Can You Produce Music On A Gaming PC? (Verdict and Build Tips)
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- Опубліковано 23 лип 2024
- If you’re a PC gamer and you want to get started with music production, or if you produce music and you want to get into gaming - this video is for you. In this video I’m going to answer the question - “Can you produce music on a gaming PC?”
A friend asked me this question as he wants to get into music production, and already has a custom built PC that he uses for gaming. He was hoping that he could use his gaming pc for music production, but wasn't sure if any modifications would be needed. I thought I'd share my thoughts on this with you.
For the sake of this discussion, by music production in this case I’m referring to recording, or sequencing instruments or recording vocals, editing, mixing and mastering music, or any combination of these. Whether that’s your music, or if you’re producing music for other artists.
Then for a gaming PC, I’m referring to a high spec desktop PC built for modern, graphically intensive PC games - whether that’s a custom build or a pre-made machine.
So to answer this question, I’m firstly going to speak on using a Windows PC for music production, as opposed to using a Mac (which are commonly found in studios). Whether or not a PC is suitable for music production to begin with.
Then we’re going to talk about the hardware itself - is the hardware of a gaming PC suitable for music production, is there anything you need specifically for music production that you might not typically find in a PC designed for gaming and vice versa.
Then finally, I’ll conclude and offer some recommendations to help you decide what parts need to be in your PC if this is something you’re considering, so don’t miss that.
Let’s get started!
Products mentioned in this video (affiliate links, I get a portion of sales through them) -
BeQuiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler - amzn.to/3tfoWuy
BeQuiet! Straight Power 11 750W PSU - amzn.to/46wcx41
BeQuiet! Silent Wings 4 Case Fans - amzn.to/3Pr6Nl6
Samsung 870 Evo 1TB SSD - amzn.to/3LF06eh
Fractal Design Define 7 Case - amzn.to/3LF0wBn
Visit www.logicalincrements.com/ for up-to-date parts recommendations.
Intro - 0:00
Part 1: PC or Mac? - 1:34
Part 2: Hardware Considerations - 3:11
Part 3: Hardware Recommendations - 5:56
Conclusion - 10:39
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Visit www.joecrowtheaudiopro.com/ for more audio production tips & guides.
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Thanks for the video. I only question whether to go for an insulated case. There is generally a trade off between insulation and air flow - cases with good insulation normally have somewhat restricted airflow (less openings), whereas good airflow PCs have more openings, therefore you will hear more of what's happening inside. The fans have to work harder in an insulated case to overcome the restricted airflow - fans running faster means more noise. On the other hand a case with good air flow but less insulation means that the fans don't have to run as fast, meaning less noise. I believe that an efficient CPU that uses less power will need less cooling and therefore less fan noise. Another point - use larger fans because these move more air and are quieter than small ones - 140s rather than 120s.
great video - i have gone in the opposite direction in terms of fans, the more fans the better. This is because the more fans you have the lower the speed needs to be. If you fill your case with quiet fans and have the speed low, you will have great airflow and it will be close silent. I have 10 Artic fans in my case at low rpm and I can't hear them.
Thanks Sean. That's a really good point. I guess it depends on the fans and stuff. I've stuck with the 2 Fractal case fans and they're really quiet. Your machine probably gets better airflow as well though.
I actually came to comments to say the same thing. More fans, biggest fans you can fit and just lock them to really low speeds and it's cool, never ramps up and dead silent.
Any particular model of Artic fans?
The reality is, you can use ANY pc to make music!
True.
@@Tigerex966 just might need to update the sound card if anything
@@OffThaWallEnt indeed and that easy enough.
@@OffThaWallEnt well if u have an interface that wont matter
@@officialsentiment. true
Excellent, helped a lot, thanks.
Happy to help, Andrew!
I’m in the market for a new unit and this was very helpful in the current day & age of popular tech.
