Intel Core i5-4670 Digital Audio Workstation for Pulsar PCI cards

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This build was for a recording artist who wanted to continue using their original Creamware Pulsar cards as they had a number of ongoing projects that were using the plugins and software that are part of the original Creamware architecture. The Creamware Pulsar cards have a PCI interface so we needed to use a motherboard that had at least 3 PCI slots.

ASUS H87 Plus

ASUS H87 Plus motherboard

The Asus H87-PLUS has a total of 4 x PCIe sockets (2 x 16 / 2 x1) and 3 x PCI sockets.

The Creamware cards are now supported by Sonic Core who provide an update to the Scope software to version 5.1, this allows the cards to run on windows 7 64bit. There are few bits of tweaking in the bios needed to get the cards to be stable but after some research and testing the unit was rock solid.

 

The full Spec;

  • Antec NSK4000 B2 Tower
  • ASUS H87-PLUS motherboard
  • Intel Core i5-4670
  • 8GB (Kit) DDR3 PC3-12800
  • Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1 TB 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive
  • Optiarc AD-7241S-0B DVDRW SATA Black
  • firewire 1394a 2 port PCI Express Card
  • LiteOn IHAS124-04 DVD+-R/RW/DL/RAM
  • OCZ ZS Series 650W Power Supply 80 Plus Bronze
  • Windows 7 64bit

 

 

Intel Core i5-4670 Rackmount Digital Audio Workstation

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This unit was built for a professional musician running reaper. The customer wanted the unit to be relatively quiet and mount in a 19″ rack. The operating noise was not too critical as there was a separate live area for recording but the customer wanted to make sure that the towers sound level would not be too intrusive while mixing.

Scythe Shuriken

Scythe Shuriken Rev B Quiet Low Profile CPU Cooler

The Scythe Shuriken CPU cooler has proved to be a very reliable unit and will cool CPU’s with a maximum Thermal Design Power of up to 95w, so it can work with pretty much all of the Intel Haswell Core i series CPU’s. There is a good article relating to CPU coolers on the quiet PC forum.

The Scythe CPU cooler combined with the FSP raider Power supply ensures that the operating noise is pretty minimal, even when pushing the performance of the CPU. One problem area with operating noise can be ‘case rattle’ but the Lian li tower is pretty good with rubber grommets to dampen any Hard drive noise.

The full spec;

  • Lian li PC-C32B Aluminium desktop tower including rack ears
  • FSP Raider 650W Quiet PSU 80+ Silver
  • ASUS H87-PLUS motherboard
  • Intel Core i5-4670 3.40 GHz Processor
  • 8GB (Kit) DDR3 PC3-12800
  • Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1 TB 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive
  • Scythe Shuriken Rev B Quiet Low Profile CPU Cooler
  • LiteOn IHAS124-04 DVD+-R/RW/DL/RAM
  • Microsoft Windows 8.1 64bit
Intel Core i5-4670 Rackmount Digital Audio Workstation

Intel Core i5-4670 Rackmount Digital Audio Workstation

Lian li PC-C32B Aluminium tower

Lian li PC-C32B Aluminium rackmount tower

Haswell

Synology DS212J 2 Bay RAID NAS

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You can never have too many backups. A customer had been having some computer issues and as a consequence had lost some important data. We decided to set up a RAID system so that the risk of data loss through hardware failure was minimised. There are obviously a few different options when it comes to backing up, online or ‘cloud’ services such as Google drive, Microsoft skydrive and dropbox offer online backup and sharing facilities that can be very useful. They do, however, rely on your internet speed and you are entrusting a 3rd party with your data. If you are using large files, such as uncompressed video or audio files, then a RAID system can offer a level of safety whilst allowing you to backup and access your data reasonably fast. I have used a number of NAS RAID units and the Synology units have always been very impressive. They are reasonably priced whilst offering a good range of features and have proved extremely reliable.

The customer’s system was used mainly for admin and storing images and audio. We built a new computer to replace the failing desktop and set up a Synology DS212J with 2 x Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1 TB hard drives configured in a basic RAID 1 array. The customer could then access their data from a number of different computers in the building and also log in remotely via a secure HTTPS connection.

