Did anyone notice me pulling a VERGE and installing the RAM in the wrong slots during RAM section? 🤦‍♂🤦‍♂ HAHA, can't believe it! Well, that was the first thing I changed before booting as you can see from the B-Roll in the end :)

RAM matters in audio. Flexibility with buffer settings limits audio drop-outs and improves latency. DDR5 is definitely worthwhile for audio production. Bluetooth and WiFi are useless in the studio. Not worth consideration in a DAW build. Everything should be outboard via USB (mostly), if the build doesn't have a professional audio card in a PCIe slot. Thunderbolt is great in Macs, not so great in PC's historically; dependent on drivers from Microsoft and performance gains per dollar/euro aren't convincing. Onboard connectivity isn't relevant, external audio interface connectivity is. RAM doesn't improve capacity for track count, typically each track is dedicated to a single CPU thread. Very pretty looking PC, but people in audio don't need anymore confusion from gamers about building a DAW. Its difficult enough as it is.

Sometimes we neglect case & CPU Cooler, but Fractal case & Noctua have been rock solid for 10 years serving my music studio

This is so cool. Me, being a gamer, photographer, videographer, and musician, I thought "He makes great PC setups for videographers and photographers, just overall content creators. Only if there was something for music" and BOOM here it is! I am overjoyed I subscribed!

Thank you for creating this video. Most of the videos about building PCs are always for gaming. I appreciate this content as it guides musicians in creating a silent but very much capable music DAW PC!

Finally!!! A pc DAW!!! Asked a video about it time ago! Dig in man... this is for "SILENCE"... push the power to the limit! The goal is "zero latency" (almost) in VSTi and recording and real time plugin!

Musicians can be forgotten creators and now they can find a system and design from it what they need. Very good video

Man, I love you for this! Been avid follower of this channel for a while, always thought it would be so awesome if you did a build for us music producers, but we normally get the short end of the stick when it comes to tech. We normally have to try base our builds on info derived from video/photography production systems. And BOOM! I just saw your video/thumbnail and flipped! Thanks so much for doing this - you're awesome!

Thank you so much for building a DAW machine. The video creator needs usually aren't quite the same. Love the content

FINALLY! A build for me/us Producers! Thanks so much!

That's a great guide, thanks man, really appreciate it. As it turns out, I discovered _way back when_ -- 20 years ago maybe, as a teen in teen rooms -- that the most silent PC for music production is the one that's _not in the room_ :D What we used to do, because no money to improve PC noise, is drill a hole in a wall (preferably closet) to wire cables to the other room next to it (say another room or garage) and put the PC there and wire it back to the intended desk (VGA + USB KB/mouse + USB for ADC/DACs). It's janky and parents will kill you if you do it wrong, but it works(TM). I hear pro studios do the same sometimes, there's a backroom with proper isolation and everything routes there (USB, HDMI etc) over ethernet for length/signal power. Just like we route XLR's all the way if we need to :p Nowadays, I agree that for most SOHO (or Small Studio / Home Studio rather), you can build perfectly silent PCs. And that was a great how-to!

This is a fantastic video! I sincerely appreciate that you've taken the time to focus on audio creators, and not just video. Instant sub, and hope that you continue to update this build for the future! I'm looking to build a new audio production machine later this year, and this will be my first stop in that journey!

This is by far the best DAW directed PC build guide I've seen on the internet so far. Your choice of motherboard was spot on, I would have also included that the ethernet ports can be used for audio over ethernet protocols like Dante, this gives you a lot of options for high quality audio interfaces without having to buy expensive option cards. I also liked that you chose an E-ATX board as PCIe expansion cards are very common for things like word clocking (a must), MADI/ADAT connection, as well as DSP acceleration so having those extra PCI lanes are very important. I do think your RAM choice was a bit overkill in terms of size, having more than 16GB doesn't really make sense for a singer song writer type, maybe up to 32GB would make sense for someone doing large projects but might still be overkill. But I wouldn't go up to 64GB unless you were recording orchestras with multiple mic arrays recording at 192kHz/24Bit for hours at a time I don't think the noise is that important as professional production setups will try their best to put any noisy machine in another room. But for the home producer having their computer in the same room might be a must to avoid spending a lot of money on long cable snakes and KVM extenders. That being said I think it would have made more sense to go with the Noctua ULN specified fans. The 120mm NH-S12A ULN with the LNA attached produces only 6.7dB according to Noctua's website, which is astonishingly low. Along with that it could have been interesting to use the fanless CPU cooler from Noctua as well. Though with the current fanned cooler you have very low levels of noise, that low level can become more noticeable in a properly treated room with isolation from the outside and silent HVAC. For reference a professional control room's ambient noise level is about 20dB which is equivalent to the sound to a watch tick, which is why most studio designs place the computer in a completely separate room.

