Best pcs for music making

#1

discuss…

I still use my hp laptop from seven years ago
Not ideal but I make do with what I have…

#2
#3

I mean. Basically the answer is buy as much Cpu power as you can afford. RAM only matters if you are working w a lot of huge audio files, though Id say 16 gigs is a minimum for Windows systems. Windows has always been RAM hungry

Other than that go w the brand you believe uses the most quality parts. A few years ago I got $600 Hp and have been shocked its held up until my keyboard started to die a slow death.

#4

I’m using an extremely low-end ‘gaming’ desktop (~$500) and it’s holding up fine for whatever I want to do, aside from extensive patching in VCV rack (can anything handle that? stay tuned!).

Considering the fact that you don’t have to worry about dedicated graphics and a lot of other shit when it comes to making music (if you don’t mind a few freezings and flattenings), I’ve been known to have no hiccups with an i5 running Windows 10 and less than 8GB of ram.

Compared to video editing and even some forms of regular graphics, making music is pretty light in the wear-and-tear department these days… unless, like I said, you’re doing crazy routing and crashing your DAW every 10 seconds (which happens to most people doing experimental stuff, let’s be honest).

#5

You can never had too many SSDs is what I’ve found.

#6

I’m still using a Core 2 Quad for music. I was using a Pentium D 950 w/4GB RAM until about mid-2018 when I bought a Xeon X3220 (same as a Core 2 Quad 6600) and a board to go with it. I upgraded that processor a few months ago to a C2Q 9550 and bumped it to 8GB of RAM. It handles everything I throw at it and then some so I’m good.

I’ve been considering moving everything to my main workstation, a Haswell quad core i5 w/16GB RAM. I’ve even installed the drivers for my audio interface and keyboard along with Reaper, but I haven’t gone all the way with it. The Core 2 machine is just comfy.