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 July 4 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. 

 

[Jim Roseberry]

Many "mini" PCs use laptop components (CPU, motherboard, RAM).

Essentially... a laptop without display and glide-point

Thus, you're subject to the limitations of a laptop.

 

A mini-ITX machine can be built with a Core Ultra 9 285k or R9 9950x.

It won't be the size of a Mac Mini... but it's a LOT faster and you can add/upgrade components.

[Alan Tubbs]

Small form computers have heat problems.  I had a hp all in one with the excellent adjustable screen that was great for mixing(it would lie flat to straight up).  It died to soon and it wasn’t even my main computer.  My last computer was a micro center build slimline unit that I had to jury rig in a second drive.  It worked for a few years but the power supply got wonky and fried the motherboard.

A small format computer is great but not for any heavy workload.  They die young and not even pretty.  It is such a time suck to get all my hardware many programs loaded and working I went ahead and bought one of Jim’s StudioCat computers.  Nothing small form or lightweight about it.

(Jim joined in before I got finished writing).

Edited July 7 by Alan Tubbs
Obvious

[Amberwolf]

If you don't push the machine, and it claims to be more powerful than you will need, a mini might be ok.   But as others noted, they're basically a laptop in a jewelry box, so they're even more heat-constrained than a laptop is.

They dont' even have the surface area of the keybaord and palm rest to radiate heat from, and all the heat-producing parts that would be away from the CPU in a laptop, under the palm rest area, are now crammed in next to the CPU, video, etc.  

 

So...if you push them like you would a desktop/tower, they'll probably not last as long as they would otherwise, because of the heat buildup inside (hardly any computer maker really makes a good heat-exhaust system for laptops or minis; the few that are usually use tiny loud fans because there isn't space for a large quiet one (that spins at low RPMs to move the same air as the high RPM tiny ones).  Another very few use metal cases that are directly thermally connected to the internal heatsinks, reducing the heatpath distance and fan requirements, but not all the parts that need heatsinking are usually thermally connected to the case.)

 

That said, I use an ancient Lenovo ideapad laptop, and the spinny harddisk in it is louder than the single tiny fan, as long as I keep the vents clear of St Bernard fur 😊 , even when I am maxing out the CPU with so many synths / fx that I get dropouts in SONAR.  If I leave the lid closed, it gets pretty warm doing this, but if I leave the lid open and the screen turned off (because I use an external 42" monitor so I can see what I am doing at 1920x1024) it doesn't really heat up.  

So, a small form factor *can* work.

 

I also have been setting up an equally ancient but much faster rackmount HP server as a DAW, and am redesigning it's fan system and casing to use a couple large diameter slow fans instead of the buckets of tiny fans that together sound like concorde taking off even at their very lowest speeds.    Without them being allowed to spin up to a fleet of airforce jets doing stunts, the system rapidly overheats. 

So, a big form factor isn't necessarily quiet, or cool. 

 

 

 

 

[Amberwolf]

Forgot:  "everybody" eventually needs to upgrade something in the computer--at minimum the harddisk or ram.  Some of the minis I looked at a while back had no ram slots at all--what you bought was what you got. 

Many small FF machines have no space in them to add a drive (and the existing one is probably an NVME card these days), so you have to use an external, and most of the minis I looked at only have USB (no eSATA or external NVME slots) so as long as that fast enough for you, it'll work, but otherwise you're left with the sometimes complex and occasionally risky task of cloning your existing drive to a new one and entirely replacing the original...if it's actually removable.

 

These are also true of most laptops.   Many of the laptops I looked for a modern replacement for my ancient one dont' have ram slots, and some don't have a removable harddisk--the SSD was actually built into the mainboard (but most used an NVME card). 

 

 

 

 

 

[Clint Martin]

Deleted.

Edited July 8 by Clint Martin

[pedwal wally wally wha]

fwiw i just replaced an aging laptop with a blackview mp100 (350 euros) and i get core-balanced ~30% cpu load running the demo songs from live11 and so5 at 64(!) sample buffer just using asio4all on the onboard audio chipset, sound is smooth and ui interactions don't spike anything, i'm a happy camper

 

[Clint Martin]

I'm just trying to educate myself a little here so be patient with me.

