laptop fan noise expectations (now with added CPU musings...)

[GaryG]

As much as I hate bringing that up here.
If you want cool, silent, long lasting and portable... it has to be mentioned although OPs disdain

Your blocked.



Nah, I hope that's the way it goes for all laptops eventually, obvious choice for audio work. Just would cost me twice as much and I'm kind of entrenched in the Windows world.

To be clear, I'm expecting some noise, this old dell latitude i'm typing on at the moment has a constant low level whoosh but easily ignorable and disappears once I put headphones on. The MSI was way louder than this all the time.

I recommend you find a newer one with a dvd so to replace that dvd with a drive caddy. more storage is nice.

Funnily enough that's exactly what I did with this Latitude, took out the dvd writer (just slides out with one screw removed) and now use a caddy with an old 1tb HDD. So 256gb of fast ssd for OS etc with longer term storage on the hdd. Works well. One of the things I looks for in a laptop, ability to add a second drive rather than just replace the supplied one. Also memory... so many have either have just soldered ram or soldered and a single slot, I think it's the lower end lenovos offer either no upgrade path or the option to replace a 4gb stick with an 8gb, total of 12gb. Ok but would like the option of more in 2022...

[FapFilter]

yes, it's quite hard to find a good one.
most brands put high end discrete graphics cards into their better laptops with no options for a non GPU config.
in the case of Dell, i was only able to configure one with onboard graphics if i chose a 12th gen i5, which of course is still a very good CPU. everything else was equipped with at least a 3050 or above nVidia.
but in this configuration, they also wanted me to safe me from hanging too long in front of my computer, because in that GPU-less config they put a 56Wh battery inside, instead of the 86 or so in the GPU configs.

[BONES]

I have no idea. I assume they come on now and again but I honestly don't notice them, ever, but I never really have, in any laptop I've owned. It's not something I care about and certainly not anything I worry about so it's possible they are on all the time. But not likely.

[GaryG]

hijacking my own thread...

for a mobile workstation, (no massive arrangements, mainly cut up/effected field recordings, a few synths, bit of software modular work etc), are the cheaper ryzens up to it? things like the 5 5500U, passmark is considerably higher than an 11th gen i5 though poorer single thread performance. Any real world experience? Thanks.

[BONES]

There are no cheap options for a good system. In the end you tend to get what you pay for. If you want to save some money, you're better off waiting for a good deal on a good system. e.g. I've wanted my new laptop for almost a year now but Au$3000 was way more than I was willing to pay. So I waited and watched and first picked up the previous model for Au$1140. Then I saw the exact one I wanted, which I now wanted even more having had a taste of what it has to offer, and I got it last month for Au$1800. I'll be putting the old one up on eBay this week and I expect to make back all my money, maybe even make a few bucks because it's still a current model and sells in shops for Au$2500.

[GaryG]

I don't disagree with that logic at all, purely wondering if these cheap ryzens are up to the job, maybe run cooler/quieter some say than the equivalent i5s.

Bottom line is the 3rd gen i5 laptop i tend to use (easier to take it where i want to work than bringing stuff to my desktop) handles most stuff fine still (things like an instance of bx_oberhausen ~12% on average), biggest issue is the low res screen, lot of plugins now just don't fit.

I'm even considering an older thinkpad workstation (P50/1/2 etc), I think the expandability and general ruggedness would serve me better than cutting edge cpu performance.

I like to muse about these things

[ghettosynth]

hijacking my own thread...

for a mobile workstation, (no massive arrangements, mainly cut up/effected field recordings, a few synths, bit of software modular work etc), are the cheaper ryzens up to it? things like the 5 5500U, passmark is considerably higher than an 11th gen i5 though poorer single thread performance. Any real world experience? Thanks.

I have a Lenovo that I use for my work with a 5700U. While I don't do field recording with it, I do record and edit a lot of video with it and it works absolutely fine for that. It was relatively cheap compared to higher end laptops with discrete video cards. I do use various audio processing in my video edits, but other than that, it's not really a demanding application. Then again, neither is field recording.

I think that you can get caught up in benchmarks and not necessarily get anything noticeably better. I personally don't find that discrete GPUs are worth it in a music laptop.

I think that if you're going to put all of your eggs in one basket, i.e., just use one computer, that storage is important. So, either spring for the big drive now or have something that will allow you to add it later. This is where I think some aspects of expandability are helpful, but rare in laptops. It's also why I prefer tiny desktops to laptops for music production.

[GaryG]

sorry, to be clear i don't use the laptop for actual field recording, have a tascam recorder for that.

agree about benchmarks, too easy to start fretting about small differences in figures when the bigger things (screen quality, expandability etc) probably have more meaning day to day.

Expandability is definitely something on my radar, I'm finding a lot of mid-range laptops frustrating as they have soldered RAM (huawei, lenovo), 8GB is ok generally but I don't want to be stuck with it. That's something positive about most Dells, the 5 series Inspirons have two proper memory slots and two m.2 bays.

[FapFilter]

this is the best music related comparison i could find, as it contains everything you need to know to make your decision:

[ghettosynth]

That's something positive about most Dells, the 5 series Inspirons have two proper memory slots and two m.2 bays.

Yes, that's a good combo. I've stopped worrying so much about the soldered RAM because most usage has stabilized and so I don't care. That said, I like to have one machine with a bit more RAM or the ability to add a bit more RAM. Drive bays, however, are another thing altogether and I really want more than one if it's my only machine.

About screen usability though. I simply cannot work all day with a laptop screen. I'm pretty comfortable these days with a 2k monitor, but it has to be 27" minimum. Even when I work on my laptops, I plug them into my monitor. I only use their screens while actually at work, or out and about, or as a second screen. I simply couldn't do music on a laptop screen. That's me though.