Computer Specs For Music Production In 2024 | RAM, Storage, & CPU

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so I'm currently shopping around for a new laptop.. I've been browsing the different options for the last 2 to 3 weeks.. decided to check out the slick audio's selection and you had to do some more investigation which brought me to these videos.. is it me or are their laptops priced waaay tooo cheap??
I don't know, maybe I'm missing something but they seem to be offering some really good specs at prices much lower than an equivalent spec'd laptop from any of the major name brands..
what's the catch?? LOL I haven't really been able to find one yet ..

I found this video incredibly helpful. I'm in dire need to upgrade my current laptop since over time the latency has gotten unacceptable. This video gave me some great tips.

So does that mean that 6 cores will be okay, and not too many to overheat?

It's fewer cores not less cores.....grammar police

Since Intel CPUs gen 12th & 13th have issues with Windows, especially E-cores architecture, I'm planning to upgrade to 7950x3D or 7800x3D.

I have researched this to no end and not once have I found anything close to this video explaining quickly and concisely what I needed to know. Fantastic job! Saving this.

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thank you

Thank you for this review, very concise and to the point.... Could you please recommend few laptops for Beginner, Intermediate & Professional levels of both music recording & Mixing? Thank you.

I9 13900k all day, 128 gigs of ram on a Z790 Hero motherboard and the t700 nvme. This is the pc I just build and I threw in a 4090 for gaming . Combine that with a 500 series cranbrone interface and a interface with DSP like the symphony desktop and you are good to go . Go with 4tb T700 nvme. Buy two if you can for 8tb

you didnt talk about hz ie 3.2 2.6 etc?

Hey thats bullshit talking right there

Lots of bad and incomplete information here.

1st. Do not buy your processor based on whether it is an i5/i7/i9. There have been THIRTEEN generations of these processors. A current i5 will easily outperform a 4th gen i7. Furthermore, for then last few years, AMD has had a performance edge, especially in the performance per dollar. Make sure you do your research on the EXACT processor you're looking at. An i7 4770 isn't a great buy because it's a decade old. Just because it says i7 doesn't make it good.

2nd, just because something is nvme doesn't mean it isnt sata. There are two different connectors for m.2 nvme drives. One is sata, one is pcie. You need to be aware of the difference.

External USB 3.x drives can absolutely be not only as fast, but faster than the SATA bus. The SATA bus is 6gbps, USB 3.x can go 40gbps. That doesn't mean your drive can take advantage of the speed, but some can. If you want to store your library on an external drive (because it's 1/10th the price apple charges for storage), go ahead. Just make sure you get a fast enough drive. The Samsung T7 will go just as fast as anything connected to a SATA port internally.

This guy isn't really ever wrong, he just leaves out so much information that its boarder line misleading.

Go watch the Linus tech tips video called "the last guide to building a PC you will ever need."

Thanks for this overview. - But I would argue a few things. - First, the RAM-speed isn't discussed at all, which is quite important. Not that it should be the fastest, but it should be fast enough, cause it could make or break the system's responsiveness, both in how it responds in an immediate sense, but also in terms of loading and unloading stuff. - It's literally your working-memory, so you don't want it to be cheap and sluggish memory, for which you need to look at the clock-speeds as well as the timings.
On top of that, you can definitely use external drivers, it just depends on what kind of interface you use. Sure, some average USB-connectivity isn't going to help, but if you get the fastest USB or any of those production-grade I/O-solutions, those are blazing fast. - Those and external drives exist for production-work as well. You shouldn't just get your average consumer "take your MP3s and JPEGs with you" kind of drives.

So a Ryzen 5800X3D will do the trick for both gaming and music production?

Are amd ryzen 7 good for music production

My old PC was a gen 1 or 2 i7 with 12gb of ram. I didn't really run in to any issues with just running FL studio and a bunch of instances of Serum for pretty much all my sounds. I'd only run in to issues with popping and cracking with patches with a lot of phase modulation.
I recently got a new rig, a 12th gen i5 and 16gb of ram. I don't play live so latency isn't an issue. Am I going to be roughly in the same spot or will my new rig be a little better?

Excellent information, thank you.😊

Bro just went straight to the point that's what we want😊

So an i9 with 24 cores will get latency issues with VST?