For anyone trying to make a decision between the Noctua cooler and the Thermalright Pearless 120....I just completed a build with the Thermalright cooler, 4 Noctua NF-A12x's(in vid) + 2 NF-A14's, and even before tuning the fans, the build was so quiet. I'm cooling an i9 12900K inside the Corsair 4000D Airflow, havent had tempts go above 85 on the CPU in any of the bench marks ive run so far. Asides from what I think is maybe too much negative pressure inside the case, I am beyond satisfied with this build.

This was great! Maybe set up a deep dive interview with someone who really knows music studio computer requirements to see exactly how to configure the 3 types of music production computers: Home Studio, Project/Demo Studio, and Professional Studio. (Thank you for all you do!)

My 16 year old MOTU audio interface went tits up a couple weeks ago, and the PC it was on was an old i7 950. That PC was still running very strong for audio recording, actually, but I wanted to go Thunderbolt with a new audio interface...so I built this system this week. I used slightly different components beyond the motherboard and processor. I also reused my old case. Can't thank you enough for the pointers on this build. When you build a PC every 12 years all the parts look like alien technology. 🤣 So guidance is always welcome. You couldn't have been more timely with this video for me. First boot was last night...looking good so far.

Saw this in my feed and shouted "Yessss!" 😊 Haven't started building yet, so this is gonna be awesome! Thanks so much for thinking of the musicians as well! Will let you know how it works with my workflow. 👍🏾

The noctua cooler is installed backwards. It should be flipped 180. It probably doesn't make much of a difference but if you look at the install instructions and look at the top of the cooler, the heatpipe holes are teardrop shaped. The tail of the teardrop should be pointing at the direction of the io shroud.

that's a very nice clean build, good video, didn't expect you to cover DAW users, WiFi may cause interference and noise issues in studio environment, but on the other hand Bluetooth may prove useful on MIDI-over-Bluetooth capable controllers and audio gadgets; one thing I'm not sure I can agree on is the CPU choice: apart from fact Windows 10 can't properly schedule tasks between P and E cores (and many musicians and producers may want to avoid W11 yet), DAW apps and audio processing in general (regardless of OS) heavily relies on consistency, which mix of P and E cores cannot deliver by design - that said 12700K gives 8 performance cores and overclocking potential to lock frequencies, but you have to completely disable its 4 E cores to prevent DPC latency spikes and unexpected slowdowns when processing audio - means, something like 12600 instead which has only 6 P cores is no hassle, and arguably at half the cost not much of a downgrade from 12700K for audio workflow...what do you think?

Basically just bought this entire setup besides a different case. This is going to be my first PC build i have been running my home studio from a DELL I’ve had for like the last 10 years lol. Excited and overdue for this upgrade

I love silent PC builds. This was 10/10!

I really appreciate this build (as well as the School of Rock cutaways). Also, I'd agree that staying on DDR4 for a while is sufficient enough for making music. In general, I'd say it pays off to not go for the highest end of hardware. I recently upgraded my system to a ryzen 5900 as it was dropping in price considerably, even though the 7900 was already on the horizon. It barely breaks a sweat even with my giant 200+ track orchestra template, and I got to keep it quite cool and quiet within my old Fractal Design R5 case. :) I figure it will be enough for the coming years, and you can also get around with using a 2.5 ssd instead of an m.2 one for sample library storage if you don't mind a bit longer loading times.

This is exactly what I need, thanks for video bro!

If your in a larger studio like the one i own, the computer is nowhere to be found. Its usually hidden away in the amp/power/cable room. Wiring is tided together and run to the soundboard/daw etc. with 2 or 3 large high refresh screens for work loads. So no real need for a fancy looking computer. Just make the guts work well with lots of ram. Musicians will never say, hey love the look of your puter rig. Paying 300 an hour for studio time they don't have time to look around. Studio time starts as soon as you walk through the door. Good video though and a very pretty computer!

i produce music and I am going to be upgrading my pc, this guide is exactly what I needed!

Legit a new fan of this channel. Your the only one that gets to the point and actually gives valid info. Like the 2x32 ram vs 4x16. I decided to go with 2x32.

Great video! Great PC. I love that it's quiet & without all of that RGB stuff.

