Hey all,
My old laptop is showing its age, performance-wise, and probably about to suffer some hardware failures. I think I need to bite the bullet and invest in a new machine. The trouble is...I'm kinda broke
I'm looking to switch to a desktop setup that is as cheap as possible right now (<$1000 for sure), but that leaves room for expansions/upgrades when things are...greener. I am willing to self-assemble, so I'm surfing the DIY sections over at NewEgg. I've done plenty of upgrades and under-the-hood maintenance, but this will be my first full build. I am open to suggestions, recommended configurations, or cautionary tales. I work mostly as a composer, and I'm not using tons of plug-ins generally, but I do use Kontakt heavily. I use a regular-old focusrite Saffire 6 USB interface that I will likely upgrade to a MOTU when I have the cash. There's some chance this upgrade will nuke that interface, but it's a risk I'll take.
My goals right now are getting adequate processing power and adequate sample storage/performance, and not locking myself into something I can't upgrade later at a reasonable price. One of the machines I'm looking at is
this combo, which I would then upgrade with another drive I have lying around more memory, and a Win10 license. Hopefully walk away with a working system for < $800.
Someday I'll add SSD's. I doubt I'll need a PCI audio interface in the near term, but it would be nice if I weren't locked out of that option. A USB interface is fine for now. I mostly use DP, sometimes Pro Tools and Sonar, on Windows 10.
A couple of questions for y'all.
- Reading through the specs they provide for that build, it appears that I could use on-board graphics and not need a graphics card. Does that seem correct?
- My old laptop has an i7-2630QM, and benchmarks seem to indicate that even an i5 of the newest generation would be a substantial performance boost. This package has an i5-7500 on a Gigabyte motherboard with LGA-1151. Anyone running an i5 and getting satisfactory performance? I know it's not best-of-the-best, but will it do for now?
- Am I overlooking something obvious that will bite me later? The MOBO looks modern and as future-proof as can be expected.
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.