Recommend a PC

[tjw1979]

Hi all

I've been using a rain livebook/win7/8gb ram for years for all reaper work.

Yesterday my pc decided to bite the dust, seems the battery is dead as the laptop still works when plugged in with battery removed.

Luckily all my audio and vsts are backed up on external drives.

Anyway please can you lovely people out there recommend a modern alternative. I want to stay with windows as it's what I'm used to.

Would like to hear both desktop and laptop options.

Worth pointing out that it would be used strictly for reaper offline.

I am mostly a bedroom woodshedder with the occasional mobile need. However i would like it to be modern spec so that it can also be used for larger productions...i.e. not run out of steam.

What are the scan pcs and laptops like?? Any happy users care to chime in??



Thanks

[MatthewMoran]

I'll make this caveat - I am a software developer/consultant - and wanted a specific setup to allow me to separate the work I do. 16GB RAM would probably be fine and you can save $1,000 buying a 9th gen processor.

I recently purchased a Dell XPS Creator laptop.
- Intel 10th Gen, i9 processor.
- 1 TB SSD drive
- 32 GB RAM
- $2,560.00

I am running Reaper 64bit - and can get almost zero latency with 25+ tracks. Some of those are folder busses & fx busses.

Zero issues to date.

Because I need to run things like SQL Server and Visual Studio, I setup a Virtual Machine for all my tech/consulting software. I run that virtual machine while doing that work, then shut it down completely - leaving all the resources for my main operating system.

[maxdembo]

Get a blue one!

[valy]

It all comes down to what plugins you want to run.

You can run sessions with quite a few tracks on not much hardware. I recorded multi-miked drums (like 10 simultaneous inputs) on a 2011 Dell laptop with an i5 and a USB 3.0 SSD.

But if you want to run a lot of heavy plugins like those from Acustica, IK Multimedia, etc...you will need every clock cycle you can afford.

So, first, I would determine my mixing needs vis-à-vis plugins.

If you absolutely need to be mobile, then it might be laptop or bust. But you can get way more for your money if you go desktop, plus they handle the generated heat better.