Finding the right laptop

[chekov]

Forgot to mention...if you are buying a laptop by one of the "common" companies I'd recommend Lenovo or Asus.

thanks!

[__________]

I would pay someone a tenner if they make a shopping list of all the neccesary items for a badboy music making computer for 500 quid

Motherboard
Asus P8Z77-V LX - 363228 - £84.99

RAM
Kingston 8GB HyperX DDR3 2133mz - 412031 - £62.99

PSU
Corsair 430W V2 CX Series - 271798 - £36.68

SSD
Toshiba 128GB - 480335 - £89.99

HDD
Seagate Barracuda 1TB - 252858 - £44.99

Case
Corsair Carbide 200R - 409943 - £47.95

Optical drive
Liteon IHOS104 Blu-Ray & DVD - 339402 - £26.99

CPU
i5 3350P 3.10GHz - 393559 - £136.12

---- total £530.70

The 6-digit number before the price is the http://www.ebuyer.com/ quick-find code, bang it in to the search bar.
You could skimp a bit down to £500 and get an i3 or a lesser motherboard or RAM, or a non Blu-Ray optical drive, although that system is uncompromising.

[Genevieve]

Man, both an SSD and HDD for that price is great. I have both too.

[jorge]

Thanks a lot for that man.

Dont I need a power supply aswell though?


I would also need to buy windows 7 and a monitor/keyboard and mouse too.

[Electric_Head]

Now you're just being lazy,

PSU = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_supp ... omputer%29

[jorge]

Shit, sorry about that. I had a look and thought it was a fan

I just havent got the first clue about any of this stuff. Thanks everyone and sorry for my laziness/ignorance

[Electric_Head]

imo you'll need more than on board graphics imo.

[jorge]

Why do you say that electric head?

I dont want to play any games on it or even watch films/tv. Im happy to use it purely for music.

[fragments]

The reason is if you use on board graphics it uses the system resources. Video cards have their own dedicated RAM and (I think) own processor dedicated to video.

FWIW I've been using onboard graphics for years w/o issues. Maybe I'm living in a dream world were I don't notice it though! You can get a low end graphics card that would sort it though. Probably 50USD or less.

[Electric_Head]

You may never notice an issue but some vsts have crappy interfaces that rape gfx.
Audio damage replicant for one was unusable on a base pc without gfx card.
That being said, onboard gfx have improved crap loads.

[Electric_Head]

Consider ram drives over ssd if you have the cash.
Get 2 32gb sims.
64gb is normally enough as operating system drive.

[fragments]

You may never notice an issue but some vsts have crappy interfaces that rape gfx.
Audio damage replicant for one was unusable on a base pc without gfx card.
That being said, onboard gfx have improved crap loads.

That's a good point. Maybe in the fall I'll look into getting one!

[Genevieve]

You may never notice an issue but some vsts have crappy interfaces that rape gfx.
Audio damage replicant for one was unusable on a base pc without gfx card.
That being said, onboard gfx have improved crap loads.

I never had this issue tho. Ever. But you can get around this by just working with your DAW's interface for the plugin. I prefer that anyway cuz it's less clicks away.

[__________]

Considering you need a monitor, mouse and keyboard too, you'll have to downgrade a few things in the build

Motherboard
Asus P8Z77-V LX - 363228 - £84.99

RAM
Kingston 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Value Memory - 398306 - £47.00

PSU
Antec VP 350W - 278493 - £29.99

SSD
SanDisk 64GB Ultra Plus SSD - 435451 - £50

HDD
Seagate Barracuda 1TB - 252858 - £44.99

Case
Coolermaster Elite 430 - 233740 - £35.00

Optical drive
Liteon IHAS120 DVD R/W - 410561 - £13.12

Graphics
Asus G210 Silent 1GB DDR3 VGA DVI HDMI - 252476 - £19.98

Display
Benq GL2023A 19.5" LED 1600 x 900 - 454070 - £70.64

CPU
i5 3350P 3.10GHz - 393559 - £136.12

Keyboard & mouse
Microsoft Wired Desktop 400 - 255302 - £13.98

----total: £545.81

...and you'll still have to steal Windows. If you really really want a legit copy of Windows, I think they're about £70 or £80 so drop the HDD and go for 4GB of RAM. That should bring it up to about £555 I think.
Then just add a new HDD and some more RAM when you have some spare cash.

p.s you'll def need a graphics card (I selected the cheapest one I found) if you go for that CPU cos it doesn't have onboard graphics, I forgot to check that when I did the first list!

