Anyway, I have a budget of $2000, and while I've pretty much decided the most parts that I'll buy, I'm very, very unsure regarding the CPU.
I want a powerful CPU, as I'm tired of the current number of buffer underruns that I have, as well as the thermal throttling. Surely they will probably always happen, but I want way better performance.
I have good friends that knows a lot about hardware, that can help me picking the right processor - but they're no music producers, so they don't know what type of processor I need for my computer.
You who know computers and also know music production - what is more important if you're dealing with heavy MIDI-data and somewhat heavy plugins, an enough number of cores and threads, or faster processor speed?
I mean the more cores you have the slower the processor speed you generally have per core if both are within the same price range, but some programs prioritize the number of processor cores rather than the processor speed.
So to state a quick exaple should I pick a quadcore processor with 4 gHz per core, or a sixcore processor with 3 gHz per core?
And what about DDR3 vs. DDR4 in the music creation world? Some processors that I've taken a look at require a DDR4 motherboard, but is it really worth it, or can I stick with a DDR3 system?
The reason why I'm asking about DDR4 vs DDR3 is because for the processor itself I've set a budget of $580 or so, but pretty much the only processors falling within that price range that I've found are DDR4, and if I want to stick to DDR3 I'm pretty much falling into $440 or so. But perhaps the others are only more expensive because they're DDR4? Meaning I migt as well cut my budget and buy a cheaper DDR3-processor? Or will I lose performance?
Some info and background about my current setup that may be helpful:
DAW: FL Studio 12
Computer: Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E530 3259-MAG NZQMAMS (Laptop) with Windows 10 64-bit
Other gear: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 (using built-in Focusrite ASIO driver)
Production habits: I don't use much loops, but more synth instances with heavy MIDI usage. The synths I use (such as Massive and Serum) themselves doesn't have the best polyphony settings/optimization and consume more CPU than the stock synths. And for more important synths I stack maybe 4 layers sometimes, each layer may be playing 5 notes or so at the same time, with maybe a standard unison with 8 voices. So sometimes I may end up with a total polyphony of 160 or so, and then my current computer goes crazy and I have to freeze the audio.
Be humble, I may be experienced with using computers, but I'm a bit unexperienced in this area
Thanks in advance!
(magnified it's very poor res so that doesn't help)