Nice! Been playing some destiny 2 and grinding pop rock tracks in pro tools! The one other thing you could have mentioned would be audio interface compatability. If you want a thunderbolt interface make sure your motherboard has a spot for a thunderbolt card!
Awesome combo 😀 Ahh yes very true. I mentioned I/O but was more thinking quantity than interface. Definitely a factor.
Will nivida 3080 be fine for this as well?
I'm going to use the Asus ART motherboard so inputs and outputs should not be an issue 2 of the newest 5 th gen and 1 4th Gen Nvme for now. A be quiet case and a 360 AIO cooler, seasonic 1200 psu too. Gaming or recording should be fine.
You told me a lot about pc's, great video
Glad I could help, thanks 🙂
thaks for the help!
My pleasure!
On the opposite extreme, I've made a ten minute fully realised tracks using a Dell e6410, running the quickest CPU I could grab that was 2 core (max for the motherboard - so there it is) and a "huge maxed out memory" of 8 Gig.
Obviously, my choice wasn't optimal for my needs - but it worked.
There were a few workrounds to deal with the limitations, obviously.
Point is, with a class compliant USB audio interface and accepting 44.1 KHz at 24 bit was it's full potential....
It worked!
Nice going!
What would you recommend for studio monitor speakers or should i just use regular stereo old logitech speakers. Also can you teach how to mix and master vocals professionally just bought an stellar 3 audiotech. And yeah would really appreciate any info i have tracks under my other channel will subscribe on both
Would a ryzen 7 7700x 4070 32gb ddr5 work?? And what daw would you reccomend the best i have fruityloops and mixcraft 9 pro studio
Right now i have an i5-11600KF 2060 6gb and b550 mobo it works ok i tried to use a shurems7b but the latency was crazy
IT WOULD BE CRAZY IF I WON THAT SYSTEM I WANTED ONE FOR A WHILE
I been using the same pc for both I have an Apollo twin with thunderbolt card pcie and works fine without graphics card but I installed a graphics card two times and upgrade the power supply and I noticed a changed on sound quality the sound it’s thinner no base idk why I still have to do some test to see if is the power supply or the graphics card but even with the graphics card unplugged from the power still the same maybe too much power going through the motherboard
Yes you can with excellent results
Great video, I kind of impulsively thought about the topic. My 7-ish year old pc is more geared towards gaming but I have a big question: why aren't the big DAW's GPU-accelerated?? Video editing software does it, it's just weird why music production companies aren't thinking about this.
I also have some (bad) numbers about my pc: its idle noise is around 30-35dB (but I don't record and am 98% digital) and in Ableton Live Pro 11 Suite the audio latency is 309ms ... ☹️. The pc has a Komplete Audio 6 mk1 interface btw.
I can't afford to use SSD's for my ~1Tb of sounds and Kontakt instruments so they're mostly on a hard drive. Some I do put on my 1Tb os SSD though.
Are there any tips you could give to at least get the latency down to
Because GPU's are designed to be good at specific graphical-related computations such as floating point operations and they actually don't handle non graphical computations nearly as well as the CPU. This is a no brainer for video production but for music it would actually be more inefficient to handle those kinds of computations and would result in lag. Some plugins have tried it by using floating point operations and such to compute the music but they're kinda janky.
As far as latency, it depends on cpu power, SPECIFICALLY single core speed. You can set lower latency settings in the settings of both Ableton and usually your ASIO drivers but be prepared for a much higher load on the cpu.
Oh one other tip: Wav audio files take MUCH less load on your cpu than midi files, especially when you start adding up plugins, so if you're running really low latency and your cpu starts getting overtaxed, consider bouncing some tracks down to audio files. Remember HOW plugins work in DAWs, they are computed by the cpu one after another in sequence. It's kinda like they're in a queue waiting for each other. So if the cpu can't compute them fast enough, THAT'S when you start getting crackling. The CPU literally falls behind the music.
I have my computer set up with an Audigy 2 with kx drivers and inline 10 band eqs to correct the sound of the speakers to monitor quality. What is weird is in Linux, you can also do it with 'easy effects' for any sound card which does the same thing, but in software.