How does the Mac mini get such glowing reviews for pro audio with the base model (16gb ram with maybe a 256gb hard drive)

when a loaded Geekom mini pc seems to have heat issues? (IT15 AI Ultra core 9 285H 32gb ram 2 tb hard drive).

I'm surprised that apple can work without thermal issues and provide performance, while PC's still have issues.

Is the Mac mini not all it's cracked up to be? Are Pc's better than I'm making them out to be?

[kitekrazy1]

2 hours ago, Clint Martin said:

I'm just trying to educate myself a little here so be patient with me.

How does the Mac mini get such glowing reviews for pro audio with the base model (16gb ram with maybe a 256gb hard drive)

when a loaded Geekom mini pc seems to have heat issues? (IT15 AI Ultra core 9 285H 32gb ram 2 tb hard drive).

I'm surprised that apple can work without thermal issues and provide performance, while PC's still have issues.

Is the Mac mini not all it's cracked up to be? Are Pc's better than I'm making them out to be?

I would think it's Apples architecture.

The best deal in the Apple world may be their  Mac Mini until Apple execs get wind of it.

[Starship Krupa]

On 7/16/2025 at 9:19 AM, Clint Martin said:

I'm surprised that apple can work without thermal issues and provide performance, while PC's still have issues.

Don't be. Several years back, Apple decided to bring a HUGE amount of engineering effort to bear on the issue of processor power consumption and heat generation. They came to the conclusion that the best way to go about it was to develop their own CPU's.

So "Apple silicon" was engineered from the very start, ground up, to be more efficient.

Microsoft is only now getting serious about Windows on ARM, so they have some catching up to do. Multiple DAW's including Sonar, now have ARM builds. So perhaps in the near future, the answer to what would be the best tiny Windows DAW computer will be "one with an ARM CPU."

[T Boog]

On 7/7/2025 at 8:55 AM, Alan Tubbs said:

Small form computers have heat problems.

Yes. I tried a micro PC a few years ago to record my music. It ran CbB and all my vsts fine but I returned it because it ran too dang hot. I decided to go with a humble tower pc and I'm glad I did. This fan is quiet and keeps the PC cool.

 

[Amberwolf]

4 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

 Multiple DAW's including Sonar, now have ARM builds. So perhaps in the near future, the answer to what would be the best tiny Windows DAW computer will be "one with an ARM CPU."

Very OT, but if you use your ARM-based DAW to play all your music for you, does that mean you have an ARM Band? 

 

 

[pedwal wally wally wha]

13 hours ago, T Boog said:

I tried a micro PC a few years ago

they've improved since then

[Starship Krupa]

On 7/17/2025 at 2:40 PM, T Boog said:

I decided to go with a humble tower pc and I'm glad I did.

That's really the thing: unless you need to be able to schlep your computer around, or you don't have enough room for a tower system, a tower is still the way to go. At least for now, at least today. I keep thinking it's got to change, but it keeps not changing.

Micro PC, if you want to set up a system in your living room for media and browsing, in a public space as a kiosk, they're great.

Laptop, if you need to be able to work on the same system both at home and in hotel rooms, dorm rooms, coffee shops, need to take it into a client, that's the ticket.

But the micro PC will have compromises regarding thermals and will favor price over performance. And will have fewer options when it comes to upgrading.

The laptop will likely be packing more CPU/GPU wallop but will also have compromises around thermals and limited capacity for expansion. The built-in screen will be smaller than the smallest screen you'd ever consider for anything but a laptop and there will be only one of them.

So if size and portability aren't critical, and by that I don't mean "handy to have," the tower still rules 45 years after IBM created the form factor. It's the other ones that are "humble."

Horses for courses, says I. I have a tower for resource intensive uses, I have a laptop for carrying around. I don't try to take the tower out of the house and I don't try to make the laptop do everything the tower can.