Hold up.. not trying to point at the elephant in the room.. the name Jim slick raises a red flag.. everybody should know rather your a gamer or video, studio. i9, 64 go or higher plus ssd is the way.. this video is for beginners..

that guys pretty slick ;)

remembered subscribing 2 years ago when I just started audio school and you had a few thousand subscribers, great to see you gaining subscribers so quickly!.

You basically contradict yourself almost immediately when you say an i9 is better. An i7 has more cores than an i5 and i9 has more cores than an i7.

Also the vast majority of motherboards these days have at least two nvme slots, and if you have thunderbolt 3 ports the data transfer rate is 40gb/ps which is actually faster than Gen 4x4 transfers at approximately 63gb/ps

What do you do about a graphics card? I assume you dont need one of the fancy gaming ones? Ableton doesnt seem very graphics intensive.

I have been narrowly getting by using a laptop with only 8gb ram, a 10th Gen intel i3 (budget processor), with a 128gb SSD 😅 it starts to lag around 8-9 tracks on REAPER.

I recently ordered a new laptop computer with 16gb ram, 12th intel Gen i7, and 1tb SSD 😅

I'm hoping to see a truly noticable difference and not feel like I wasted my money on upgrading. 😩

Fingers crossed that I can at least double the amount of tracks 🤞😅🤞

I just watched without looking for a while and i couldve sworn on my mothers life that was John Goodmans voice

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I think most hit songs of all time used less than 16gb of ram ;) so maybe better advice is: if your song ate 16gb of ram and still sounds like shit - extend your songwriting skills, not your ram ;)

Best explanation on this topic! Cheers!

Is a sample drive really necessary if you already have a 2TB system drive?

What about iMacs?

Are there any thoughts out there on cooling fans or how to deal with the noise factor of a desktop? I'm recording in the same room as my computer and trying to upgrade to a PC that has the specs mentioned in this great video. However I'm not sure if fan noise is something I can scope out ahead of time until I get the unit up and running.

This video is out of date. 64 gb RAM isstandard, 32 gb is a bit iffy these days. Use an NMVE M.2 for you Operating system. Modern mobos have slots on them for M.2. If you can go for an PCI4 mobo this will be real fast. Tghe fasrtst speeds for SATA drives is around 650, an NMVE PCI 3 m.2 can do about 3500, on PCI5 NMVE gen 4 drives go over 7,200.

This was SO HELPFUL! I thought more codes would help but it looks like I need more Ram and and SSD!

I’ve been looking for two years on a video that hit all of these topics on specs to music production and especially laptop vs desktop. You guys couldn’t of hit it better.. thank you 🙏🏾

...have been working for 5 years with an 11 year old HP Z800 workstation (about 8000 $ then, 600 now) with 2 6-core 3.3 Ghz XEON processors.
Now for the first time I have a problem that the new NI Massive synth needs a newer chip generation.
I got a 5 year old laptop for this.

Folks, buy old workstations for 1/10th the original price and be happy.
I recommend anything from the HP Z620.

I am about to upgrade my 2017 i5-7500 audio PC to something like i5-12400 with new Mobo, RAM, SSD but this time w/o graphic card as I will try to use iGPU only as I don´t play games (anymore). Has anyone here experience in upgrading a DAW PC without reinstalling everything but simply using an image of the operating system with all plugins etc on it?

Mainboard?

Thank you, super helpful

Before I saw this vid I had been ready to buy a 16-core i7 processor. How many cores are ideal? At present I have a PC with a i5 4x3Ghz processor. Could it be enough for some DAWs? Please help me a bit! I am confused now. Thanx very much!

I'm looking at a laptop with and Ryzen 9 6900hx and 32 gigs of RAM. Would an i7 or Ryzen 7 with 64 gigs of RAM be better?

Thank you.

I used a 120gb ssd for windows OS... figured I'd have enough for the stuff I need. Apps and some plugins will take up content space of your OS drive even if you choose other drives or folders. I quickly ran out of space.

I was running an i3 with a 250 gb HDD 6 gb of ram for my recording computer. I made it work! Two weeks ago I upgraded to an i9 with a 2tb ssd, 2tb hdd, 32 gb ram. I'm absolutely blown away.

He just described any good computer no matter the purpose.

I wish he talked about the GPU and his recommendations