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!

 

[Gary Carey]

I replaced my laptop with a mini PC some months back and reclaimed valuable desk space. Performance has been absolutely fine. Songwriter demo projects up to 40-ish tracks still normally give low enough latency to overdub guitar and keyboards. 

Can't remember the exact specs off the top of my head and won't be able to check for a few days as I'm away from home. (Back on the laptop!). It wasn't anything special regarding processor. I do keep this dedicated as a music computer though. Operating system is Windows 11.

The fan isn't noisy and only ramps up every now and then.  Overall I've been very pleased.