Where are the Computer Nerds??

[midnightlaundry]

I have like 4 Desktops running right now. I have 1 on every TV and 1 on a descent 4K monitor that I use for my crap Studio.. But I really don't know a lot. Just enough to get in trouble..
My fastest is a Gen 1 i7-980X! Gulftown baby!

I can overclock it reliably to about 4.2 Ghz but heat is the factor and the Fans can get noisy pulsating constantly. I only have Passive CPU Cooler on it.. Frankly, it runs just fine and quiet at 3.6 Ghz and does everything I need because I really don't Game. It's more of an ego thing to say my rig runs at X mega gigahertz.. But really this Rig is fine at 3.6.

There are some good deals on Amazon with Bundle MB and CPU.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B44WGYS5/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
With some descent Ram, I can get all 3 for under $500. I already have an anchor ATX Case with a Corsair 850 Power Supply.. SSD Drives are fine and worlds faster than HDD's.. M.2 would be the next goto eventually.

Question is, how many cores are really necessary? I'd like at least 8 but going to 12 Cores is significantly more expensive..

 

[Monkey Man]

DAW's generally restrict mixer channels to 1 core. The only way around this that I'm aware of is to use a plugin host within a mixer channel. PluginGuru's Unify springs to mind.

IOW, if you're running a lot of mixer channels loaded with plugins, more cores can be beneficial.

Of course, you'll theoretically get the same basic latency from a single core machine of the same CPU spec / model as you would from a multi-core one 'cause the extra cores only increase the bandwidth, not the throughput speed.