For many a mini pc that is fanless such as the ones in aliexpress and amazon, that come with i7-1355u and can have 64gb ddr4 ram plus gen4 pcie m2 drive would be very good. Also that one has thunderbolt so one could add an external gpu if trying to install hackintosh. I think th e needs depend on how fast single core vs multi core are, and the amount of ram. For example many mini pcs can have 96gb ddr5 ram but from what Ive seen most are noisy, appearently the Beelink GTR7 is the exception as far as noise and thermals (it has a Ryzen 9 7940hs), but that is more expensive than the fanless one I mentioned. The Hx100g minisforum could be a contender as well but that has to be proven with time, since most mini pcs are problematic and unreliable many become bricks after a while, thermal problems, noise problems, etc. Great video by the way.

The only correction I see is with the advent of gpu audio being in beta testing. I can't see it being adopted overnight, but this is something to think about.

Studio Machine - a DAW is digital audio workstation for example abelton, logic, FL etc are DAW.

Is there a such thing as having a powerful PC for Video Editing, 3D rendering, and music production in one package? What materials would you use to optimize it, is it recommended to have 64g ram or 128ram? Great material btw

Excellent guide! Once thing I will say is that I would NOT recommend installing plug-in graphics card, particularly NVidia! I thought I could use NVidia GeForce RTX 4060, and I would get better performance, but for audio it was considerably worse! The NVidia added a lot of latency issues that went away after I uninstalled it, and started using just the discrete Intel graphics, so if you want the best audi performance, definitely do NOT add NVidia GeForce RTX adapter!

That section in the bottom front behind the front panel are 2 5.25" bays so if you wanted to put a HDD cage or optical drive you can do so.

While I truly, sincerely appreciate you making this video for musicians (cheers, just finished my studio!) and not gamers, I have some concerns about the choice of PSU. Sparkle is not the most reputable brand and for such a critical component of this type of system, I would think going with a more stable brand like Corsair or Seasonic would be ideal. Of course every manufacturer is going to have lemons, but I've never had one from either of those two companies, and I've been building computers since 2010. Actually the first Corsair PSU I installed in 2010 is still alive and kicking today! Just something to consider.

- DAW PC build guide for Music Production & Quietness... follows color theme - measures only temperature & noise - noise measurement is: i can't hear it - saying "maybe", "might", "you know" in a phrase shows that you are not sure what you're saying? - not measured system latency - many audio interfaces & DAWs recommend to turn off intel Hyperthreading, intel Turbo Boost etc. and put everything power related to maximum power (they even recommend disabling some CPU-C states)

To be honest i have skipped only psu part. Except that i haven't skipped anything. Keep it up

As an Audio engineer of 17 years and gamer, i appreciate this video. Details like "a faster single thread for lower latency operations..." i have not heard from any other YTer and is good to get confirmation on. Somethings ive had to be aware of for my build is a mobo with two ethernet ports. One for internet and another for Dante. Also perhaps running 140mm fans as they run slower to push the same amount of air and resonate at a lower frequency? I would certainly appreciate if you were to do an update to this as newer CPU technology comes out. Hard to keep up with team red and blue throwing punches. Subscribed!

Hey Tech Notice, what an awesome video. I hope you will make a awesome Digital Artist PC in the future. For those out there doing digital painting in Photoshop. Big size stuff, 300dpi, lot of layers. Doing some blender for a quick reference and move over to a drawing program. USB C for connecting a Drawing screen, etc.

I didn’t see you screw with confidence. Seriously though, your videos are a big help. Thank you 😊

Been waiting for some more musician love. Thanks.there is also a few. Music vst plugins that can use the video card for acceleration planned in the future.

I'd love to see an updated video for a custom music PC that's as silent as possible and super fast for running lots of plugins and VSTs. Thanks for all your work I love your content!

Awesome video! And if someone wonders if the NH-D15 fits it this case, the answer is YES!

I love it! What if I want it quiet but I do 3D? What is the quietest high end graphics card you recommend? Do they exist?

super cool video!!!! Just to clarify terminology, a DAW is usually a software where we track or compose, such as Logic, Protools, Cubase, Ableton etc.... still learned a bunch as a computer tech noob and long time mac user! cheers mate.

Fantastic video - as per usual

Perhaps I shouldn't ask for advice here but I'm going to try: I'm not even sure I need an Audio interface, I have happily used an M Audio Audiophile internal sound card for the last 20 years, first in a 20 year old PC then on my present build from about 10 years ago, I've just upgraded from Windows 7 to 10, and lost the software and drivers of the card in the process. I've been doing a littler research and it looks like my good old sound card is very dated. All I do is on Sibelius, DORICO, Vienna Instruments and Note Performer. All I really need is Sound quality, power to drive my Zennheiser HD 600 headphones well, lowest possible latency and no clipping. I like monitors with amps in them. Connecting an instrument or a Microphone is something I've never done, but it could be fun to do sometime maybe. Certainly not more than 1 instrument or 1 microphone. These are my two choices though I'm not sure they are what I need. MOTU M2 2x2 USB-C Audio Interface. M-Audio AIR 192x4 USB C Audio Interface. Hope you can help.

