Recommend best Windows laptop for DAW and video editing

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zionstrat

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Newbie here, Long time DAW user, have used many different gaming computers over the years. Will be running Ableton cubase and DaVinci for video.

I'd like to get a new platform with the Black Friday sales and would appreciate your recommendations in the 15 to 1900 range.

Thanks in advance and looking forward to your input!
 
If you are an experienced DAW user and game player, then you already know what is important for you? I recently upgraded my PC in the video studio to a silly one my cash starved son my son used for gaming. I hung my interface on it, installed cubase 14 installed adobe and it does a little better than the old one, but not much.

Tell us what you have and where it falls down.

PS, you do know black friday sales are just a sales tactic and not genuine sales for things like computers. Old stock, ways to shift long shelf time internals, end of life bits and pieces and unpopular motherboards? Computers are very prone to being obsolete when the paint is still wet!
 
Thanks Rob, no I had no idea about black Friday... I thought it was a good way to save money.

The reason I'm asking for current recommendations is I had a wonderful ASUS based system that died about 3 years ago but I haven't been looking at systems since then so I'm not really up to date. At that point I wasn't financially able to replace it, but I found that if I ran an extremely low footprint DAW, I could do lightweight recording on my little yoga entertainment computer.

Good news is I'm back to point that I could spend $1,500 or so and wanted recommendations on trade offs to get the best bang for the buck.

Video production is secondary.. The main question is which processor I can afford while retaining appropriate clock speed and memory.

The secondary question is GPU.. I've heard that they can actually mess up audio under some unusual circumstances but it wouldn't be bad considering I do some video editing..

Any and all ideas appreciated!
 
I recently upgraded from a 9th gen Intel i7 to a 14th gen i7. Only because the opportunity presented itself (my brother wanted a dedicated computer for astronomy image crunching).

Although the performance increase wasn't tremendous, it was noticeable.

As for your questions.

1. I'd recommend an Intel i7, 12th gen or newer. The 13 / 14th gen have a bad rap at the moment with the voltage issues, but I haven't seen any real world problems personally, and I do computers for a living. It's hard to buy a computer without a solid state hard drive these days, but if you buy one from a box store, make sure you have something solid state, and not the older magnetic / spinning drives that they may shove in, just because. Not that there is anything wrong with them, we still use them for mass storage and NAS's etc, but for your applications it makes more sense to have SSD of some type, and the speed benefit. 32GB DDR5 is lots for RAM, but get 64GB if it fits the budget.

There are finer details to all of this, but stick with components that are known. ASUS motherboards, Samsung make decent NVMe drives, get a good power supply - Antec / EVGA etc.

2. Yes, GPU can be a problem. I ran into the Nvidia issues and DPC latency problems. I ended up pulling out the card and just using onboard video, which is plenty for a DAW, but perhaps not enough for video editing, depending what you are doing. In that case, check out the AMD video products.

EL
 
Eric Malone said:
I recently upgraded from a 9th gen Intel i7 to a 14th gen i7. Only because the opportunity presented itself (my brother wanted a dedicated computer for astronomy image crunching).

Although the performance increase wasn't tremendous, it was noticeable.

As for your questions.

1. I'd recommend an Intel i7, 12th gen or newer. The 13 / 14th gen have a bad rap at the moment with the voltage issues, but I haven't seen any real world problems personally, and I do computers for a living. It's hard to buy a computer without a solid state hard drive these days, but if you buy one from a box store, make sure you have something solid state, and not the older magnetic / spinning drives that they may shove in, just because. Not that there is anything wrong with them, we still use them for mass storage and NAS's etc, but for your applications it makes more sense to have SSD of some type, and the speed benefit. 32GB DDR5 is lots for RAM, but get 64GB if it fits the budget.

There are finer details to all of this, but stick with components that are known. ASUS motherboards, Samsung make decent NVMe drives, get a good power supply - Antec / EVGA etc.

2. Yes, GPU can be a problem. I ran into the Nvidia issues and DPC latency problems. I ended up pulling out the card and just using onboard video, which is plenty for a DAW, but perhaps not enough for video editing, depending what you are doing. In that case, check out the AMD video products.

EL
Click to expand...
Bingo this is exactly what I needed! Much much appreciated
 
Glad it is of help, although I missed one key part of your requirement. Does it have to be a laptop?

If you are leaning towards any kind of gaming laptop because of the generally higher specs, try not to go overboard on the video card. They run very hot by nature, and as such the lifespan of a gaming laptop is much less then a desktop (in my experience).

If you aren't dead set on a laptop, then a desktop opens up a world of different configurations and future upgradability.

EL
 
You ask a wonderful question.. I've used laptops in the past for mobile recording... I'm not currently mobile recording so for the first time in 20 years I m looking at desktops and laptops...

I think you may have influenced me into the desktop direction.. I've even looked at some minis, not understanding why they may be less appropriate than a standard sized desktop...

Seems like there's a lot more variables than the last time around :-) thanks for all the input!
 
One of the downsides to the mini-pc's is that they may be noisier (acoustically, fan noise etc) then you prefer, and there isn't much you can do about it as they tend to be very proprietary parts. Another downside, is they tend to not have much expandability, if that is a requirement for you. i.e. they may only have one m.2 slot for storage expansion, versus 2 or 3 on a regular sized motherboard. Same applies to RAM, 2 slots versus 4. Add a video card? No way. The processor may be even soldered to the motherboard, so sometimes the mini's are nothing more then a laptop in a computer looking box.

If you have any local computer store, with a good reputation, you might approach them with your requirements and see how it prices out. You've had good experience with ASUS products, so something built around an ASUS motherboard with some quiet cooling (I like the Noctua coolers, I'm not a fan of liquid cooling), a zero dB power supply etc.

Good luck!

EL
 
Had a thought of a computer store.. That's a great idea! Thanks again
 
Most mini computers are laptop processor based. They will be lower end processors as well. Processors designed tor laptops are usually running at a lower base speed, and have lower power ratings and will have fewer cores than a desktop processor. This is to decrease power usage, which has become a major issue with laptops.

Look at the I7-1250U vs the I7-12700K The first has 10 cores at 1.1GHz vs 12cores at 3.3GHz. Both are 12Gen I7s, but the performance can be drastically different.
 
TalismanRich said:
Most mini computers are laptop processor based. They will be lower end processors as well. Processors designed tor laptops are usually running at a lower base speed, and have lower power ratings and will have fewer cores than a desktop processor. This is to decrease power usage, which has become a major issue with laptops.

Look at the I7-1250U vs the I7-12700K The first has 10 cores at 1.1GHz vs 12cores at 3.3GHz. Both are 12Gen I7s, but the performance can be drastically different.
Click to expand...
That seems significant! Well considering I don't absolutely have to have a laptop, I think you've made up my mind! Much appreciated!
 
Good points stacking up here. So many things now need so much ram. I flip flop from job to job so if I am using my ram for sample packages it can fill up quickly and while Cubase can run from the xterms drives the older ones I have are not quick enough. If I then boot up Adobe premiere I can feel the delays as windows tries to manage so much. Many video cards now do on board processing so that takes the strain too. Be careful as some of these need bigger psu’s and special sockets
 
Not that people want to hear it - but I think the new MacBook Pro M4 Pro is the best Video and Audio laptop ever.
 
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