4w ago

Laptop recommendations for Music Production?

Hi there, am looking for a new and powerful laptop that can handle music production quite well, but am not sure what to get. So far I've understood that its important for this laptop to have:

32GB RAM (DDR5 preferably)
Top-notch processor
Good graphic card
at least 1TB of SSD Storage, planning on buying external ssd later.

Anyone have any good recommendations for this? The budget is around 2,250 USD / 2,137 EUR.

17 comments

Whatever you get, invest in a decent quality USB audio interface with ASIO support. You'll notice the lag with WDM drivers if you ever try to hook up a controller.
- good to know, thanks!

I wouldn't look to hard for a decent gpu. Matter of fact, you might even get one without a discrete gpu but one with decent integrated graphics. You'll be fine with a Ryzen 7 or whatever Intel's equivalent currently is. Get a 9 if you want it to have some extra oomph. But save yourself the cost of getting something with a 4070 or 4080.
- Been looking at a Thinkpad X1 Gen 11. It has pretty good everything (can spec it myself via their website) however it "only" has a Integrated Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics. I'm not too familiar with how these integrated graphic-cards work so im not sure it will fit my workflow or not. As far as I've understood it will be sufficient but if I were to want anything a little more graphic heavy then it will limit performance. What's considered the middle ground between Integrated graphics and a 4070?
  
  As a fellow music producer, you definitely don't need a discrete graphics card if this machine is purely for music production. Definitely better off spending that money on an audio interface and some studio monitors, or some plugins
  
  4060 or 7600XT but that's still very pricey. It really depends on what you call graphic heavy. The latest video games will not run on an Xe. Then again, they'll not run great on a 4070 either. If you need to do stuff like video editing, especially rendering, will take longer on an Xe but will work. A 4070 will be quicker but you'll be far better off with a Quadro or whatever they call their professional series now. They do add to the price but you can settle for a lower model. If you're looking at just stuff like photo editing, an Xe will do fine.

I get that this is the pcmasterrace community, but I would highly suggestions considering a MacBook Pro for any kind of media production. You can find refurbished ones with warranty within your budget. It’ll handle any track out and plugins you throw at it like nothing.
- While true, and it is great hardware, but... MacBook is just completely off the table. For numerous reasons but won't go onto that rant here.
- Maybe we can keep all the 'whubout macs' comments contained as replies to this comment 😆
  I've used a little M1 macbook air since they came out for music production stuff and they're just so unreasonably good. That and Reaper will get you very very far. Audio stuff isn't such a heavy lift that you need crazy hardware like gaming or other graphic intensive workloads. Mine is finally starting to show its age when really piling up the more modern VSTs, so I'll probably get an M4 air when they come out.
  I use a UA Apollo X6 as an interface, but I'd probably go for one of the more capable MOTU ones if I got another one. The MOTU M2 is a great little interface that I use on both my mac and PC as well, and I'd highly recommend it.

AFAIK music production is a huge variety and often requires special hardware. What are you planning to do with it? My SO started with FL Studio a few months ago and is trying to make some EDM. At the moment she is not even close to putting a strain on the laptop. It's a Lenovo V15 G4 with an Intel 13420h, 16GB Ram and a 1TB Drive.
- Fl studio and Cubase are the two main pieces of software used.

If you're ok with using macOS, definitely go with a MacBook Pro. Otherwise, I'd pick a Framework laptop. If you really need a strong GPU, the Framework 16 is perfect for you. They're very upgradable and repairable, only the CPU is soldered in and can't be swapped.

17 comments