First Time Music Production PC Build. Need advice from Micro Center and/or current builds
Currently a Mac user but I have gone down the rabbit hole of the idea of building a great music production pc.
Couple questions here.
Hopefully you all can help me.
1. Micro Center -
a. Is it possible to communicate with one person privately to discuss this build?
b. I have used the pc builder and noticed certain items are not options to choose, can these be ordered?
For example. - I9 9900x skylake, Be Quite Power supplies, cpu cooling, cases.
c. After review with a professional, does Microcenter allow me to drop off all the parts including items not ordered through Microcenter, to be built?
Most information i have come across is about gaming pcs which puts a large focus on the video card, where i believe this build's focus will be around CPU, RAM, and as quiet as possible to remove as much ambient sound during recording.
Comments
1. Yes, you can certainly speak to one of our BYOPC reps in store and they can help you. I would probably suggest coming in and speaking to them first to get started.
2. Possibly, if they're in our website inventory we can have them delivered. We are getting in new inventory very frequently, it may very well be available when you're ready to go.
3. Yes, if you can't locate the part in our store you can bring it parts from another retailer. The only issue we have here is that we can't RMA the part if it's DOA. We would have to ask you to pick it up and RMA it with the other retailer yourself.
Otherwise, you're right on for music production. CPU and RAM are your main concerns. GPU is secondary, but you do want a decent card. There are several plug ins used for music production that do utilize GPU rendering. It's a relatively small work load for the GPU so you won't need anything crazy here.
Is that overkill? What do you recommend?
Current cost is $2,300
I would like to shave off $300 and make it a flat $2K
The easiest area to save cost would be on the CPU and motherboard. There's almost no reason to get a 9900X at this point in my opinion, especially at that price. The Intel i9-10900k is also a 10 core/20 thread part just like the 9900X, but can be paired with a much more reasonable Z490 motherboard for saved cost. Those two by themselves could save you ~$500+ on the total cost of your build and you wouldn't lose any performance.
I'd also put in a good word for the Ryzen 9 3950X. It's a 16 core/32 thread part and can also be paired with a reasonable X570 motherboard. In my opinion if you're looking at CPUs in that price range/category, it's just the best overall option. It has more cores/threads and still packs in good single-threaded performance. It also supports PCIe 4.0 if that's something you're interested in, which the Intel chips are lacking right now.
The one reason to get a 9900X or another extreme series Intel processor would be if you specifically need a larger amount of PCIe lanes on your system. Otherwise, I would personally choose the Ryzen 9 3950X at that price point, or go with the 10900K if you really want to go Intel.
Is it best to stop into my local microcenter and get an estimate on build cost?
If you want us to actually build it, we have our custom build pricing listed here:
https://www.microcenter.com/site/service/instore-service-complete-build.aspx
Just scroll down to the bottom of the page and it will list the different tiers of builds we offer and pricing. Click on each tier to view the exact details for what it includes.