Ensign

Hello,

I have limited experience playing around with Reaper over the years, but now need to upgrade to a new PC. My current PC is from 8-10 years ago (i7 3770K with 16 gig of RAM and a 256GB SSD). I would sometimes run into some click type glitchy sounds using several plugins (Steven Slate Drums, some IK multimedia synth plugin, Helix Native, etc.)

Looking for input or recommended sites for recommended specs/requirements for a new system. I was initially thinking something like a i7 12700K might give some nice longevity, but not sure about amount and types of RAM (32 vs 64 gig, DDR4 vs DDR5, etc.).

I would appreciate any thoughts you might have. Thanks in advance!

bolgwrad

Can I suggest: audio card, audio card, audio card.

From my own experience I'd suggest getting a whopper internal audio card rather than a whopper PC.

I'm happily running Reaper on XP on a 12 y/o (64-bit) PC (beefed up PSU, GFX, SSD drives) with a 4-channel MAYA PCIe card. Personal choice, not a budget constraint, and I get more glitches, hangs and crackles on W10 (which I've tried, repeatedly - but no more) than XP. Without that PCIe card I'd need to upgrade the whole thing.

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jnorman34

The chip you mention is one of the best (and consequently most expensive) chips made today, so yes, it should give you several years of excellent service. Whatever chips you are considering, visit userbenchmarks.com and compare the specs (and especially the overall ranking - the i7-12700k is currently ranked #3, which is awesome). The i9-12900ks is currently ranked #1.
16 ram is plenty for most audio purposes, so 32 ram seems a good safe choice.
DDDR5 is marginally faster than DDDR4, and is/will be available in larger amounts of ram per chip than DDDR4. Is it worth it? Maybe for gaming, maybe not so much for audio.
Check into optane memory for your SSD. Try to avoid any non-ssd drives.
Dedicated GPU is significant if you do video editing, but is not a necessity for audio.
There are several online sites with guidance on spec�ing out a new machine:
https://integraudio.com/what-pc-ram-...ic-production/

Ensign

Interesting idea. How does that work with an interface? Does it take the place of it?

jnorman34

A good audio interface negates the need for an internal sound card.

Softsynth

Before shelling out perhaps consider optimisation - if you haven't done all that already.
Check to see if there are lots of unnecessary background processes running. Make sure you're running in exclusive mode. Make sure your buffer settings are large enough. Consider freeze rendering some of the tracks.

A good internal card or good external interface should give very similar performance. Good dedicated ASIO and exclusive WASAPI also can perform with barely perceptible latency.

I also use a 3770 CPU (though not the highly overclockable K) it's still a capable CPU. The 12700 is obviously going to have far more brute force when number crunching multiple simultaneous virtual instruments.

I often have projects running around 20 instances of simultaneous synth VSTis (fairly power hungry ones, in some cases). If I went to something like a 12700 I would use the extra grunt to go to 96khz or 192 - I run at 48khz and don't see this as a significant quality limitation where the occasional aliasing in the highest frequencies is usually dealt with by oversampling.

Rarely do virtual instruments alias noticeably, and this only tends to happen audibly at the very highest of high frequencies.

Consider how many instances of reverb you need. Do you have separate instances of reverb on every track or do you have an auxiliary bus track?

Have a listen to see if some of the tracks sound no different with oversampling turned off. Check to see if you can reduce the amount of polyphony on any synthesizers, in a way that wouldn't be deleterious to your track.

Ask yourself do you really need as many tracks in a project or does it actually sound tighter with less tracks?
Basically you want to check if you are being as efficient as possible with your CPU that you already own. Once you've got that down to a fine art then consider moving to something more powerful, if you really need it.