Thank you. Needed some high end pc build talk.

Thank you for this video! I’m glad I finally found a video from you focusing specifically on building a PC for musicians and recording engineers. I’m trying to figure out if it makes more sense to build something very similar to this machine or build a DAW based on a Mac mini. Years ago, I was very happy when I switched from windows to macOS. So I’m not really thrilled about the idea of going back to a windows based machine. Yes I know they’ve come along way in the last 10 years. I know you as well. I’d love to hear your opinion on what Mac mini based solution you’d have to put together to equal this machine in the video.

Beautiful! I built pretty similiar workstation but with Aero G, DDR5, 64gb Corsair Vengeance and Arctic duo freezer 34. i7 12700K also my choice. Works like a charm but seems like little bit of noisy. Maybe I could give it a try with this Noctua cooler, even this Arctic is very quiet. GPU is some old gen, but I am planning to upgrade it. Anyway, machine is the beast, I did’t succeed to make it insufficient even with dozens of synths and instruments. Stable as a the rock.

Fractal makes the best insulated noise free cases without the glass side panel. Don't hear a thing.

Excellent video. You’re one of the few KZfaqrs who build systems for purposes other than gaming. From watching all of the others, one could be forgiven for thinking that all people do with their computers is play games all day on systems that look like electronic clown cars. Btw, I suggest reducing the number of cutesy interruptions (from Jack Black or whatever). Once or twice is OK, but after that it begins to disturb the flow of the video and it becomes annoying. You’re the star here, not him. 🤓

I’ve built a 100% silent pc using noctua fanless cpu cooler, a 1000w psu that goes silent below 40% use, and a fanless gt 1030

You can apply a .03V undervolt that i7 pretty comfortably & reduce load temps by about 5°. I havn’t had the opportunity to mess with that GPU but undervolting could reduce temps some more. Having less hot air inside the case would allow you to run the fans even less. Those are some simple software changes that can make it quieter without voiding warranties but you can take it a step further by delidding the cpu & repasting/repadding the gpu, lowering temps even further allowing for slower fans once again.

Thanks for the video. I put my PC to the small room next to my studio, running 2 display and 2 usb extension cables. Zero noise. But if you have such a place available, ot course.

If single core performance in key, then I presume tight ram timings and frequency would be as well just like in gaming? I'm helping out a friend who is a profecissonal sound engineer and producer with his next build. But I have never seen benchmarks in like pro tools or anything like that, so it's hard to determine what to prioritize when comes to ram. Does quad rank gain performance over dual rank just like in gaming? DDR4 vs DDR5? i7 12700 vs i5 13600k?

When is tech notice gonna try building a custom watercooled build just for the lols?

Thanks, i wish more reviewers would cover PC builds for music production. Too much RGB madness.........Also It would be good if you can compare the new AM5 AMD 7950 and Intel 13900k performance for DAW use eg Wav render time's, loading Linear phase plugins with oversampling enabled etc...... I find this missing in all the reviews where the focus is just on playing shallow copy-paste games or adobe subscription based products.....Both of which don't fit my use case.

I'm coveting that system right now and making lists. Audio Visuals will be my goal and I use so many channels running vets and effects for music, the there's Devinci resolve for video even though Reaper can handle that too, I find Reaper fiddly for video. Of course the build is looking around £865 right now. Ouch. But hopefully will be keep going for at least 10 years.

Any chance for a link update on the components, it looks like some new fans have come out

thanks a lot for the info... im planning to build a silent pc... your guide helps me a lot!!!

Love from India sir ❤️❤️❤️❤️

I had to subscribe, you're so knowledgeable 👍🏾💯

Really good video, thanks

What we do is create baffles which close all the holes in the case EXCEPT for a lower front one, and the top-most rear panel fan hole (which a fan being affixed and running is crucial). This creates a closed system except the inlet and outlet. The top rear fan pulls cool air through the front lower open hole without turbulence within the case. This design prevents running extra fans that only create more noise too. Having a speed control on the top rear fan is good so you can set it where it's at the right speed for sufficient cooling (monitor your MB temps here) and lowest noise. You can create a quiet case like this with almost any of the cases on the market now. For those cases with a PSU tunnel which is separate from the motherboard cavity, you don't have to have a fan on the inlet there. You can simply utilize the outlet fan that's built into the PSU. Adding foam or mineral wool (or even Owens Corning compressed fiberglass) sound dampening and butyl hybrid sound deadening sheets can further reduce noise and help direct airflow. It's very simple for people to do. :)

Hey! This video gave me a great guidance for building a Music Production PC. Kindly make a video based on an Intel i3 build for the people who wanna build their first ultra budget PC.

