Gaming Computer vs Mac

[vurt]

nope. theyre big with little screws you muppet.

im supposed to be getting new fittings put in, so im waiting on that.
i do have some light but im down to 3 bulbs across the house

dont get me started on the bathroom one weird bloody square thing.

[vurt]

alls i was saying is, leaving stuff on when youre not using it is wasteful

you wouldnt let a kid just leave a tap running

[PAK]

alls i was saying is, leaving stuff on when youre not using it is wasteful

That explains the nudism.

you wouldnt let a kid just leave a tap running

Some might - depending on which kid?

Anyway, an Apple Silicon machine costs ~8p per day to idle 24/7 if it makes you feel any better. That'd just about buy a single fruit pastille lately (The blackcurrant one. The others cost more due to increased manufacturing costs.. )

[vurt]

my apologies
as a grandfather, im unable to withhold comments, mainly related to "the price of things these days" or "its not like when i was your age" which doesnt work often here, as many folk are older than me

[2DaT]

Say you keep a machine on 24/7 (not that uncommon.. ) and are based in a country with insane energy prices - like the UK. That 50W extra is 1.2kWh per day, 438kWh/year, or US$188.34. Atm, over 5 years of system use, that's a US$941.70 difference! So what you think is "an insignificant amount" isn't always true.

Nice argument, but you will lose the same amount if not more by buying actual usable mac with 32G RAM and 2Tb SSD. Which are around 200$! total on PC.

And who leaves their PC idling for no reason at all? They turn on reasonably fast with SSDs, it's not a problem these days. More reasonable estimate would be 8 hours if you aren't working from home and 16 if you are. If you are working on your computer, 600$ over 5 years is nothing, if you aren't - it's 300$ over 5 years, which isn't that impressive.

In other words, it's not much. You would save more by not boiling a water for a tea or coffee, and drinking water instead.

[BONES]

Yeah, this is about the most desperate argument yet from the Applytes. It's so patently absurd that it's almost enough to make you feel sorry for them, isn't it?

[fedexnman]

If I could buy my own RAM and SSD and change them out myself, I'd go the Mac Mini route just for music and music only in a heartbeat ....... Apple , have totally F'd that up .. and I'll never buy a single product from them , I'm done . Maybe iphone , airpod , and ipad for my Wife or Mom in-law , but that's it and they know my feelings towards Apple . They make a great product though if you don't mind getting hosed on upgrading RAM and SSD prices .

[Jac459]

Say you keep a machine on 24/7 (not that uncommon.. ) and are based in a country with insane energy prices - like the UK. That 50W extra is 1.2kWh per day, 438kWh/year, or US$188.34. Atm, over 5 years of system use, that's a US$941.70 difference! So what you think is "an insignificant amount" isn't always true.

Nice argument, but you will lose the same amount if not more by buying actual usable mac with 32G RAM and 2Tb SSD. Which are around 200$! total on PC.

And who leaves their PC idling for no reason at all? They turn on reasonably fast with SSDs, it's not a problem these days. More reasonable estimate would be 8 hours if you aren't working from home and 16 if you are. If you are working on your computer, 600$ over 5 years is nothing, if you aren't - it's 300$ over 5 years, which isn't that impressive.

In other words, it's not much. You would save more by not boiling a water for a tea or coffee, and drinking water instead.

Well in non-geek world it may be true but not in the geek realm.
Here are a few reasons I know to have a computer switched on all the time:
Media server: Plex, Roon, volumio, ...
IOT server: Home assistant, node-red, mosquitto, ....
File server: NAS.
And some other less good reasons like sonarr or radarr....
For some of those a Raspberry is suitable but only half of a M1 power consumption and 10 times less performance.

Then the arguments of "there are worst things, electricity is negligeable".... yes for sure. If you totally stop travelling, your positive impact will buy you a few decades (centuries?) of gaming usage ...
But the thing is most of us don't do that....

Anyway, that's all personal choices.

Where it is not personal choice but facts is thermals for laptops
That's the primary reason why I flew PC world. My razer was getting so hot when I was producing (not gaming! ) that I was not able to touch the keyboard. The fan so loud that my kids was joking saying I should hurry my helicopter is taking off.

That's just not manageable in a warm country.
Now I just looked at a 2023 benchmark.
https://www.rtings.com/laptop/tests/per ... -and-noise
Basically they say 40 degrees celsius is a good value for keyboard temperature, 45dba a good noise floor. What the f**k?
How can it be confortable?
Music production IS heavy load, how can you work like that?

[PAK]

Nice argument, but you will lose the same amount if not more by buying actual usable mac with 32G RAM and 2Tb SSD. Which are around 200$! total on PC.

Here's a nicer one - you're assuming people always pay Apple's prices. They don't. Many use external storage over Thunderbolt 4, and they don't buy direct from Apple either. EG A base 32GB Studio machine is $1,499 at Costco USA right now.

