Buying new desktop and need suggestions

R

Robert Donithan

Member
I have a laptop that gives me headaches so I'm in the market for a refurbished 256gb SSD desktop,keyboard and mouse...I have cubasele8 and it doesn't work well with the laptop and windows10 home...what I want to know is has anyone had problem free experiences with a certain computer using cubasele8? If so and it can be bought for between $400-600 refurbished(SSD) please let me know...
 
Hi Robert,
I suppose the question to ask is why the laptop is giving you headaches. Is it a compatibility issue between Le8 and windows 10, or are there other issues?
It may be that there's something we can fix, to save you buying a new machine.

If you need a new machine regardless then compatibility is the thing to research, in advance.
Pick the OS you want and the Daw version you want, and make sure there's full support there.

Same goes for your chosen audio interface; Make certain that the manufacturers are bang up to date with drivers for the OS you'll be using.

Broadly speaking the specific motherboard/SSD type etc shouldn't matter too much, as long as you know all your software is fully supported and you have the right ins/outs for your peripherals.
 
I think ,as in the case of my smartphones, that the laptop is wearing out..sometimes the pointer don't work, but mainly my cubasele8 freezes after 30 minutes as well as abelton live 9 lite..I have to restart the computer to unfreeze them..I get unwanted or random warnings and other pop ups(not adds)that if I ignore them nothing happens..it's a 7 or 8 year old dell e6410 laptop and I run it for hours at a time..I've put $40 into it for 4 more gb of ram but nothing changed..it's awful slow at times and cubasele8 isn't dependent on the internet or WiFi...so I can only assume that it's time is at an end..not taking into account that the hinges are going bad too.
 
Robert Donithan said:
I think ,as in the case of my smartphones, that the laptop is wearing out..sometimes the pointer don't work, but mainly my cubasele8 freezes after 30 minutes as well as abelton live 9 lite..I have to restart the computer to unfreeze them..I get unwanted or random warnings and other pop ups(not adds)that if I ignore them nothing happens..it's a 7 or 8 year old dell e6410 laptop and I run it for hours at a time..I've put $40 into it for 4 more gb of ram but nothing changed..it's awful slow at times and cubasele8 isn't dependent on the internet or WiFi...so I can only assume that it's time is at an end..not taking into account that the hinges are going bad too.
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Ok, thanks for the info.
Of course it's your call. A lot of that is probably fixable, though.

Physical stuff like the hinges are a different story, but slow performance, warnings and pop ups...this kind of thing,
it's not wear and tear; It's accumulation of programs/services/update checkers etc.

Often simply reinstalling windows or taking an afternoon to gut out the crap can pay off massively.

Of course failing hardware can cause freezes too...Can't rule that out. With a laptop 'randomly' freezing the first thing I do is remove the dead mouse from the fan airflow vents. ;)


If you fancy trying to resurrect, ask some more questions about that. ;)
If not, really just research is your friend. Maybe some people can recommend bargain computers,
but ensuring software/os/hardware compatibility is largely just checking manufacturers specs and googling for first-hand experiences.

Hope something in there is helpful. :)
 
I have just come from the Steinberg site to see if there was a trial of Cubasis I could run on this pretty low spec i3 HP laptop.

I find the DAW is for iThings?!! If that really is the case I am surprised it runs at all on OP's lappy.

Re the "worn out laptop" ? Don't believe it, here are some things to try.

Malwarebytes has been mentioned. Ccleaner. You won't want to keep the latest version but you could dld and run the cleaner and registry scanner.

Get a USB 3.0 7200 external drive (always handy) and dump off all the files you might need. Then using the free Macrum Reflect progg' make an image of the hard drive as is (not likely you will keep that, just safety). Now you need a copy of Win7 or there might be a recovery partition on the laptop's hard drive.

Best bet is to format the hard drive then re-install W7,next best a recovery. PPlease give us the make and model of the laptop. It would have to be a very weak sister indeed NOT to run a DAW at least recording two tracks and a couple of plugins. I am willing to bet the HDD is full of ***t!