Ok, that was the musician version, how about a producer/mixer/mastering version?

Why did you choose 120mm fans over 140mm fans

It's interesting whether RAM speed really matters for music production. Any issues I have in my DAW is due to the CPU maxing out. This is why I'm building a Intel 13th gen rig with 32gb RAM. I'm only using DDR4 3200 but I don't think it'll make a bit of difference to my music making!

Intel Efficiency Cores have some substantial issues, really for this you could easily get away with a Ryzen 5600G/5700G on a B450 or B550 motherboard. And add enough memory, I chose 32GB of 3600 memory and it's going to work perfectly. I did mine as an upgrade just after New Year so the CPU and memory cost me $200, and I picked up the Gigabyte B450 motherboard for about $30 as the person selling it thought it was faulty, but all I needed to do was throw the old 2200G in there to reset the BIOS settings.

That pump noise is going to haunt me the rest of the day.. lol

An isolation box can allso be helpful for home studio setups. Just be sure to ventilate for heat release.

"its 27 degrees, so very hot"... *laughs in australian*

I’m a music producer and build CPU’s for studio owners and friends and the industry’ and working with plugins, VST’s and anything RAM heavy’ most important’ people always come to me with laptops running cracked FL software / 4gbs ram 😂😂

Water cooling is never a problem regarding noise if you have the PC on the floor. No pump noise EVER if you have a good one.

This requriment can use video edting purpose

Interesting to know music production needs are slightly different to gaming pc. With the system it would have been good to see if how many high quality sound VST Plugins you can run before it crashes, drop outs.

Love from India 🇮🇳

Can you make a pc or give out your recommendation for 3d rendering and cad cam programmers,a short would be absolutely appreciated too

I'm running a i9 12900k 360 msi AIO water cooler with 16 GB DDR5 5600. FL studio runs like a dream. I haven't hit my memory limit.

a single "data drive" is a sure recipe for a complete data loss, when that drive breaks in a few years

You'd get a quieter pc if you run a more open case and populate most of the fan slots. Run every fan slower.

I used a Deepcool Assassin 3 for the i7. I found that beast for the same price as an NH-U12A and performs like an NH-D15. The case is a Corsair 5000D airflow (tempered glass panel broke, but i made a new panel with common glass and it's way better without the nonsense of tempered glass exploding for everything).

great video! I just don't have the time. What if I do not want to build one but rather buy a quiet creator computer? any recommendations on where to get it?

It's possible to get this amazing silence in a Laptop? BTW, tu for this video.

Yep need multi core but grunt as quite a few tasks are sequential and can't be divided up . Memory just fill it to the max with fastest you can get

Awesome video!

Thank you so much for this! Just this week I was wondering what I can do since I want to make one of your bang for buck 4k editing builds but silent for audio work as well. Would I be right in using the 4k build but just swap out the fans, cpu cooler and case for those in this video or am I missing something?

My dude likes School of Rock movie I guess.

Yes, thank you!

loling at the SponsorBlock edits on this

I dont mind a lil fans, as long as it cant be heard when i record or stream or w.e but inprefer it cooler and push rhe limits then a quite computer

You really don't need to build a specific "DAW" PC these days. Any PC that has adjustable fan profiles (for low noise) and more than 8Gb of ram is sufficient. A decent pair of headphones (flat response) is more important than DDR4 ram etc.

Keep it up just keep it up insane sir

Can you do this video again but with a budget of $5000 (not including price of cpu plus price of gpu)?

2024 did anyone try this build? How much does it cost nowadays?

I'm curious to know why you chose the u12a over the d15? (the d15 is supposed to be quieter). Also, which one of them will be your best choice for a music production + video editing pc?

I don't think you can actually fit the thunderbolt and graphic driver in the same case - am I mistaken? That thunderbolt card is a nightmare to configure. Built this a week ago and the card still won't install correctly.All music production is halted.

Circle area is a better place😂 0:36

Great build for music producers. I would've upgraded the GPU for video editing ang gaming just in case.

Slam a AMD GPU in this build and make a Open Core bootloader for Big Sur OS and lets see how well it runs a DAW ...Mac vs WN11. Great build!!!