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hey ya'll my laptop for the past 6 years fell to it's death last night and I'm looking for something solid to replace it. would like to finally move on from audacity and get into ableton for recording/manipulating stuff. leaning towards mac but I could be definitely roll with windows again. it would primarily be used for audio / visual production (ableton/vcvrack,audiomulch, photoshop, whatever video editor, maybe some league of legends).

from what I understand I need an i7 with 8 gb ram. not sure the rest is too important? trying to keep it under a G if possible. do you get by with less? would appreciate some recommendations; pretty overwhelmed by em all and I NEED to order it this weekend.

ps anyone have a good experience with getting refurbished computers?

I've had good experience with refurb PC's.

If you get a PC make sure you take off any necessary crap they put on it that's unrelated to record. And I mean EVERYTHING.

You'll get more bang for the buck with PC's. Definitely at least 8gig RAM.

And turn the WiFi off during recording.

I use laptops all the time with Pro Tools. Works great. I have a regular PC tower in my studio when I'm not on the road.

if u end up switching to mac, make sure you're not leaving anything essential behind that is PC only. or atleast look to see if there are some mac alternatives.

my computers are over 10 years old and i more than get by w/ everything except heavy video stuff. regular video stuff is fine but heavy shit just craps out.
just max out the ram and get a SSD. makes a world of difference

And if you move to PC I use Pinnacle 22 for video editing. Works great. (Though I'm not a big video guy and most people I know prefer Macs for that)

Dr. Sticks is right about the SSD whichever computer you get. It's worth the extra cash.

I'd say 8 gigs of ram is the bare minimum. The good news is that it's pretty reasonable these days—I have 32 in mine and think it was probably about 160 bucks for all of it.

popvulture wrote:I'd say 8 gigs of ram is the bare minimum. The good news is that it's pretty reasonable these days—I have 32 in mine and think it was probably about 160 bucks for all of it.

Agreed. Get as much as you can afford and the computer will take.

You can still get an 8th gen i7 and 16gb of RAM for less than $800 this weekend. It is true that 8gb is bare minimum in late 2018.

yo thanks so much for the input. I ended up snaggin an acer nitro 5 for $730~ with an i5-8300H, IPS Display, 8gb ram, 256gb ssd, 1050 Ti 4GB graphics.. some change left over for more ram and maybe another SSD.

after a load of research this processor is 2nd most powerful for video encoding vs all the newer 8th gens and performs better for most things besides the 7700. I'm probably wrong but god damn you can only read so many articles/compare specs within one weekend! think I took too long to decide and missed some sales.. almost went for an MSI with similar specs except it had optane memory with a 1tb hdd. seems a bit gimmicky tho.

there are some sick deals for laptops with i5-8250s, but I figured it'd be worth it to spend the extra cash for something a bit more powerful. all in all this will be the 'best' computer I've ever used, lol. pretty stoked to not worry about crashing my computer with vcvrack or ableton. I should actually be able to save video projects now instead of rushing to finish them in one sitting

I love the Lenovo P52 (core i7) I have at work. It's a beast.
A SSD NVME M.2 is the way to go.
A minimum of 16 GB of RAM (I have 32 GB).

Is turning off wifi for performance gains or sound interference?

adamajah wrote:Is turning off wifi for performance gains or sound interference?

Performance gains. Less interruptions and glitches. WiFi is constantly collecting data and pinging.

Wifi as glitch? Hmmm that gives me ideas :P

sylnau wrote:I love the Lenovo P52 (core i7) I have at work. It's a beast.
A SSD NVME M.2 is the way to go.
A minimum of 16 GB of RAM (I have 32 GB).

How heavy/bulky is it?

I'm still using my early 2011 MBP which I maxed with 16gb of ram and an SSD. It's still going but at some point I'll need to upgrade.

adamajah wrote:Is turning off wifi for performance gains or sound interference?

I noticed more of an improvement turning the wifi off when I had a windows laptop for music stuff. I'd actually have some serious slowing at times that went away with turning it off. With a Mac I don't think I've noticed as much. Sometimes I'll realize I didn't turn the wifi off. I generally try to turn it off though and the bluetooth. Not sure if the latter causes issues too but I always try and eliminate any potential interference or CPU/RAM usage.

Faldoe wrote:

sylnau wrote:I love the Lenovo P52 (core i7) I have at work. It's a beast.
A SSD NVME M.2 is the way to go.
A minimum of 16 GB of RAM (I have 32 GB).

How heavy/bulky is it?

I'm still using my early 2011 MBP which I maxed with 16gb of ram and an SSD. It's still going but at some point I'll need to upgrade.

adamajah wrote:Is turning off wifi for performance gains or sound interference?

I noticed more of an improvement turning the wifi off when I had a windows laptop for music stuff. I'd actually have some serious slowing at times that went away with turning it off. With a Mac I don't think I've noticed as much. Sometimes I'll realize I didn't turn the wifi off. I generally try to turn it off though and the bluetooth. Not sure if the latter causes issues too but I always try and eliminate any potential interference or CPU/RAM usage.

It's heavy and not thine like a macbook... but it's powerful. You can go lighter and thiner with the P52s. But you cannot add a second SSD and the processor is not as powerful but it still a core i7 (that's the reason I choose the P52).