Drives fitted

Drives fitted

Installing the drives

Installing the drives

NAS with drives

NAS with drives

Intel Pentium G2120 Tower

Intel Pentium G2120 Tower

Synology DS212J NAS

Synology DS212J NAS

Intel Core i5-3570 Digital Audio Workstation

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This build was for a musician that was recording material for their new album and also editing some visuals primarily using Sony’s Vegas software. The customer was having performance issues with their current computer system so we needed to make sure that the new machine could perform the required tasks whilst keeping an eye on the budget. The customer had recently purchased a new PSU and graphics card for their current workstation so we re-used them on this build.

An Intel Core i5-3570 CPU, 16GB RAM and the Crucial SSD provided more than enough performance. The Crucial SSD was set up as the main Windows drive and a 2TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive would be used mainly for storage. We also installed the Siig FireWire card for connecting a Focusrite audio interface. A few different video cameras were also going to be hooked up via firewire and the Siig card has proved to be much more reliable than some of the cheaper firewire cards.

Fractal Design Tower Crucial SSD Fractal Design Define R3

 

 

 

 

 

 

The full spec…

  • Fractal Design Define R3 Black Pearl Mid Tower Case USB 3.0
  • ASUS P8Z77-V LX2 S1155 Z77
  • Intel Core i5-3570 3.40 GHz Processor
  • 16GB kit (8GBx2), 240-pin DIMM, DDR3 PC3-12800 / 1.5V
  • SAMSUNG SH-224BB/BEBE DVD±RW SATA
  • Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2 TB 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive
  • Crucial 128GB m4 2.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s
  • Siig FireWire 2-Port PCI Express Adapter Card (NN-E20012-S2 Texas Instruments)

Overheating Desktop Repair

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An old desktop was brought in that was randomly powering off. A quick look inside revealed some clogged up vents, fans and heatsinks. Even if overheating was not the main problem it was worth a clean!

dusty heatsink and fans clogged up vents

 

 

 

We cleaned up the insides with a small brush and compressed air duster. We could have ran some temperature diagnostic software but the unit was powering off so frequently that a quick test showed that the cleaning had been successful.

all clean clean vents

 

 

Intel Core i5-3570 Photography Workstation

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This build was for a photographer. Their old machine was starting to creak. After being brought in for repair a couple of times we decided to build a new machine. The customer was running Adobe Photoshop CS 6 with Adobe Lightroom 4. The software was mainly used for simple editing tasks, nothing too intensive, though processing raw images can be very slow if the resources are not available. We decided to build the machine around an Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5-3570 with 16GB RAM. This would provide the performance necessary for an efficient workflow.

Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine

Adobe have abandoned their support for Nvidia’s proprietary CUDA GPU acceleration found in earlier versions of their software, in favour of OpenCL. The Mercury graphics engine allows you to use other manufacturers graphics processors for GPU acceleration. This will speed up certain tasks but also allow you to utilise a number of options that are unavailable if you do not have a supported graphics card.

More information can be found on the Adobe website here and here

For this build we decided to stick with the on board Intel HD4000 Graphics, as this is supported by Photoshop and for the kind of tasks the customer would be running, it did not really seem necessary to add an expensive separate graphics card. Which could always be added at a later date if it seemed necessary.

The full spec…

  • GIGABYTE GZ-M1 Micro ATX Tower
  • OCZ CoreXStream 500W ATX PSU
  • Asus P8H77-M LE MATX Desktop Motherboard – Intel H77
  • Intel Core i5 i5-3570 3.40 GHz CPU
  • Crucial 16GB kit (8GBx2) Ballistix, DDR3 PC3-12800 RAM
  • Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB Hard Drive
  • Pioneer BDR-207EBK Blu-ray drive
  • Microsoft Windows 8 (64-bit)
OCZ CoreXStream 500W ATX PSU

OCZ CoreXStream 500W ATX PSU

GIGABYTE GZ-M1

GIGABYTE GZ-M1

Asus P8H77-M LE

Asus P8H77-M LE

 

i7-3840QM 3D Gaming Laptop

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This was a custom laptop build for a desktop replacement gaming machine. Built around a Clevo P370EM 17.3″ Chassis, it features two NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 680M graphics cards with the NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision Wireless Stereoscopic kit. It is running an Intel 240GB SSD and a 1TB SATA drive. An intel i7-3840QM CPU and 16GB of DDR3 RAM ensure this unit can perform a large amount of calculations in a very short amount of time.

