Who is using a Mini-PC for musicproduction?

[HerrFornit]

Hi musicans,

who of you is using a Mini-PC with an audio interface, like a NUC or so. There are plenty of powerful options today.
But did you experience audioproblems and high latencies?
EDIT: For Windows and DAW

Thanx for your reply?

[nix808]

Raspberry Pi and Latte Panda looked interesting when I was researching them

-they are quite different things though.
Latte Panda runs Windows, While R-Pi runs Linux I think, please correct me

[DNnX]

I purchased NUC with Intel N5105, 2 years ago. I placed it under the TV. It has enough power to play family games, to watch movies, or to play audio with USB-DAC with ASIO support.
After a while I found that N5105 (not that old CPU) doesn't have AVX instruction support, which is a minimum requirement of some plugins. If you want to get cheap NUC in music production, don't forget checking the AVX support. Intel N100 seems to be OK.

[VitaminD]

The little windows mini PCs are far more powerful than the raspberry pi's. They're effectively windows laptops without the screen, battery, and keyboard. Just a large puck sized device.

I own a couple as well as a Pi4. The oldest one (Beelink brand) has the Intel N5095 and Windows 10 on it (came with Win 11 Pro). I used it as a headless synth module for awhile with ASIO4ALL. I setup energyxt 64bit to auto start up on system booting and then created a default project that had preloaded a few synths I favored. The up down arrows on my midi keyboard could jump between them. It worked rather well.

Then I ended up using it as a bedroom PC for web surfing and movie streaming. It worked pretty well there too but with only 8GB of ram and 4c/4t it was a little slow. Not bad by any means, but it could use a little more oomph.

I recently got a Beelink SER5 with a 5700u APU (8 core / 16 thread), 16 GB of DDr4, and vega7 or 8 graphics. I'm using that now with the bedroom TV. It is very snappy like a regular desktop and even plays some games. It is so nice that I could see myself using it as you are imagining. Under 250 bucks so cheap also.

If you are comfortable with a laptop's performance, you'll be happy with a mini PC's performance. Because they're using the same parts.

The only downfall is these are all slapped out of a nondescript chinese factory. So your after sale support is very very minimal, at best. And since it is a System on a Chip type device, if it fails you're just hosed. Because there is nothing really to replace. Well beyond RAM and SSD. But no slots so if usb dies you just dont use that usb. And the CPU is soldered to the tiny mobo so theres no replacing it. Just buyer beware in knowing what you're getting into.

[MeanMrMustard]

I've been considering this. I believe it's one of the best out there today.

2023 Beelink GTR7 Pro Has the Insanely Fast Phoenix Point Ryzen 9 7949HS RDNA 3 APU! With Zen4 cores and a Radeon 780M RDNA3 iGPU up to 2800MHz that makes this tiny PC one of the most powerful on the market right now! An iGPU that matched the GTX 1060!

[t3toooo]

Unless you take it outside, for home use I rather would build a micro ITX PC in a light and small case. Something like a 15-12400 or newer like a i5-14400. The new Ryzen 7 5800X3D looks great too.


The Fans on those small devices can be annoying loud when pushed hard. Perhaps they even throttle when they are too hot. I'm using a Intel NUC 11 Essential Kit NUC11ATKPE with an Pentium Silver N6005 only for web browsing. Sometimes it's all the day on and it is not demanding much power and even on this device the Fan can be audible when pushed.
Nevertheless, The Ryzen 9 7940HS looks very efficient and is certainty a very good CPU. I have a Asus Laptop with an 5900HS and it is working very well. I'm using the Laptop only for Live performance. The 5900HS consumes nearly 20 Watt less though.

[ghettosynth]

Unless you take it outside, for home use I rather would build a micro ITX PC in a light and small case. Something like a 15-12400 or newer like a i5-14400. The new Ryzen 7 5800X3D looks great too.


