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

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

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