I’m looking to lighten my primary gig rig to a NUC. I can get a pretty good price on the Intel NUC 11 Pro NUC11PAHi7 with 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD and TB3. I’ve read that these chips can generate some heat but I plan to mount it (and my Quantum 2626 interface) in a 4U rack, and I always mount an extra switched fan in the rack. I’ll run my samples on an external SSD, USB 3.0.
Clock is 2.8-4.7GB, I usually keep turbo boost enabled. I’m thinking this should work well for C4…Any thoughts?
Tom
Clock frequency is not bad, even I prefer a minimum @3.7GHz only available on full-desktop PCs (your NUC is based on a low power “G” family processor).
That said, it always depends on your use. If you need six Omnisphere at the same time, well… you’ll need a desktop PC.
I’ve been doing end of year PC upgrades for clients and surprised by how fast the latest crop of machines are. The processors are usually Intel gen 12 such as i5-12500. The motherboards are PCIe 4.0, with NVMe solid state storage and DDR5 memory.
EDIT - I just checked the i5-240P on UserBenchmark - these ones that end with P aren’t as powerful as the run of the mill i5-12500 or i7-12700 that Dell is putting in their mid priced towers.
EDIT 2 - The NUC11PAHi7 is probably powerful enough for most Cantabile users as @cpaolo mentioned.
thanks. My best comparison is my current rack pc (which is pretty heavy by the time I add the interface, wireless receiver and the rack itself), using an i7-9700K with 32GB RAM running at 64 samples on a Quantum 2626 interface. My fattest setlist runs at about 8% CPU and high teens time load… it doesn’t even break a sweat, never a glitch. According to userbenchmark the single core speed of the 1165 is slightly faster than the 9700… I remember Brad saying that single core performance is generally most important for Cantabile, although I know more plugs and I believe C4 are now optimized for multi core, Not sure if that’s still true?
Most of my effects/plugs are processed serially, although I do run Kontakt and a Neural DSP amp sim simultanteously, with maybe 5 other lightweight effects on a lot of songs (Neural amps are CPU hogs but they do sound great!). But I’m guessing even that would be no problem for the 1165?
Tom
Do not trust benchmarks 100%. In most cases, those tests are performed with popular programs (office, video editing etc. etc.), while real-time audio processing is a strange world with its own rules, and the processor is only one of the variables. Bad driver or peripheral can cripple the faster CPU.
I don’t think i7-9700K is slower than i7-1165G7, these two processors can’t be compared so easily.
Because the (still existing) multi core issues, the most important parameter is the processor speed. Higher frequency will help in reduce latency (the buffer latency, not the audio interface one).
I meant… the lack of multi core plugin support.
Right, I hear you on benchmarks. This is the same chip and configuration used by PC Audio Labs which custom builds audio pc’s, I got a pc from them before and they were pretty knowledgeable and build great machines (although $$$$). But I can get this unit at a really great price right now, and it will shave about 21 lbs from my rig which is just what I need. I am slightly concerned about the base 2.8 speed… although I’d prefer not to, I may have to use turbo, or overclock it a bit for one band where I run a ton of backing tracks (I haven’t mixed them down to one track yet, I run about 6 tracks per song). On my old Vaio laptop from around 2010 that setlist glitches pretty bad on some songs, so I run it turbo all the time, it’s been solid, no thermal or other issues.
Thanks guys!
Tom