Choosing a new system, what to look out for

[youngmanblues]

Hi, i'm sorry if this has been posted before. I've tried searching for the right topic, however since the broadness of my question is the issue i couldn't really find the answer i was looking for.

i'm 1 of the many people who are staying at indoors regarding Covid-19 measurements. I'm also 1 of the people who suddenly has a lot more time to create music.

I've been doing this for the past few years on my macbook pro 2012 13", upgraded with 500GB SSD. I also have a windows system with an AMD A10 processor and integrated r7 gpu. 8gb ram, 250GB SSD and 1tb sata.

i've always been more keen of making music on my macbook, however it has become rather unstable and crashes frequently.
I use my pc for making music and gaming. I don't play very high specs demanding games, mostly warcraft 3 reforged or gta. It's getting a little lacking on preformance lately and i've already stopped making music on it because it crashes so often and has incredible driver issues.

Since i'm on lockdown i've been thinking about purchasing a new system and i find myself clueless in what to buy. I could opt for a new macbook, it would be my first choice for creating music and browsing. However it's not optimal to be my only system for music as well as gaming.

I'm also open for the option to build a new pc with a budget around €800. My previous pc was purely focussed on gaming and i have really bad experience on creating music on pc. A lot of driver issues, plugins don't run smooth, crashes, crackling, kontakt not working properly,...If i'm building a new system i want it to be able to handle it all.

I've been reading up on what makes a good pc for creating music but i don't know how to tie it all together. My main question is, can in your opinion, windows drivers be installed so i have minor problems with my daw and plugins?

My secondary question is:
What is to recommend in a pc build at this moment? i've read about Gflops as well the importance of internal cache memory and the correct drivers. Can somebody please elaborate me?

[Passing Bye]

Personally with that budget would go with Ryzen 5 3600 on MSI B450 Tomahawk as foundation of my build, so good luck in your quest.

[Pictus]

Here a good PC build for games/music and you can edit to better fit the budget
https://be.pcpartpicker.com/list/xbDQhg

- CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor
Some audio benchmarks http://www.scanproaudio.info/2020/02/27 ... -overview/
For music silence is an important factor, if you find the standard cooler
too noisy, the king of silence is Ninja 5.
https://youtu.be/mNg9VAV3mtA

- Motherboard with good price and decent VRM
https://youtu.be/J69aiJJEHzQ

- Fast RAM is good for Ryzen CPU, check
http://www.scanproaudio.info/2019/07/30 ... an-impact/

- Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM CD KEY for $14 (discount code: GD20)
https://www.urcdkey.com/microsoft-windo ... .html#GURU

- GPU with semi-passive FAN, for audio workloads the fan probably will never turn on.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sapp ... se/29.html
Seems fast enough your games
https://youtu.be/G3h-hkFjMNs

- PSU with semi-passive FAN, up to +- 150W the FAN is off and up to +- 550W is very low RPM/noise.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/co ... 585-5.html


- A decent case
https://youtu.be/8MFYtDosBqM
If want something better check
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3397 ... es-of-2018
and
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3534-gn-awards-show

- Very fast and *durable* SSD
https://3dnews.ru/938764/page-3.html

[Michael L]

If you want a Mac, consider a Mini with a gaming monitor.

[Gamma-UT]

If you want a Mac, consider a Mini with a gaming monitor.

Not with the built-in GPU; not with that budget. I'm running a 2018 Mini and I think it needs an eGPU even for a DAW because of the way the Intel GPU shares memory with applications – the contention means low latency operation is a bit tricky. I'd go for the AMD-based PC option unless it's really important to have OS X or a plugin or app that only runs on OS X.

[Aloysius]

My 2c. Make sure it's not a Mac.

[Debutante]

Things to look out for : Intel.

AMD 16 core is king of the hill mainstream.