Hello audiosexies!

I am looking forwad to buy a laptop for my partner and would love to hear your advice/help/suggestions.
My budget lies between 2000€ and 3000€.

The Laptops usecases will be
1. Live Music Performance: Looping, a couple of kontakt libs
I'm aware of things such as setting up the OS properly, setting up the projects/sessions correctly,
using bufer sizes such as 128 to ensure a good balance between low latency and performance and many things more.

2. Recording Music: Mainly vocals, lots of kontakt libs, some other acoustic instruments
Since the laptop will be close-by during recording vocals and other acoustic instruments I absolutely need the cooling system to be proper, meaning
a great balance between quiet fans and cooling capabilities.

3. Editing 4k Video: I am using DaVinci Resolve and VEGAS to edit videos.
I know that Nvidia GPUs do have an davantage over Radeon GPUs when it comes to using NVENC
and general rendering performance but on my desktop I have had better experiences with an AMD Radeon when it comes to its driver during live music performance.
In any case the driver will be debloated.

What she will use
Audio-Interface: RME Babyface Pro FS
DAW: REAPER
OS: Windows 10 (debloated and properly stripped down)
CPU: Leaning towards AMD CPUs due to lower power consumption, generally lower temperatures (which should lead to less fan usage/fan noise).

My main concerns/thoughts are
- Heat/Fan Noise (when performing live and when recording)
- Which GPU to go with to find the balance between music and video production
- Enough RAM (16GB or 32GB?) (especially seeing that AMD CPUs love themselves some extra RAM) to run "enough" kontakt libs in a stable manner
- Extras such as SDcard reader built-in to the laptop are very welcome
- Display size does not really matter but I would prefer a minimum of 15"
- Is it worth waiting until the end of the year for Ryzen 7000, DDR5, PCIe5, etc. ?

To summarize
I have only built desktop systems so far so the laptop world is a bit of a jungle for me.
From my research I'm leaning towards getting an ASUS laptop but there are so many models and I don't even understand the differences between ROG Zephyrus, Flow or Strix. ^_^
But then there's also the ASUS ProArt series and other companies such as Acer Nitro, Alienware m17, Razer Blade, Lenovo Legion, HP EliteBook.
There's also companies that put together laptops for music production which sounds tempting but then again I need a machine that also does 4k video production decently and none of these companies seem to offer Ryzen CPUs in their builds. Apart from that I'm happy to set up the machine myself (debloating, installing drivers, software, etc.) and I would like to know how and what has been set up.

What do you guys and gurls suggest?

Looking very much forward to your ideas.
Thanks a lot for reading and your help in advance! <3
- shovelh34d

 

Last edited: Jul 10, 2022

What do you guys and gurls suggest? Your Strange

 

aren't we all? ;-)

 

dude there is literally only one game in town since apple silicon....it baffles the hell out of me why anyone would buy a windblows machine now when macs product gives literally so much more bang for the buck
i mean it made sense back before mac came out with the big surprise and got all reasonable with their prices but the overpriced mac is gone man, now you get pretty damned good value for the money you spend compared especially to anything windows puts out

look at the base 3000$ mac, compare the specs on several mediums to what you will get for the same with windows and go buy the mac because:
A: mac stomps windows for music production
B: apples chip has an architecture that is way more efficient and
C: you hardly ever even have a fan running on macs now less you have it loaded up

and last but not least you buy a mac you dont have to deal with windows clunky navigation and slows ass operation - feel lost trying to navigate? ask anyone who owns one they can show you in 30 seconds everything you need to know to navigate its that damned easy

 

Last edited: Jul 10, 2022

There are no "quiet" AMD/Intel laptops in that category. You will also need to be plugged in to get maximum performance.

A MacBook Pro makes more since unless, you want to stay with Windows based x86_x64 systems.

 

NVENC isn't known for its quality. You want software encoding for that, and CPU would be used as fallback for most video editing DSP.

 

Literally the best option here is a MacBook Pro with an M1 or M2 chip like quadcore64 said

 

don't lose it! 3k for a mac?1 I hope you get a t-shirt too.
an alternative:
bongos: $40, guitar $50, talent: priceless.

 

Seconded.

No brainer.