[OzoneJunkie]

quad core vs dual core CPU:

Haven't read the whole thread, but if you're still considering a laptop, one thing to consider is if you get a machine with a quad core chip or not. I recently owned 2 different Dell laptops (13" ultrabook, 15" laptop) - the newer design that looks like a MacBook Pro. The ultrabook had a 2nd gen i7 dual core, the 15" had a 3rd gen i7 quad core, and the quad core basically doubled the amount of simultaneous VSTs. I downloaded a stress test FL Studio file which ran many instances of Sytrus. The Ultrabook could handle 24 instances, the quadcore machine was over 60. Now there was a one generation difference between the chips, but I suspect that if the gens were the same but it would have been an even 2x difference.

[dial_back]

As an IT professional I would recommend against Lenovo. Their tech & warranty support is some of the worst I have ever had to deal with and for every good piece of hardware they make they have 3 lemons.


and following up with what Ozone said...You want a quad core and you want hyper threading enabled. Hyper threading allows the CPU to run virtual cores, so a dual can run as a quad. In general the previous generations of I5 chips did not have hyper threading, you needed to get an I3 or an I7. Looks like gen 4 has changed that. Also Intel tends to smoke AMD in the cpu department, BUUUUUT AMD is extremely solid, cheap and you can easily save some money while not miss a ton of performance.


Ohh and the Intel released a new socket within the last month, so these Sandy Bridge i7s are going to be dropping in price over the next few months. Hold out for a bit if you're set on Intel. AMD also has new chips rolling out next year so their chips should drop eventually as well.

[Tom_Autobot]

and following up with what Ozone said...You want a quad core and you want hyper threading enabled. Hyper threading allows the CPU to run virtual cores, so a dual can run as a quad. In general the previous generations of I5 chips did not have hyper threading, you needed to get an I3 or an I7. Looks like gen 4 has changed that. Also Intel tends to smoke AMD in the cpu department, BUUUUUT AMD is extremely solid, cheap and you can easily save some money while not miss a ton of performance.

Standard i5 chips are quad core with no hyperthreading. The only exeption is some of the low power ones that only have 2 cores, with hyperthreading (the same as an i3), but these do have turbo (unlike an i3)

AMD is a crap choice for production, but fantastic for a cheap media centre pc, as the onboard graphics are (very for the price) decent and you can do a bit of light gaming on them.

This chart shows exactly how much audio processing power there is in cpu's (at different buffer sizes, with the same soundcard), with the AMD's coming bottom.

http://www.scanproaudio.info/?p=2290

Ohh and the Intel released a new socket within the last month, so these Sandy Bridge i7s are going to be dropping in price over the next few months. Hold out for a bit if you're set on Intel. AMD also has new chips rolling out next year so their chips should drop eventually as well.

Sandy / ivy bridge chips never really drop in price by more than about 5%, they just run out of stock. This has been the case for about the past 3 years.

[dial_back]

AMD vs Intel has always been a price vs performance pay off. Doesn't make it crap, just a different choice. You can build a whole AMD based machine for the price of some of those Intel chips. Yeah, it won't be running 50 instances of Ozone, but so what? It'll still let you make music, play games, and download porn

Intel is replacing the 1155 socket with 1150. Ivy/Sandy were both based on the 1155. Since it's a new generation socket the prices for the 1155 boards and chips should drop as production of the 1150s ramp up and the line is phased out. Personally I think it'll be a while before the 1150 chip performance is worth the cost, but I'm a cheap skeptical bastard and hate buying the latest and greatest of the week.

[SunkLo]

That setup that 10 bag posted is decent. I'd go for an i7 instead, skimp on the ram and then upgrade later. Steal Windows7. When you get a bit of cash you can add in an extra 4 gigs of ram, a dedicated GPU and an aftermarket CPU cooler. Primary concern when first buying is the mobo and cpu. If you get a good mobo that overclocks well and a good cpu, you can upgrade the rig down the road and be relatively future-proofed. Ram is always easy to slot in when you get some spare cash and a GPU is probably what you'd replace the most often if you were into gaming. You could even omit the SSD at first and just run off your HDD and then add that in later.

For the record, my rig is an Asus P6T6 mobo, Intel i7 920, 6 gigs Mushkin 1600 Mhz ram, Sapphire Hd 4870 2gig GPU, Kingston 1000w PSU, Intel 80 gig SSD, 500 gig WD data HDD (my 2TB died) Coolermaster V8 CPU cooler, and a bluray burner and networking processor pci card (Killer Xeno)

Runs like a dream and I originally bought it for $650 from a guy who owned a computer parts store and built PCs for fun. If you're lucky and patient you might find a similar deal.