Oh! and download a system temperature sensor progg as well. Look at Ninite - Install or Update Multiple Apps at Once Always a safe download.

Dave.
 
Robert Donithan said:
It's a dell laptop e6410, about 7 years old..
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Strewth! Bob! That has a i5 520m processor, knocks chunks off my HP i3! The only downside I can see is it is specce'd with just 2G of ram?

This HP has 8G and just doing "this" it is using 2.81G (which seems a bloody lot just to do internet? Something called MsMpENG.exe is grabbing 100k and lots of other things are having a nibble. Must investigate)

If indeed you only have 2G ram I am surprised you do much more than type a letter! 4G woud be regarded as the minimum for general work, even low level audio work. 8G is nice but I doubt you need more, The machine probably won't handle more anyway. I would do a "Crucial memory scan" now to see exactly what you have and what 4G say might cost you.

I am in fact in the process of finding a laptop refurbed, for my son in France (Xmas prezzie) and am at the moment drawn to a Lenovo with an i5 3320M 2.4G (twice the Benchmark rating of my i3) 8Geam and 240G SSD but I shall keep looking.

So, bottom line. I think with more ram and a serious cleanup that laptop will be well up for audio work. Yes a tower is better value (if you have monitor/kbd/mouse and very flexible, more ports, PCIe slots etc and pretty future proof. For a given outlay you can build a much faster machine than a laptop. I built one a few years ago. AMD 3G 6 core Black, 6G ram but a 1TB 7200 spinner. Win 7 and handles pretty much anything I throw at it. NOT that that is a great deal these days! Tis slick tho'...

Dave.
 
The dell e6410 latitude that I have after it was refurbished had 4 gb of ram 256gb hdd..after sinking $40 into it for 4 more gb, I now have 8gb of ram...I kinda want the bigger desktop anyhow and I never take the laptop anywhere so it acts like a desktop...
 
Robert Donithan said:
The dell e6410 latitude that I have after it was refurbished had 4 gb of ram 256gb hdd..after sinking $40 into it for 4 more gb, I now have 8gb of ram...I kinda want the bigger desktop anyhow and I never take the laptop anywhere so it acts like a desktop...
Click to expand...

Ok, I don't want to put you off a DT, as I said, in many ways better than a lappy but if I can just mention the obvious? If the Dell can be fixed you can of course run it into a bigger monitor (or a 25 quid 22"FSTV as I do) The cramped kbd and trackpad can be swapped for growed up jobbies...

Dave.
 
I just recently assembled a good budget audio production desktop computer for just under $500 (well, $530 after tax). It features an 8th gen i3 running at 3.6 GHz, 8GB of RAM, a small SSD, a 1TB mass storage drive, and it runs Win10 and Reaper like a champ (I'm not a Cubase guy so I have no idea how it would fare).

So you could easily put a solid machine together within your budget without going refurbished. Maybe invest a bit more in the CPU and get something like an 8th gen i5 or a Ryzen 5 for a little more horsepower and more cores/threads to spread out the load.
 
Tadpui said:
I just recently assembled a good budget audio production desktop computer for just under $500 (well, $530 after tax). It features an 8th gen i3 running at 3.6 GHz, 8GB of RAM, a small SSD, a 1TB mass storage drive, and it runs Win10 and Reaper like a champ (I'm not a Cubase guy so I have no idea how it would fare).

So you could easily put a solid machine together within your budget without going refurbished. Maybe invest a bit more in the CPU and get something like an 8th gen i5 or a Ryzen 5 for a little more horsepower and more cores/threads to spread out the load.
Click to expand...

Can you give us the motherboard details please?

Dave.
 
One thing to check for is a bad memory card. That can make an otherwise perfectly good computer seem like it's ready for the junk heap.
 
ecc83 said:
Muchos! If they can fix me eye again this time I might have one last crack at an i7 speed demon before the mortal coil is shrugged!