The full Spec…

  • Clevo P370EM 17.3″ 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920×1080)
  • Intel Core i7-3840QM
  • KINGSTON 16GB HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 8GB)
  • 2 x NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 680M – 4.0GB DDR5
  • INTEL® 240GB 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s
  • 1TB SATA II 2.5″ HDD
  • BLURAY ROM Drive
  • NVIDIA GEFORCE 3D VISION WIRELESS STEREOSCOPIC KIT

 

Clevo P370EM 17.3" 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen

Clevo P370EM 17.3″ 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen

Clevo P370EM 17.3" 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen

Clevo P370EM 17.3″ 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen

Clevo P370EM 17.3" 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen

Clevo P370EM 17.3″ 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen

Clevo P370EM 17.3" 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen

Clevo P370EM 17.3″ 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen

Clevo P370EM 17.3" 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen

Clevo P370EM 17.3″ 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen

Clevo P370EM 17.3" 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen

Clevo P370EM 17.3″ 120Hz 3D Matte Full HD LED Widescreen

A note about headphone impedance

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As a basic rule the lower a headphones impedance value, the ‘louder’ they will sound for a particular output. So a pair of 16 ohm headphones will sound louder than a 600 ohm pair when plugged into the same headphone socket. (There are other factors that affect the volume of headphones, such as the strength of the magnets used.)
Lower impedance headphones, usually 150 ohms or less, are usually better suited to devices that have lower output levels like portable recording units or cd / mp3 players that run from batteries. (There is no reason why you could not use headphones with higher impedance; they just would not be that loud!)
Impedance values from 150 – 600 ohms are usually better suited to general studio use. The higher a headphones impedance value, the more power needed to drive them, which makes them less susceptible to damage from over powering. Higher impedance headphones are also better suited when using multiple pairs connected in parallel.
Impedance values of 1.5 – 2K (ohms) are used mainly in broadcast environments. The relatively high impedance value allows headphones to be connected to devices directly and monitor signals without causing noticeable drops in signal level.

A more in depth article covering impedance can be found here;

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan03/articles/impedanceworkshop.asp

 

Intel Pentium G840 HTPC

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This build was to be installed into a living room and connected to a 1080 HD TV and a NAS. It was mainly going to be used for playing media content such as TV, films and music. The case needed to be small enough to integrate into a living space but did not need to be particularly discreet. The Antec MINUET 350 Case has a reasonably small footprint and is good value for money with the PSU included in the price.

Most of the media content would be stored on the NAS, so drive space was not a major concern but the customer was intending to upload photos and videos from cameras and smartphones so we decided to install a 1TB Seagate Barracuda to ensure that there was enough space for the future. We also installed a card reader into the 3.5″ bay so transferring media from cameras would be easier.

The Intel Pentium G840 was more than capable of handling all the media tasks and is very reasonably priced.

The unit was running Windows 8 64 with VLC and Winamp handling a lot of the media playback. The customer had quite a few films they had ripped from DVD on the NAS and the nice thing about VLC is that it will play DVD image files as well as media files.

We also installed a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR900 DVB-T USB tuner which also has an analog input. I really like the Hauppage products. The software is easy to use, stable and fully supports Windows 8. This allowed the customer to schedule record TV programs and also connect an old VHS video recorder so they could watch and also record old videos on the computer.

The full spec…

  • Antec Minuet Piano Black Slimline PC Case inc 350w 80+ PSU
  • Asus P8H61-M LE Rev 3.0 Motherboard
  • Intel Pentium G840 (2.8GHz,65W,32nm,3MB)
  • 4GB kit (2GBx2) 240-pin DIMM DDR3 PC3-12800 CL=11 Unbuffered NON-ECC
  • Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1 TB 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive
  • CIT IO-001B USB2 3.5″ Internal Card Reader with SIM slot
  • Hauppauge WinTV-HVR900 DVB-T USB Tuner.
  • LiteOn iHBS112 BLU-RAY WRITER

Antec HTPC

Antec case inc PSU

Antec case without cover