Time for Rebuilding
Well, there's nothing like research.
Having determined that DDR5 is going to carry a substantial price premium over DDR4 memory for at least a year -- assuming that you can *find* it -- and that the observed performance benefits from having it are sharply limited; and having determined by observation that the available motherboards tend to only have Thunderbolt available without an add-in card if you get a really expensive motherboard with all of the possible bells and whistles, but that an add-in card is only a bit over $100; I decided to pull the trigger and I have ordered all of the parts that I need to build a new Alder Lake Thunderbolt-capable computer for the studio.
Normally, I would pick up the parts from Newegg or Micro Center, but the promo code I got for Newegg was restricted and they were charging more for most of the parts than Amazon does, while I can get a 5% rebate on my Amazon purchases. Micro Center, meanwhile, had almost nothing I needed in stock, but had Alder Lake CPUs in quantity for substantially cheaper than anyone else, probably because you can't sell them if you have nothing but DDR5 motherboards to install them on in the current environment.
That simplified a lot of decisions. Most of the parts were accumulated from Amazon orders and should be here in a few days, while I drove down to Micro Center to pick up the CPU and OS (because I just get itchy when I order an OS from Amazon, as there are so many questionable suppliers that are *probably* just fine. Probably.).
And I've decided to try to run the system on Intel Integrated Graphics, which should run a dual monitor system for me. We'll see how that goes, but I've got a Display Port and an HDMI output on the back of the motherboard, which matches up nicely with what's available on my existing monitors. Cables have been ordered, because who keeps extra 15 foot cables around?
We'll see how this goes.
Meanwhile, I went down to the studio to fire up Cubase and look at the status of the "Crosstime Bus" project. I had opened a few Cubase files hunting for the drum tracks that I'd recorded with Sally some years ago and hadn't found them. It turns out that I had just opened the wrong files, because we hadn't actually *finished* recording a full set of drum tracks and had planned to pick it up at some future date.
You cannot imagine how relieved I was to find those tracks. :) (And that I had not imagined that recording session...)
So it will be time to get back to work on this.
And other things.
Having determined that DDR5 is going to carry a substantial price premium over DDR4 memory for at least a year -- assuming that you can *find* it -- and that the observed performance benefits from having it are sharply limited; and having determined by observation that the available motherboards tend to only have Thunderbolt available without an add-in card if you get a really expensive motherboard with all of the possible bells and whistles, but that an add-in card is only a bit over $100; I decided to pull the trigger and I have ordered all of the parts that I need to build a new Alder Lake Thunderbolt-capable computer for the studio.
Normally, I would pick up the parts from Newegg or Micro Center, but the promo code I got for Newegg was restricted and they were charging more for most of the parts than Amazon does, while I can get a 5% rebate on my Amazon purchases. Micro Center, meanwhile, had almost nothing I needed in stock, but had Alder Lake CPUs in quantity for substantially cheaper than anyone else, probably because you can't sell them if you have nothing but DDR5 motherboards to install them on in the current environment.
That simplified a lot of decisions. Most of the parts were accumulated from Amazon orders and should be here in a few days, while I drove down to Micro Center to pick up the CPU and OS (because I just get itchy when I order an OS from Amazon, as there are so many questionable suppliers that are *probably* just fine. Probably.).
And I've decided to try to run the system on Intel Integrated Graphics, which should run a dual monitor system for me. We'll see how that goes, but I've got a Display Port and an HDMI output on the back of the motherboard, which matches up nicely with what's available on my existing monitors. Cables have been ordered, because who keeps extra 15 foot cables around?
We'll see how this goes.
Meanwhile, I went down to the studio to fire up Cubase and look at the status of the "Crosstime Bus" project. I had opened a few Cubase files hunting for the drum tracks that I'd recorded with Sally some years ago and hadn't found them. It turns out that I had just opened the wrong files, because we hadn't actually *finished* recording a full set of drum tracks and had planned to pick it up at some future date.
You cannot imagine how relieved I was to find those tracks. :) (And that I had not imagined that recording session...)
So it will be time to get back to work on this.
And other things.