PC

[watchnerd]

After 5+ years of service, my late 2012 Mac Mini, which I use for my DAW and to run Roon, is throwing SMART disk errors, indicating a HD that is starting to get iffy.

I could just upgrade the HD, but the machine is pretty old these days and obsolete. Plus the surgery to get to the HD is a bit of a PITA.

So what should I get next?

Primary requirements are the ability to:

Run Roon
Run Logic Pro
Run Pro Tools
connect to my NAS

Oh...and a 5K screen, since we're modernizing

 

[Jinjuku]

Are you staying with Apple?

 

[watchnerd]

Are you staying with Apple?

Probably. I don't want to have to deal with Windows drivers for DACs.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Well they haven't really kept the Mac Mini up to date. So you don't want a new one of those I don't think. The hardware of the Imacs have been allowed to slip a bit too, with a promised serious refresh of those coming 2018. Maybe a nice second hand imac would make sense for what you need in the interim. That only leaves the Macbook Pro in the apple world. They'll meet all your requirements.

 

[amirm]

Probably. I don't want to have to deal with Windows drivers for DACs.

It is all driverless now with Windows 10 Creator's edition.

 

[watchnerd]

Well they haven't really kept the Mac Mini up to date. So you don't want a new one of those I don't think. The hardware of the Imacs have been allowed to slip a bit too, with a promised serious refresh of those coming 2018. Maybe a nice second hand imac would make sense for what you need in the interim. That only leaves the Macbook Pro in the apple world. They'll meet all your requirements.

There's also the new iMac Pro coming out.

The 2017 vanilla iMacs seem fresh enough...or is there a chipset refresh waiting the wings?

 

[watchnerd]

It is all driverless now with Windows 10 Creator's edition.

Who makes good Windows machines these days, preferably with a 4k-5k monitor?

 

[RayDunzl]

Who makes good Windows machines these days, preferably with a 4k-5k monitor?

You do, from the parts vendors...

 

[Jinjuku]

Probably. I don't want to have to deal with Windows drivers for DACs.

With the fall creators update Windows now uses UAC 2.0. So plug in your interface and go. About time.

 

[Jinjuku]

Who makes good Windows machines these days, preferably with a 4k-5k monitor?

PM me and we can discuss a custom build.

 

[amirm]

Who makes good Windows machines these days, preferably with a 4k-5k monitor?

I always build my own because that is the strength of PC architecture. Parts are easy to get from Amazon or Fry's and there is satisfaction in building it.

This is a good time to do it given the 8th generation Intel CPUs being out (and AMD too) and end of the year sales.

Major OEMs like Dell and HP make good stuff too but often with custom components so if anything goes wrong, you are kind of stuck.

 

[Jinjuku]

I always build my own because that is the strength of PC architecture. Parts are easy to get from Amazon or Fry's and there is satisfaction in building it.

This is a good time to do it given the 8th generation Intel CPUs being out (and AMD too) and end of the year sales.

Major OEMs like Dell and HP make good stuff too but often with custom components so if anything goes wrong, you are kind of stuck.

Agreed. There are always some caveats:

I just picked up a HP Z420 with Xeon 1650v2 HexaCore (12 with HT enabled) with Windows 10 Pro and a chincy 250GB HDD, with that I managed (believe it or not) Kingston Registered, Buffered, ECC, 8GB DDR3 at $20 a pop.

While maybe proprietary I couldn't pass up a HP workstation for pocket change.

I already had SSD and Dual Port NIC's hanging around.

So for $480 I have a Xeon Hexacore machine with 64GB of ECC Memory and all running off SSD and ~212MB a second transfer rate to another Windows 10 Pro machine with 10TB in a Windows Parity Storage Space with SSD tierring.

So all my Hyper-V machines sit on the storage space and I just use SMB multi-channel. The onboard NIC of both my file server and the HP are constrained and not in the multi-channel config so I'll never lose management ability.

 

[watchnerd]

You do, from the parts vendors...

I always build my own because that is the strength of PC architecture. Parts are easy to get from Amazon or Fry's and there is satisfaction in building it.

This is a good time to do it given the 8th generation Intel CPUs being out (and AMD too) and end of the year sales.

Major OEMs like Dell and HP make good stuff too but often with custom components so if anything goes wrong, you are kind of stuck.

I last did that 10+ years ago.

I'm so fsr behind on knowing which graphic card, chip set, etc is bang for the buck...or even just best. It would take me weeks of research.

And then there are the cases.

That being said, it was fun last time I did it (back in overclocked AMD days).

If I did all that, I'd probably put Linux on it, anyway.

 

[watchnerd]

That being said, this looks pretty freaking awesome:

 

[Sal1950]

It is all driverless now with Windows 10 Creator's edition.

With the fall creators update Windows now uses UAC 2.0. So plug in your interface and go. About time.

Still pretty sketchy in my experience. My fully updated Creators install recognized my Emo DC-1 and connected just fine with no issues.
That is until I tried to plug in a USB stick or drive, then it would refuse to connect to them telling me it didn't recognize the device?
Unplug the DC-1 and it falls back to recognizing my USB storage devices just fine?
Never put any time into investigating the issue as I don't use the Windoz partition for anything but doing my Quicken financial accounts.

That being said, this looks pretty freaking awesome:

watchnerd, why not get a PC build of your choice and install a Hackintosh OS?

 

[Wayne]

It is all driverless now with Windows 10 Creator's edition.

Could you explain how the "driverless" works/differs from the previous editions? and/or provide explanation references?

(Just in general, not a technical explanation)

THX

 

[watchnerd]

Still pretty sketchy in my experience. My fully updated Creators install recognized my Emo DC-1 and connected just fine with no issues.
That is until I tried to plug in a USB stick or drive, then it would refuse to connect to them telling me it didn't recognize the device?
Unplug the DC-1 and it falls back to recognizing my USB storage devices just fine?
Never put any time into investigating the issue as I don't use the Windoz partition for anything but doing my Quicken financial accounts.


watchnerd, why not get a PC build of your choice and install a Hackintosh OS?

I thought the loopholes that allowed Hackintoshes were closed years ago?

 

[Vincent Kars]

Could you explain how the "driverless" works/differs from the previous editions? and/or provide explanation references?

There are standards for USB audio
UAC1 (USB Audio Class 1) allows for 2 channel pcm with 24 bits and 96 kHz sample rate max
In 2009 UAC2 was finalized.
It supports 32 bit and all common sample rates > 96 kHz.
Apple and Linux supports UAC2 from 2010 on.
In 2017 Microsoft finally implemented UAC2
Hence before you had to install a third party driver to use UAC2 on Win.
Bit more detail: http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/USB.html

 

[Jinjuku]

I last did that 10+ years ago.

I'm so fsr behind on knowing which graphic card, chip set, etc is bang for the buck...or even just best. It would take me weeks of research.

And then there are the cases.

That being said, it was fun last time I did it (back in overclocked AMD days).

If I did all that, I'd probably put Linux on it, anyway.

For a 5K display the AMD Radeon WX5100 will give you everything you see listed with the iMac Pro for $340. For $70 you can get a lot of cards that will do 4K displays (this I would consider bang for the buck).

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 6core for $199

Get a mainboard that supports M.2 NVME storage

 

[Darwin]

Windows 10 is still Windows which means it's a bifurcated mess of a designed by committee OS. Just like it has always been.