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thinking about a cheap and cheerful studio pc?

John_PJohn_P Frets: 2750
in Studio & Recording
It's been a long long time since I updated the pc I use for recording and song writing at home and I'm a bit out of touch with the 
spec needed these days.
For context I'm thinking cubase or reaper,  I don't need hundreds of tracks and plugins but I don't want to be capped if I try and go over 30 tracks with decent effect plugins and a handful of virtual instruments.  

Would something like this cope ok?      Can I go even lower spec or do I need to spend more?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-OptiPlex-7020-240GB-Refurbished/dp/B07K5ZY395/

(thats a dell i5  16GB ram,  240GB sdd drive, 1TB hdd)

Thanks for any pointers or tips
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Comments

  • robinbowesrobinbowes Frets: 3043
    There's an iMac on here that would do just what you want - £80!

    I've also got a later iMac that would also do what you want (2011, 3.4Ghz Quad Core, think it's got 16GB RAM).

    R.
    Good quality cables available here

    Eqd Speaker Cranker clone
    Monte Allums TR-2 Plus mod kit

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  • John_PJohn_P Frets: 2750
    There's an iMac on here that would do just what you want - £80!

    I've also got a later iMac that would also do what you want (2011, 3.4Ghz Quad Core, think it's got 16GB RAM).

    R.
    If I was closer or had time for a day out I might have grabbed that imac.     
    I've got a few monitors kicking around so a cheap desktop seemed the way forward and I could use a windows machine for work stuff. 
    If you are thinking of selling your imac give me a shout - you're fairly local so I'd be very interested.  
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  • John_PJohn_P Frets: 2750
    A follow up question - processor type, generation (speed)  and ram will all affect performance but any tips or places to read up on the balance - an older i7  vs newer i5 and 16GB vs 32GB of ram.     

    If I was to compromise on any of those to get a bargain where is the best way to do it?    I'm thinking if I have an sdd drive with 32GB then it wouldn't matter if I had an older i7 but I need to get up to speed on the codes to know what I'm looking at.
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  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10413
    People tend to assume you need a shedload of ram and a super fast processor to run a lot of tracks and some VI's but in actual fact you don't. My main machine is a 2.6 dual core with 4Gb ram and stock HD, but is fine running 30 tracks and 6 or so VI's. 
    Even a first gen i7 is a more than capable CPU, 8Gb is fine and an SSD is nice but not super essential. in the professional studio world no one used SSD's ten years ago, we just used standard IDE and SATA drives in firewire or USB 2 caddies to move projects of 80 tracks or so between studios. 

    There are certain VI's, used in film  / tv  score post that can create some huge sounds and are very CPU intensive but for the most part home users music PC's don't need to be that powerful, it just takes a little knowledge to get optimise it as an audio PC. If your PC is trying to run FB, One Drive, Norton AV, Windows update, iTunes helper, Adobe update, Office fast find etc all at the same your using it as a DAW then you will experience some issue's even on fast hardware. If you need to use one desktop machine for everything then 2 drive system is a better way to go. That allows you to boot into a drive containing nothing but Windows and a DAW for audio work and then you boot from the other drive for normal PC stuff.


    www.2020studios.co.uk 
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  • BranshenBranshen Frets: 1222
    John_P said:
    A follow up question - processor type, generation (speed)  and ram will all affect performance but any tips or places to read up on the balance - an older i7  vs newer i5 and 16GB vs 32GB of ram.     

    If I was to compromise on any of those to get a bargain where is the best way to do it?    I'm thinking if I have an sdd drive with 32GB then it wouldn't matter if I had an older i7 but I need to get up to speed on the codes to know what I'm looking at.
    I would check benchmarks and get the more powerful processor regardless of generation. RAM can be upgraded later anyway for cheap. Just recently, I'm upgrading my 4 year old laptop from 12GB ram to 24 GB because my projects (which make use of a fair bit of kontakt) are getting heavier. 
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