Going with that hypothetical 50W difference, over 5 years, you'd now have to find a $550 PC with equivalent features and which outperforms the Base Mac Studio for audio purposes (including heat and noise). You'd have your work cut out even if we reduced it to 12hrs of usage per day to give a ~$1,000 budget..

And who leaves their PC idling for no reason at all?

That's taking a hypothetical example a bit too literal. EG You might run some type of server that you need available 24/7, but it might only be in use for 5% of the time. Then there's all the other stuff people do.. remote access / file access / Personal VPN / accessing Plex content / security cameras and other home stuff etc. There are many reasonable and practical reasons people might want a computer available 24/7. This isn't saying a majority of users do that (Of course, they don't.. ) It's just saying these use cases aren't that uncommon either.

Some audio users (especially those who have big templates) also want to avoid waits.. it's an inspiration killer for them. If they've got a machine, which costs literal pennies per day to always be ready, then there's not much to be guilty about and many other things they could do which would have far bigger impacts on their "foot print".

People aren't used to thinking of computers in terms of something which can sip such small amounts of energy - where it's closer to having a home appliance on standby than anything people might traditionally associate with computers - at least ones which aren't a Raspberry Pi etc.

[2DaT]

Well in non-geek world it may be true but not in the geek realm.
Here are a few reasons I know to have a computer switched on all the time:
Media server: Plex, Roon, volumio, ...
IOT server: Home assistant, node-red, mosquitto, ....
File server: NAS.
And some other less good reasons like sonarr or radarr....

First of all, how can you run a NAS when macs don't have any storage connectivity? Again, you are somehow making an argument for macs by including stuff that macs can't do at all.

So you have a gazillion devices in your home (including multiple PC desktops) and you are worried about idle power consumption of the server that is running non-stop?

If you care that much, you can use an i3 on iGPU, run linux, turn on all power saving features and it will consume like 20W when idling. Except that it will have the connectivity to actually run 6 hard drives for your NAS.

Where it is not personal choice but facts is thermals for laptops
That's the primary reason why I flew PC world. My razer was getting so hot when I was producing (not gaming! ) that I was not able to touch the keyboard. The fan so loud that my kids was joking saying I should hurry my helicopter is taking off.

Maybe....Just maybe that laptop was not well designed? The tendency to make laptops thinner is what causes them to become hotter and hotter.

I don't like laptops, because I can't tolerate small screens, but if you really want a laptop, you should do the reseach and not go by the looks alone.

[2DaT]

Here's a nicer one - you're assuming people always pay Apple's prices. They don't. Many use external storage over Thunderbolt 4, and they don't buy direct from Apple either. EG A base 32GB Studio machine is $1,499 at Costco USA right now.

Ha-ha. If you pay for electricity in UK, you also buy a mac in UK or pay for shipping. You can't cherrypick like that. And does that 32GB Studio has a 2Tb SSD? External storage is inconvenient, and often times more expensive and slower.

Some audio users (especially those who have big templates) also want to avoid waits.. it's an inspiration killer for them. If they've got a machine, which costs literal pennies per day to always be ready, then there's not much to be guilty about and many other things they could do which would have far bigger impacts on their "foot print".

You could have skip all the argument and go straight for "Apple inspires me" and it would be the same. You can use sleep for your PC and it would be ready with all your projects loaded in 5 seconds. There is no excuse for actually running a PC and a monitor turned all the time and complaining about the power usage at the same time. It just doesn't make any sense.

[BONES]

Then the arguments of "there are worst things, electricity is negligeable".... yes for sure. If you totally stop travelling, your positive impact will buy you a few decades (centuries?) of gaming usage ...
But the thing is most of us don't do that.... Anyway, that's all personal choices.

To digress for a moment, this is what annoys me about the whole carbon debate - governments make all the decisions about what we do and don't need to do, instead of allowing us to choose our own path. Did you know, for example, that owning a large dog is worse for the environment than driving a large 4WD vehicle and the absolute worst thing you can do for global emissions is to have a child. The personal choices you say we have are all quite narrowly construed and, particularly with electricity, short-term, as it won't be too long until all electricity comes from renewable sources.

Where it is not personal choice but facts is thermals for laptops
That's the primary reason why I flew PC world. My razer was getting so hot when I was producing (not gaming! ) that I was not able to touch the keyboard.

Are you sure it wasn't broken? Because I do far more intensive work than music on laptops and I've never experienced anything even close to that kind of thing. Why would you have bought a gaming computer and paid a shit-ton more than you had to for high-spec graphics that you didn't need?

