Thinking about investing in a new Laptop. Should you invest in Intel in the first place when choosing a processor? Had planned to start on 32G in memory and 1Tb storage disk. Is DDR4 recommended out of memories? Hard disk SSD? Anyone have any suggestions and tips?
Hi Håkan,
One of the most important parameter is the processor frequency. Avoid things like 1.2GHz (used on low power or fanless laptops). A good starting point is 2.6GHz.
Cores #: 4 to 8
RAM: 16GB (32GB better). DDR4 is very good.
SSD: size is highly depending your needs. Generally, 1TB is good size. PCIe (aka NVMe) type is raccomended.
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The one I have been looking at has an Intel Core i7-6820HQ @ 2.70GHz. The computer is an HP adapted for Cad from the beginning.
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I’m currently in the transition to DAW for recording and live performance. The journey brought me here. Both of my laptops are I7 (8th & 11th generation), 16Gb RAM, 1.9Ghz and 2.9Ghz (Asus Zenbook & HP Spectre). Faster processing is better for latency. aiStorAC,sys (Asus) and ACPI.sys (HP) are the gremlins haunting ‘Latency Monitor’ (Resplendence.com). ‘Process Lasso Pro’ (Bitsum.com) is one silver bullet, along with ‘ParkControl Pro’ (Bitsum) are keeping my Asus (slower PC) peaks around 50 to 70% on Ableton Live 11 Lite with 128 samples. I’m picking up Cantabile Performer in June 2022. I’m choosing my VSTs arsenal wisely, based on low latency and CPU load. After that… USB capacity is important. Some software (DAW/MIDI) dislike USB hubs (some don’t), so expect and research this. In my opinion, the digital music industry needs to step up to USB–C or better (from USB-A that’s becoming rare on new PCs). This is the aggregate summary of my journey so far. It’s taken about six weeks to get here.
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I bought an HP laptop, will be waiting for it in a few days. I bought from a company that recycles business computers, they give less than half the new price. The processor is an Intel Core i7-6820HQ @ 2.70GHz, 32mb DDR4, 1T SSD disk. It has 3 USB 3.0, 2 USB C. I have previously used an external SSD USB disk on 4T to store samples. Even though it is fast, it takes longer to load some plugins, I will put everything on the new one now internally. I drive with Steinberg UR816C and have no problems with latency. The card also has a built-in mixer and good effects. I use C3 pro and am very happy with the program. Also drive C4 in parallel. I have 16mb of memory today and it gets a little too heavy when I run heavy samples from symphony instruments.
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It should rock. I just tested my Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 tonight with my backup harmony and guitar each mono XLR into a Mackie Mix8 and Scarlett into 3/4. I Nembrini doubled guitar left (preset) and panned the backup guitar 45° to right with the bass down quite a bit. I get three guitar distinctions in the sound field. Ran the samples to 256 and no CPU issues. I could run 128 with the UA Volt476 and bring the 3/4 into it. This is on my slow laptop (1.9ghz). Yours will be much faster. Have fun.
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I think it’s ok if you don’t try to run lots of VSTs at the same time. My spare laptop is a i7-4810MQ and I’m able to manage all my plugs. Sure the main gig PCs (i7-7700K and i7-10750H) work better.
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I have tested and it flows well. I usually have two plugins at the same time. But I also use Sampeltank 4, Miroslav Philharmonik 2, Korg M1, HALion etc. in multi mode and it also seems to work well on the new laptop. The SSD disk internally with 1T also solves some bottlenecks. USB C 3.1 from sound card etc.