How much processor/RAM do you find yourself needing?

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How much processor/RAM do you find yourself needing?

Postby ivaliotes44 » Wed Sep 01, 2021 7:02 pm

This is not a tech support question for IK. I've been playing music for a long time, but I'm getting into doing some stuff with a DAW. I have also been working in technology for decades, so I understand "buy what you can afford." That doesn't mean I want to overbuy.

In this context, are RAM requirements additive? If I am running MODO Bass and MODO Drum, does the recommended RAM go up to 32GB?

I'm not a professional and not wanting 100 tracks, but I would like to have some sense that it's going to work smoothly.
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Re: How much processor/RAM do you find yourself needing?

Postby Peter_IK » Wed Sep 01, 2021 7:29 pm

RAM requirements aren't really additive but you'll want to overshoot a bit if you will be using many tools simultaneously. You also have some optimization that happens in your DAW that usually helps balance things out (and that's not including the ability to do things yourself like freeze tracks or print them to audio tracks).

16GB would be the recommended minimum in my opinion. Even on a laptop (the M1 MacBook I'm using to type this has 16GB RAM and even with the new architecture allegedly making more RAM not as important for some tasks I'm happy to have it and feel it performs well).

For processors I tend to agree on at least 6-8 cores like this article states, I'd lean at least i7 (I'm not an AMD fan, but I'm sure they are capable): https://integraudio.com/what-pc-ram-cpu ... roduction/ You should try to get current gen if possible but it doesn't have to be top of the line. When I purchased my gaming PC a couple of years ago I went with the current gen i7 and my wife went with i9. I have no regrets, hers was just a build that happened to have an i9 and didn't cost much more. In that situation video cards were the important consideration and we both chose the 2080 which was near the top of the line at the time (but the ti version was way more and out of our budgets). These machines still perform amazingly for gaming and mine is great for music too. It isn't my main home studio computer (see below) because that one is tailored for music so it has more cores, more RAM, and a video card that's geared toward "production" tasks instead of framerates.

Of course my home studio machine has 96GB RAM and 24 cores but that's another story as I do need the headroom for hundreds of tracks and 24 channels of analog input/output ;) It is an older machine, though, so those specs sound impressive but you could get a current-gen 8 core machine with lots of RAM and do really really well too if you wanted a powerhouse.
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Re: How much processor/RAM do you find yourself needing?

Postby ivaliotes44 » Wed Sep 01, 2021 7:42 pm

Thanks. I've been in technology for a long time (systems architecture, networking, management, now cybersecurity), and I know that all requirements are application-specific. I also appreciate that gaming is the context in which a lot of performance metrics are communicated. I just don't game, so I can't translate. It's kind of funny - some of the most technical people I know can do almost their entire jobs on i3 laptops. :)

I think I'll go with 32GB (RAM is relatively cheap) and at least 6 cores, and go from there.
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Re: How much processor/RAM do you find yourself needing?

Postby ivaliotes44 » Wed Sep 01, 2021 7:56 pm

This is sure to sound stupid, but...so long as I have an external audio interface, I don't actually need a sound card inside the computer that is ASIO-compatible, do I?
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Re: How much processor/RAM do you find yourself needing?

Postby Peter_IK » Wed Sep 01, 2021 8:56 pm

ivaliotes44 wrote:This is sure to sound stupid, but...so long as I have an external audio interface, I don't actually need a sound card inside the computer that is ASIO-compatible, do I?

Correct. Not stupid at all. A proper external audio interface is the way to go, I know a lot of people want to just connect to their computer direct and feel it should just work but proper audio interfaces are stupid cheap these days and remove so much of the headache.
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Re: How much processor/RAM do you find yourself needing?

Postby ivaliotes44 » Wed Sep 01, 2021 10:02 pm

Thank you!
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Re: How much processor/RAM do you find yourself needing?

Postby ivaliotes44 » Thu Sep 02, 2021 6:03 pm

I’ve been noticing the huge leaps in performance by generation. The top 11th gen i5 with 6 cores essentially matches many 9th gen i9s.
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