Can a mini pc cut it?

[Clint Martin]

I need to upgrade my PC soon. I see many videos on mini pc’s but can they handle audio production without heat problems and the cpu scaling back?

I was kind of thinking about trying a Mac mini but with recent changes to Cakewalk I now see staying and subscribing to Sonar something to consider.

Edited Friday at 04:31 PM by Clint Martin

[Clint Martin]

Surprised that no one has attempted to use a mini pc.

I would guess they are at least as good as a laptop would be.

[msmcleod]

I use a Silent PC for tracking on occasion.  It's an Intel J4215 @ 2Ghz with 8GB of RAM.  I've also got an Intel N100 @ 2.6GHz with 16GB of RAM.


Both of them run Sonar fine, but you need to realistically set expectations.   The reason I chose these over a laptop is because they're completely silent - they just get really hot (they're designed to).  Decently powered laptops sound like a jet engine when the fan kicks in.

The J4215 is fine for tracking - I've recorded 16 simultaneous audio tracks while 32 audio tracks are playing, with an ASIO buffer size of 128.   No FX were used at all, and the Pro Channel / Spectrum Analyser was disabled on all tracks.  The audio was being tracked to an external SSD via USB3, which it coped with fine.

The N100 does a fair bit more, but again, I can't expect too much.  It'll happily run a fairly standard 32 track project with 2 or 3 VSTi's and a standard set of VST effects. Any reverbs are normally put on a bus for sharing, and if doing any mixing, I'll up the ASIO buffer size. I also commit changes regularly, bouncing to track(s) after edits and freezing when I can.

The N100 is eventually going to serve as a virtual synth.

TDLR:  A mini PC will work, but I wouldn't recommend it for general DAW use.  It's certainly adequate for tracking on location though.

[Clint Martin]

Good info. Thanks!