The Fans on those small devices can be annoying loud when pushed hard. Perhaps they even throttle when they are too hot. I'm using a Intel NUC 11 Essential Kit NUC11ATKPE with an Pentium Silver N6005 only for web browsing. Sometimes it's all the day on and it is not demanding much power and even on this device the Fan can be audible when pushed.
Nevertheless, The Ryzen 9 7940HS looks very efficient and is certainty a very good CPU. I have a Asus Laptop with an 5900HS and it is working very well. I'm using the Laptop only for Live performance. The 5900HS consumes nearly 20 Watt less though.

Yes, but, as someone who's gone though this, I find that it's hard to find a reliable vendor for mini-itx builds that doesn't cost and arm and a leg and it's tedious to build your own. Everything that can go wrong in a normal build is that much harder in a tiny build. Watch a few videos on youtube before you go down this route.

Also, the Intel enthusiast series mini-pcs cost more, but, they are considerably better than the tiny boxes. I have an 11th gen one that has a very quiet fan. It's a high quality unit and not a simple box fan.

Of course, the quiet monsters are the apple mac mini/studio. I've never even heard the fan in mine, but, then you have to use a mac.

[VitaminD]

I would avoid the 5800X3d for audio work. Go with a 5900X if you are looking at the X3d. Same price many more cores and threads, which would be great for use in a modern DAW.

The 5800X3d shines when playing games since it has a much larger cache. That's the only reason to buy that one.

That's neither here nor there since the OP asked about MiniPCs specifically. And those use laptop CPUs not desktop CPUs. So neither of those CPUs are going to be available in MiniPC form.

The newer MiniPCs sound about like a laptop at high fan speed.

[HerrFornit]

Thanx, for your replies!

Ok, I am looking for a desktop replace PC. Indeed, I am favouring the AMD 7940/7840 CPUs. So the beelink etc are fine. (And I am also concernd about after sale service an quality)

My main concern is about the latencies. Notebookcheck does some DPC testing, but only with a YT Video, not with real DAW project, of course. So thats why I asked here...
Any stutterung or crackles?

[VitaminD]

I did install Cubase on the older Mini I own, but I never really worked on a project in it. I just used it to test as a shell for my headless synth project. I didn't get any crackles though in that setup. But it was essentially just one synth at a time so not a very heavy load.

And I haven't done any audio work on the newer one I just picked up. So I'm afraid I'm of very limited help on that question.

Amazon has a rather decent return policy though and currently its extended to the end of January, so I think there is minimal risk in trying one out.

[HerrFornit]

I did install Cubase on the older Mini I own, but I never really worked on a project in it. I just used ...

Thanx a lot for your nice clarifying answer. So it seems that nowadays it is still rare that people trust in Mini-PC for running a DAW on it.

[maanga]

Geekom has introduced a I9 13900K mini PC with dedicated card.
Looks a bit larger than their other mini PC
GEEKOM Mini IT13, 32gb memory and 2tb m.2 ssd.
Very promising.
Regards.

[legendCNCD]

Yeah but how hot does it get with i9-13900 in that small enclosure, its VERY hot chip and I bet the enclosure moves on the table when CPU is in high usage because the fan pushes it forward
I would be surprised if it did not sound like the i9 mac laptops...

[maanga]

The 13900H version (I typed 13900K in the previous post, my mistake)is said to be a creator version has a dedicated graphics card and can handle games as per another review.
But for DAW application, there is no info available.
Regards.

[Laopowe]

AUTO-ADMIN: Non-MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links in this post have been protected automatically. Once the member reaches 5 posts the links will function as normal.

My trusty Beelink mini PC, with the Intel N5095 and Windows 11 Pro, has been a versatile companion. Used it as a headless synth module with ASIO4ALL, and man, the up-down arrow MIDI shortcuts were a game-changer for quick synth swaps! One thing to mention, though – have any of you tried a mini pc stick (https://azulle.com/)? I've been eyeing those, too. They seem like great little gadgets, but I'm curious to hear your experiences.