this is honestly the best no-bullshit no-fanboy coverage of what you should consider when picking CPU, RAM, storage, no matter if PC or Mac, actually based on what kind of work and what DAW you use:

 

Does this mean that my i9 9900K is already retro? You don't have to buy new equipment every year. There is so much production software that has been released to this day, that I probably won't be able to check everything in the next 10 years

 

Ok, but keeping 50% free on your drives for performance and lifespan, that's just bad advice. ~13-20% and you're fine.

 

this depends on many things,
modern OSes and DAWs can effectively make use of swapping/caching and SSDs are rather fast to make use of them in that regard,
and when it comes to SSD tricks, nowadays high-end TLC SSDs are able to "boost" write speed running in SLC mode (writing only 1/3rd block state) so for ex. if you want to quickly transfer 50GB project you need at least 150GB free space,
also larger capacity SSDs that have own DRAM do have higher capacity DRAM cache (for ex. 4TB has 4GB) which gives nice performance boost,
there is nothing inherently wrong having half of disk empty, apart from overspending of course - but even so, having 2TB drive half empty isn't 2x more expensive than 1TB almost full, and with modern computers being limited to how many NVME SSDs can be utilized without sharing bandwidth, it's always more efficient to have fewer bigger disks

 

not really, but if you got to point of feeling lack of performance, that video would explain where to look (more cores or higher clocks or more ram etc...),
he actually mentions for ex. 32GB ram being good enough for vast majority of audio folks too

 

Unless you are a hardcore Logic or Samplitude/Sequoia user with no intent of switching DAW, why would your choice of DAW dictate what hardware or OS you pick to use? There are a small number of additional DAW that are not fully cross-platform in 2025, and I would gamble to say the users of such specific options are not really factoring in 99% of users are.

The only reason to put all these considerations in, is money. I haven't heard a single piece of music sound any different wether created on an M4, or a AMD/intel processor that has another tiny increase in cpu speeds, latency improvements, or any of the other interesting to discuss technical factors. Zero. Almost all productivity improvements come from workflow improvements at this point. You aren't comparing the clock speed of your Pentium 2 with a 14900K. Most modern systems are so far beyond what is actually necessary for audio work; that the differences are close to meaningless.

This guy's video may not be fanboying one OS, DAW, or piece of hardware; but is for people who still watch videos about a technology arms race in audio that became primarily a discussion of overhead years and years ago. At some point, the calculator is still just a calculator.

 

Yeah, that's fair. But in practice, the use cases where you'd notice the uplift from keeping 50% free on a 2 TB SSD are probably very few.

Unless someone OCD re-saves their 250 GB video project every 5 seconds and their editor blocks during saving, they're not going to notice the pSLC->TLC/QLC transition.

In any case, 22.5% free space would reserve the 150 GB pSLC from your example on a 2 TB TLC drive.

(My projects and their undo files are all under 500 MB!)

 

That I9 9900K will last for as long as it is comfortable to use - which will be in my estimation, many years. Productions should sound the same (all other things being equal) no matter what platform they are produced on. BUT, the ease at which you are able to carry on your production activities will vary depending on platform, most assuredly. For example you're working on studio or symphonic compositions for film, game, album, etc, and you have a platform short on RAM (16GB as opposed to 64GB or 128GB ). You will feel this in how well you are able to carry out a production with many sampler instances and large studio/cinematic libraries all open at once. It can get claustrophobic very fast.

My rule of thumb for choosing hardware is to envision your future and the most ambitious task you ever plan to carry out. Are your current hardware choices capable of supporting that future task with ease and efficiency? No? Then choose your hardware so that you know you'll be covered when that task (or something similar) arises. Or at least get hardware that is capable of easy expansion later on for when you will need the extra resources.

 

Last edited: Nov 1, 2025 at 7:56 PM