3XS SA68 PowerDAW Review - Reviews

Musicians are always on the lookout for more raw speed, but more usually means more money. So how about eight threads running at 4.6GHz? Hollin Jones fires up Scan’s latest PowerDAW.

Price: £1,266.00
Manufacturer: Scan
Website: http://www.scan.co.uk

scan 3xs sa68 powerDAW

After spending a few years trying to overcome some technical hurdles in the manufacturing process of CPUs, Intel now seems to be introducing new generations of faster multi-core chips with amazing regularity. This is great news for musicians, who are among the most power-hungry users around.

But power is nothing if it cannot be harnessed, of course – thankfully, though, both Windows and many of the DAWs that run on it are increasingly able to do so, being both 64-bit-capable and having the facility to utilise the ever-increasing number of threads available in modern processors. The latest generation of Intel CPUs is known asSandyBridge(ortheslightlyless glamorous Core i7-2600K) and it is this that is found inside Scan’s latest music system. It’s a quad-core chip with eight threads, so it appears to Windows as eight processors. The already respectable clock speed of 3.4GHz per core is overclocked to a staggering 4.6GHz as standard.

Sizing up

The case is muted in appearance but not physically as large as some we have seen, which is a good thing. As you might expect there’s a wide range of I/O so you won’t be wanting for ports. On the front there’s access to the DVD rewriter as well as multiple card readers, two USB ports, mini-jack audio in and outs and an eSATA port. Interestingly, there’s also the facility to insert a 2.5-inch hard drive directly into the PC here as well. Around the back you’ll find a further ten USB ports, dual FireWire 400 ports, HDMI, S/PDIF and another eSATA as well as multiple monitor outputs. It doesn’t come with an audio interface though you can specify one when ordering and Scan will install and test it for you.

The PC is supplied with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit edition, which is the optimum OS for taking advantage of the 64-bit capabilities of the hardware. Inside there’s plenty of storage: a Seagate 500GB hybrid SSD/HDD drive as the bootdriveplusa1TB7,200RPMdrive for data coupled with a 60GB SSD drive.

It’s an interesting combination of drives – Scan is presumably aiming to combine the speed benefits of solid-state drives with the lower cost and higher capacity of regular spinning drives. The hybrid boot drive is a new concept – a normal drive with an SSD cache built-in to store frequently used files and make fetching them much quicker. Boot times are accelerated, as are frequent operations in everyday use. The result isn’t as fast as a dedicated SSD drive, but it does bring speed advantages at a fraction of the cost.

The additional 60GB SSD drive works in a similar way, except that it employs a special feature of the motherboard to cache the most frequently used files. As an example: if you’re working on a DAW project with audio files and some instances of Kontakt that use samples, these files would be cached in the SSD; next time you opened the project it would open more quickly. Again, it provides speed boosts without the considerable extra costs of a large SSD. Until solid-state drivescomedowninpricetheseseem like good, low-cost workarounds to disk access speed issues, especially for those using sample-heavy instruments.

Nuts and bolts

Delving deeper into the specs, you get 8GB of Corsair DDR3 1,600MHz RAM in the form of two 4GB sticks. This can be upgraded during configuration to 16GB (4 x 4GB) for a fairly small extra fee, though at present, 8GB should be a decent amount for most users. The processor is Intel’s latest i7 engraved at 32nm – a quad-core, eight-thread monster overclocked to 4.6GHz. Scan’s claims, which we find to be broadly in line with our own experiences, suggest that these new processors deliver significantly better performance than the previous generation, beating even more expensive CPUs in some real-world tests. Intel’s hexa-core processors are the flagship models at present, but the two additional cores can cost you almost double – and you won’t get nearly twice the performance for the money.

For high-end music production work at low latencies, raw processing power is king – and this machine has it in spades. We were able to run Cubase and FL Studio projects at extremely low latencies without incurring any pops or clicks. Project-loading was very quick and Windows’ CPU monitor was barely troubled as we continued to add plug-ins. General operation is smooth and snappy, and fan noise minimal even under load. It’s hard to say which component was doing most of the heavy lifting, but it’s likely to be a combination of the fast, multi-core processor, the generous amount of RAM and the clever SSD/HDD combo that provides ample storage along with some of the speed benefits of solid-state.

The SA68 PowerDAW in its standard configuration is already a pretty fearsome machine – thanks largely to the blazing processor – but as ever you are able to upgrade, tweak and configure it during the ordering process, which will affect the price a little one way or the other. We can’t honestly imagine why you would downgrade any particular component, given that it knocks very little off the price. Anyone wanting to do gaming or 3D work as well as music might want to up the 512MB Gainward NV210 graphics card to a better model, though if you’re sticking to audio this probably isn’t necessary. There’s no wireless networking by default but this is common with pro audio PCs, though you can add the feature for around £15 if you need to. This being a desktop machine with lots of free PCI slots you also have the option of using PCI-based audio interfaces as well as USB or FireWire models, since PCI offers a faster data path to the motherboard. Again, these can be added at the ordering stage.

Power hungry

If you’re in the market for a pro audio PC but your budget isn’t huge, this is a very serious contender for your studio dollar. There are ‘bigger’ machines in Scan’s range that come with the six-core chips, more RAM and large SSD drives by default, but they have a bigger price tag to go with it. With this model you get a very capable and speedy eight-thread processor running at over 4GHz, a decent amount of RAM, plus plenty of storage and fast access thanks to innovative new SSD/HDD hybrid drives.

For a great many users these are the things that matter in everyday music-making and this system has more than enough headroom to keep you making tunes without prematurely running out of steam. MTM

9/10 Verdict - A solid and powerful music machine that offers tons of power for the money. The SA68 demands serious consideration.

WHY BUY

+ Very fast
+ Plenty of I/O
+ 64-bit operating system
+ Clever use of hybrid drives
+ Fast file access thanks to well-implemented caching
+ Overclocked to 4.6GHz
+ Quiet operation
+ Attractively priced

WALK ON BY

- Gamers might want to upgrade the standard graphics card

Score: 9/10

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This review first appeared in Music Tech Magazine issue 101
Filed under Home, Computers, Hardware, Reviews

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Scan 3XS SA68 PowerDAW Review