 

That's simply not correct. Everyone is repeating Apples marketing blabla instead of relying on real world tests. In this video a guy is comparing video editing with DaVinci Resolve on a 3000,- Euro Windows Laptop with an nvidia 3080 GPU to the GPU/CPU-wise maxed out 4800,- Euro MacBook Pro with 32 GPU cores:

And that is the ONLY Mac that's noticeably faster than the Windows machine, so forget about all the entry-level Macs with 7-10 GPU cores. Also M1 or M2 Macs are always compared to several years old Intel CPUs and not the most recent generation.

If you want performance, you have to pay for it, there is no "magic" about M1/M2 Macs.

 

No Mac can bet a AMD Ryzen 9 series when it comes to performance (for now).
And my take is that MACs are just overprized PCs with a nice shell, at least the "Intel inside" ones.
You can get a serious AMD 24-core or more CPU with a NVIDIA GPU 30xx series and superfast 1TB NVME disc for under 3000 bux. Tell me if you can find a MAC with that performance, and for that price....
Sorry of topic, but the same goes for Laptops...and Mobile phones.

 

as said above - you will not get a quiet machine on a powerful Windows laptop, as they sacrifice power efficiency for performance and power draw, this being for both the CPU and the GPU, two things that will get toasty when you really push the machine.
there are more powerful Windows laptops than any Macbook, but it comes at the price of massive fan noise and heat production.

so if the computer being quiet is really important to you - its a safe bet to say you should go for the new M1 macbook pros (14" or 16", NOT the 13")
also when it comes to video encoding/decoding - the M1 chips are really nice for it since they have dedicated encoders inside the chip that makes export times and editing really smooth, especially if you go with Final Cut or Davinci (although most codecs and formats are supported there are still a few that arent)

a few years ago i would advise you to stay away from any Mac laptop, but nowadays they do give great value for money, that be in stability, the return of the Magsafe, variety of ports, and a chips that doesnt thermal throttle easily and blow the fans on full power.

that being said - if you plan on using cracked plugins - on Mac, and especially the new M1 chips and new Mac operating systems - that will give you a hard time on some releases.
if youre not a technical person you will probably encounter plenty issues related to permission, codesigning, dequarantining etc..
expect a big learning curve you will have to go through in order to learn how to solve these security restrictions when it comes to cracked software.

im currently a Windows user with a recent, up-to-date laptop, but plan on transitioning into the new Macbooks as ive experienced them first hand and was just blown away by how quick they are, and the fact you almost never hear the fans going... i guess arm64 CPU architecture might be the future...

 

As a side note: I don't like Windows or Gill Bates, but at least the warez works, and I can always boot Linux mint or other flavors, when it pleases me. And the Hardware is hardcore custom built. And yes, cheaper than MAC, including future hardware upgrades

 

Macbook M1 is the only game in town. I have a 14" M1Pro it's a beast and rock solid. Most certainly the best machine I have ever owned. Windows Laptops (I've had XPS ect i7 high-end etc) and they never last. I gave my trusty 2015 i7 15" macbook pro running Big Sur to my Girlfriend and its still kicking ass.. M1 Macbooks are the only game in town EOS.

 

Powerful Laptop (with a couple of thunderbolts) or PC.
Video editing and Don't Forget about games (what if you or your girlfriend/child like to play games someday? Or you would like to try some kind of AI stuff?).
Today (after Bitcoin crashes) there are plenty of Nvidia cards as fast as Ferrari. Your 3000E laptop can use via eGPU. Forget about Macs.

 

Apple Silicon stays cool, silent and use less energy, that no marketing blabla

 

sure? Have you compared the prices?

 

This person wants a WINDOWS system, people. So stop making propaganda for Mac. OK?

 

Be prepared to massive headaches if you want to use "sister site" releases on Mac M1
And last OSX versions are a nightmare.
That's another story ...
So YES M1 is nice, Apple OSX run smooth ... until you use "scene" releases

On my side, i built an hackintosh ... and reverted back to Windows for scene releases.
Even got massive troubles with scene Lightroom and Photoshop (not only audio)

Don't trust me ?
Search this forum with "M1 sister site"

 

Start by reading this :
https://www.laptopmag.com/best-picks/amd-ryzen-laptops

So YES there are Ryzen laptops
This will give you some help