Dave.
Click to expand...

A couple of things to note about that mobo:

- The 'M' designation in its model number indicates that it's a micro ATX, intended for compact builds and mATX cases. So it doesn't have the number of PCI slots and some other features that a larger board would have
- Intel 8th gen "Coffee Lake" processors require a 300-series chipset, like this board.
- This chipset doesn't support CPU overclocking, so if you get a "K" series unlocked CPU, you'd need a "Z" 300 series chipset in order to take advantage of the unlocked multiplier.

I hope that the industry standardizes this confusing crap soon. Garanimals did it with shirts and pants, why can't mobo and CPU manufacturers come up with something? "hey look, there's a teddy bear sticker on this mobo, so I know that it works with my CPU, which also has a teddy bear sticker!" :D
 
Tadpui said:
A couple of things to note about that mobo:

- The 'M' designation in its model number indicates that it's a micro ATX, intended for compact builds and mATX cases. So it doesn't have the number of PCI slots and some other features that a larger board would have
- Intel 8th gen "Coffee Lake" processors require a 300-series chipset, like this board.
- This chipset doesn't support CPU overclocking, so if you get a "K" series unlocked CPU, you'd need a "Z" 300 series chipset in order to take advantage of the unlocked multiplier.

I hope that the industry standardizes this confusing crap soon. Garanimals did it with shirts and pants, why can't mobo and CPU manufacturers come up with something? "hey look, there's a teddy bear sticker on this mobo, so I know that it works with my CPU, which also has a teddy bear sticker!" :D
Click to expand...

Wooooof! (is there an emo' for "over my head"?) Mind you, I sort of knew this when I built my Asus/AMD rig and so I wimped out and bought a MOBO+CPU package. Seems to have worked out.

One thing, and I don't know if this is common with MOBOs these days? No OB graphics. I had to dash down to Maplins and fork out another 30 quid for a passively cooled card.

I probably won't build another PC. I am really looking to bend the Bcard on some really good monitors, rather taken by the Result 6? But even that is some years away. Everything hinges on the eye. I am presently just legal to drive. If I have to go Shanksie's P that will be a massive inconvenience but will free up a fair wedge per annum.

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
Wooooof! (is there an emo' for "over my head"?) Mind you, I sort of knew this when I built my Asus/AMD rig and so I wimped out and bought a MOBO+CPU package. Seems to have worked out.

One thing, and I don't know if this is common with MOBOs these days? No OB graphics. I had to dash down to Maplins and fork out another 30 quid for a passively cooled card.

I probably won't build another PC. I am really looking to bend the Bcard on some really good monitors, rather taken by the Result 6? But even that is some years away. Everything hinges on the eye. I am presently just legal to drive. If I have to go Shanksie's P that will be a massive inconvenience but will free up a fair wedge per annum.

Dave.
Click to expand...

Yeah I understand. As plug-and-play as computer building has become lately, there are still "gotchas".

As for integrated graphics, most mainstream motherboards and CPUs support it nowadays. It'll be listed as a feature on each, so people have to read the fine print and tech specs pretty closely to make 100% sure. But it almost always helps to have even a modest GPU anyways, just to take that graphics load off of the CPU.

And to the OP, at least keep in mind that you can source the parts pretty easily and assemble a computer relatively easily. There are all sorts of system layouts to browse on PCPartPicker. The assembly process is largely "tab A into slot B" if you have the time and energy to invest into tackling the few issues that are bound to crop up. Linus Tech Tips, Jayz2cents, BitWit, Paul's Hardware all have marvelously well-done PC build guides on YouTube that should inspire some confidence.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
One thing to check for is a bad memory card. That can make an otherwise perfectly good computer seem like it's ready for the junk heap.
Click to expand...

A big +1 to this^^

I have had ram go bad and it would randomly mess with all kinds of things. Memtest them. A plus that they will be replaced for free if a card is bad.
 
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