[SOLVED] Should I upgrade this laptop for music production?

[Mimo69]

Hi everyone.
I have an acer laptop with an Intel Core i3 5005U (2000 MHz) and 4GB of RAM. The pc has done well for the university and to play even some games. However now I am producing music, and sometimes some plugins absorb all the pc (in fl studio plugins as bias fx or omnisphere reach 90% of use). I was looking at some better laptopts, but I could buy a better one from next year. Meanwhile, I was thinking about increasing RAM from 4GB to 8GB, which has a value of 60 dollars, to get better performance with VST and plugins in music production.
What do you think? Is it worth doing this as a momentary solution? Or the differences will not be as noticeable and I better keep the money for next year.
Thank you.

 

[Quanticriver]

I have a few friends in the music industry, that use their pc's to produce music,
They all use desktops for their production. Those plugins are very cpu heavy

I REALLY wouldn't recommend using a laptop as you will have to wait for some of your effects to load which will seriously hamper your creativity

If possible use a desktop pc with as beefy a cpu as your budget allows

as laptops even the "powerful" ones basically have castrated cpu's for power and heat concerns

tl;dr avoid using a laptop for these things, ram will help but not much, cpu is what matters - and that is what a desktop is for

 

[Ralston18]

What application or applications are you using to produce music?

Most applications have some listing of hardware/software requirements along the lines of "minimal", "recommended", and "best".

You do not want "minimal" and you do want as much "best" as you can afford.

Adding RAM is generally a cost-effective way to boost performance. However, that may be moot if there is indeed some other bottleneck that slows the application being run.

With some planning and forethought, you might be able to buy extra RAM now and then install it into a new laptop next year.

Generally difficult to accomplish. But you may be at least able to sell the RAM to recover some costs at that time.

 

[Mimo69]

What application or applications are you using to produce music?

Most applications have some listing of hardware/software requirements along the lines of "minimal", "recommended", and "best".

You do not want "minimal" and you do want as much "best" as you can afford.

Adding RAM is generally a cost-effective way to boost performance. However, that may be moot if there is indeed some other bottleneck that slows the application being run.

With some planning and forethought, you might be able to buy extra RAM now and then install it into a new laptop next year.

Generally difficult to accomplish. But you may be at least able to sell the RAM to recover some costs at that time.

I use fl studio. When im doing things only with my pc, the daw goes really fine. When I connect my Guitar and some plugins, I dont have problems, just a little bit of waiting to open the vst or plugin. But with nexus + midi Guitar 2 or when I try to use some pads from omnisphere, the computer gives me glitches and lag.

 

[Ralston18]

Glitches and lags:

Well that goes back to @Quanticriver's post about using desktops versus laptops for music production.

The existing laptop may simply not be up to the task. You may find a high end gaming laptop that would work; likely to be expensive.

If you are serious about music production it may well be that a desktop system is truly needed. I do not know.

Not producing music so I will defer to the Forum musicians community accordingly.

 

[Quanticriver]

I would recommend getting a recent AMD cpu (think zen 2 or better gen)and build a desktop around it, 16 gb of ram would be great too

you basically have no need for a dedicated gpu, which would cut costs dramatically

i'd say you can get it done for 500 or less dollars