When you are rendering out a piece of music, how long does it take? Studio One actually tells you how much faster than real time it is rendering and, even on my current Core i5, it never dips below 2.0 x real time. i.e. It always renders a 4 minute song in less than 2 minutes. That tells me that while I am doing the work, it is generally using less than half the available processing power. After all, it's only music, it's not hard. OTOH, when I'm rendering a 3D project, it can take 10-15 minutes to render a single frame, hours to render a few seconds of vision, with every thread maxxed out, yet I've never experienced any laptop I've owned getting more than a bit warm, even on a 40 degree day. My phone gets as hot on the charger.

Music production IS heavy load, how can you work like that?

Not really, not if you know what you're doing. You just have to think about what you are doing and work efficiently.

[PAK]

Ha-ha. If you pay for electricity in UK, you also buy a mac in UK or pay for shipping.

Costco also have UK warehouses you know The 20% VAT will shove prices up for regular end users, but there's still deals to be had. EG The 16 inch M1 Macbook Pro is £1799 now.. Or you can pay Apple £900 more for the M2 version, which is about 10% faster..

You could, of course, find a PC laptop with more ram and a bigger SSD for that money. But it won't have speakers as nice or a screen as well calibrated. Apple also understand polarizers so their IPS screens have always had minimal off axis glow etc, and there's good chassis build quality, and it'll lack the battery drain issues of Windows, as well as DPC issues common amongst laptops and low latency audio.

External storage is inconvenient, and often times more expensive and slower.

External prices have come down quite a bit lately. You will generally pay more to go faster but even the cheaper M2 devices over USB are still about double internal SATA SSD speeds. Good enough for most scenarios.. certainly audio wise at least.

You could have skip all the argument and go straight for "Apple inspires me" and it would be the same.

It's really not - Some people have a strong preference to work "in the moment". They'll sometimes leave all their gear on - not just PC's.

You can use sleep for your PC and it would be ready with all your projects loaded in 5 seconds.

Hope you've got them fully backed up.

There is no excuse for actually running a PC and a monitor turned all the time and complaining about the power usage at the same time. It just doesn't make any sense.

Again, there's no excuse in your mind. The world is a big place with diverse scenarios and needs. And, if you have such needs, then a fairly capable system with a baseline usage of 10W IE ~0.24kWh per day, is a nice option to have. Doesn't mean it's right for everyone, but the operating costs can go a ways towards offsetting overall costs.. With the amount being dependent on use and energy cost.

[2DaT]

Going with that hypothetical 50W difference, over 5 years, you'd now have to find a $550 PC with equivalent features and which outperforms the Base Mac Studio for audio purposes (including heat and noise). You'd have your work cut out even if we reduced it to 12hrs of usage per day to give a ~$1,000 budget..

550$ is a little ambitious, but for example you can buy this one and it should perform on par with mac studio.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/kcGjtn

It's totally possible to assemble a decent PC for half a price of a mac. And no, it won't scream like a jet engine and it wont consume lots of power.

[Jac459]

To digress for a moment, this is what annoys me about the whole carbon debate - governments make all the decisions about what we do and don't need to do, instead of allowing us to choose our own path. Did you know, for example, that owning a large dog is worse for the environment than driving a large 4WD vehicle and the absolute worst thing you can do for global emissions is to have a child. The personal choices you say we have are all quite narrowly construed and, particularly with electricity, short-term, as it won't be too long until all electricity comes from renewable sources.

I agree with you on that.
One point though, renewable sources doesn't mean no-impact on global warming.

Are you sure it wasn't broken? Because I do far more intensive work than music on laptops and I've never experienced anything even close to that kind of thing. Why would you have bought a gaming computer and paid a shit-ton more than you had to for high-spec graphics that you didn't need?

When you are rendering out a piece of music, how long does it take? Studio One actually tells you how much faster than real time it is rendering and, even on my current Core i5, it never dips below 2.0 x real time. i.e. It always renders a 4 minute song in less than 2 minutes. That tells me that while I am doing the work, it is generally using less than half the available processing power. After all, it's only music, it's not hard. OTOH, when I'm rendering a 3D project, it can take 10-15 minutes to render a single frame, hours to render a few seconds of vision, with every thread maxxed out, yet I've never experienced any laptop I've owned getting more than a bit warm, even on a 40 degree day. My phone gets as hot on the charger.

I bought a gaming razer because I thought I would play also... Turns out I never did....
Gaming bore me to death....
So no, I am absolutely not sure it wasn't broken, but it was even sold with a support for under the laptop to keep it cool, so I guess thermal was a point anyway.
Also I agree a non gaming laptop would fit better and I am sure there is good ones (like the Asus double screen)... But still, I checked again last week, peak cpu usage is 115W on a laptop cpu, that's too much. I don't want 40 degrees on my laptop.

Not really, not if you know what you're doing. You just have to think about what you are doing and work efficiently.

Well I use a lot of side chaining EQ, complex modulations.... we are not working on the same genre at all so I guess you shouldn't judge too fast.