[Build Log] Studio 213

I've been a member here for about over 5 years now. Starting at around 16 years old, building a computer because I wanted to play some games and not have to share my computer with my parents, but mainly because I loved the field of audio. Times have changed, gaming (other than Diablo III and F1 racing) has completely stopped as I've gone off to college. Now my love of audio and recording dreams combine into what I consider an OverKill build.

This will be my first build log, so bare with me, and this should be an experiance for us all.

So the primary focus of this computer is Audio and Audio Recording. In my recording experience sampling uses an ungodly amount of ram, and rendering 30+ audio tracks with equalizers and other effects can chew up even the best of processors. In addition raw music projects are often very large files when each track is captured in 24-bit 96 KHz quality, so a tones of hard drive space is a must. Most of all, the system must be silent when recording is in process.


The products I will be using are as follows:

CPU: Intel Core i7-3820 Sandy Bridge-E 3.6 GHz (3.8 GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 2011 Quad-Core

Motherboard: Asus P9X79 WorkStation LGA 2011

Ram: G. Skill Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR3 1600

SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 120 GB Primary Drive

HDD: Western Digital Blue 320 GB
HDD Long Term Storage: 2 X 1TB Western Digital Green
PSU: Corsair AX750

GPU: XFX HD 4850 1GB (Temporary)
Processor Cooling: Corsair H100 Closed-Circuit Water Cooling

Case: Corsair Graphite Special Edition White 600T
Optical Drive: Asus 24X


Most of the parts are currently in the mail. I'm sleeplessly awaiting their delivery. The only parts that are carrying over from previous builds are the Hard Drives and the Graphics Card.
Edited by deadagain6591 - 6/23/12 at 7:53pm

Every instance of a piano or other sampled instrument can easily be .5-1 GB in size, these for what ever reason load up into ram. This really starts to add up with multi-track recording, often I use 15-20 sampled instruments, which includes allowances for doubling and such. Also, ram is so cheap these days, I figured why not.

I received my first set of deliveries today, you've gotta love Amazon Prime. Two boxes arrived.



Ordered so much the last few days, I was unsure what was in the boxes. Almost felt like Christmas.



I am impressed with the packing and organization of the H100. Also somewhat surprised at the size of the radiator being so large (no idea why, I know what 2x120MM fans next to eachother look like). The size of the block that sits on the processor is so small, its hard to believe there's a pump inside there.




Next came the AX750, again the packing is impeccable. There seems to be so many cables for this unit. Thanks Corsair for thinking of everything I might plug in and the free zip ties.







Last thing that came today was the processor. The boxes are coo much smaller than the last time I bought a processor, mainly because there is not and included heatsink. Less for me to throw away. The processor also seems huge, never seen a 2011 processor in person before




Well more to come later. Waiting for more deliveries!
If you have any questions on the build, feel free to ask.

Thanks, looking forward to building it myself. Case comes in Monday, so I'm delayed to start till then.

The first part of the build will involve placing all the cable and as a little time passes I will buy some quieter fans and cable sleeves.

More toys for me!!
Weather has been horrible today, raining all day kept me inside watching tv and playing a few games while I anxiously awaited my new parts. Just as I was about to leave the door to go out to dinner with a few friends the UPS delivery-man pulls up with 3 more packages.


In the first package, 2 kits of 16GB (2x8GB) Ram by G. Skill 1600 MHz Cas 10. First time I have ever seen ram ship with a case badge.



Second box had my Asus DVD-Burner in it...Extremely fast delivery, it was overnight when I paid for 2-day. Thank You Amazon. Now onto removing the logos.


The final box comes with my Motherboard. Asus P9X79 WS, This truly is a great looking board with every imaginable cable or accessory you would need.




Now I decided to do a preliminary build in my Centiropm 5 to test the parts (AKA couldn't resist putting it together.)
This is what was inside before, a very old computer (Q6600 Processor was found, so not too old. I will be selling the old parts once I receive the right amount of reps)


After cleaing out the old components i put in the motherboard. Then CPU and RAM. And finally my graphics card an 8800 GT.





Unfortunately during my test the 8800 was not posting.
Edited by deadagain6591 - 6/23/12 at 7:51pm

Im sorry for the delay in posting the complete system. I got the case on Monday and have been working out the bugs in software ever since. Well anyways, here I go.





First I mounted my 4x1TB Western Digital Green drives, my 500GB Western Digital Black, and my OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD. I had to mount the ssd, because of its size, only using one set of pegs from that drive carriers.


After this i mounted the cooling, Power Supply and motherboard (with ram and CPU already attached).

As you may be able to see in this picture, there is no way to have a push pull on the radiator with this setup. The VRM Cooling Is in the way of where the fan would go. (Remember this motherboard is a very different layout from most, including other X79 boards. It is a CEB form factor.)


A few more pictures...



I had to do a modification to the top grill cover to have the fans fit properly. I had to cut out the plastic supports in the middle. The structure still seems very strong without them.

And now look...a perfect fit




I have a few more pictures to come of the cable management and complete system.