My biggest tip for folk's building a music production PC when it comes to graphics cards (if performance of it is the lesser issue) is to checkout the signal output ports. Whilst I have a main 1440p gaming monitor, i like to use a number of USB C powered 1080p portable monitors from Amazon for music production to have a separate screen for the mixer and another for visual aid plugins like oscilloscopes and spectral analyzers and they can also recieve signal via USB C. It would be super handy to have USB C signal outputs on a GPU or at least more HDMI outputs as opposed to display port. Of course, if you were to be a gamer primarily then you would likely want more display ports instead. Just my 2 cents :)
Yea we work off a hackintosh Mac only using a server windows os for diagnostics
Good vid. My problem is I wanna upgrade my interface. Seems all the higher end interfaces are thunderbolt 3? Almost seems like we’re forced to go with Mac just based off that? Maybe new ones will start coming out for usb-c?
Hi Kayak, what interface do you have at the moment? There are manufacturers still making USB-C interfaces.
@@JoeAtClaricast Fire studio project. Im actually having a new PC built. Should be ready for pick up today! Its built for speed along with 2 TB4 ports. 12 cores! thx for asking. Cheers
An option is Gigabyte’s Vision D-P motherboard, which is what I have, using a PreSonus Quantum 2 Thunderbolt interface and a Samsung Thunderbolt ultra wide. Glad you found a solution though.
What's the best prebuild for high quality gaming and music production? 👀
I have a Razer blade advanced 2021 and it's perfect for me.
Heaps of power and mobility, sleek and great for AAA gaming 👌
I have 32gb ram, rtx 3080 and a 10th gen Intel chip.
I'm glad I went with the razer instead if mac! And it looks and feels 90% as good as a Mac.
I have A Dell XPS 8940 and a Nividia GTX 1660 Super graphics card - I am using Cubase 13 professional and want to know why is a high end graphics card necessary or not in my studio set up?
I am assuming that the XPS is a gaming computer.
Hi there, I wouldn't say a high-end graphics card is necessary. Good storage, CPU and RAM are the biggest factors - which most gaming PCs also happen to have. If you're doing video production then a solid GPU is essential.
Wound up disabled and have not recorded in years and my pcs are old My gaming rig is a Haswell 4790K with a 970 gpu and the recording rig is an old Xenon rig, 10 years old with a Motu896Mk2 interface. Old. Building a top shelf Ryzen 9 rig with a 4090 and 64 gigs of ram. Should do anything. Bought a Neve 2channel interface.
Sounds like a solid build, I really hope the recording goes well for you and you're able to get back into it!
great video, very helpful…. thnx
Nice, happy to help :)
I was also wondering if I can do two different drives with windows for different uses one for music and the other one for the gaming ?
Hey there, as in two different storage drives? I partition my drives to split things up. I've now moved everything onto one physical drive though as I've been able to get an SSD large enough which helps with loading times.
you can duual boot from a Live Linux USB Flash, even
Do you think in future macs could be compatible to do gaming like normal pc?
It's a good question. Macs currently do support some modern games. I don't see Apple ever being a real competitor to Windows PCs in terms of PC gaming though. I don't think Apple is really after that market. And the ease of building and modding your own PC makes a huge difference.
No. The majority of game companies don't want to use the metal API.
They also are not going to dump money into a small market.
Cool video. I think I'll buy a ~1000€ "gaming" PC for games and music and after a few months a M1 (or M2 if it's out by then) MacBook air solely for music and studying. Does that sound good?
You can definitely build a solid PC for gaming and music production for 1000€. MacBook Air would be nice for mobile audio if you have the money! What DAW do you use?
@@JoeAtClaricast I use Ableton Live 11
Hey, I'm building a gaming pc but I'm not sure if what im building is enough for recoring music. I have
Geforce rtx 4070 ti graphic car
I5 12600k intel
Cosiar rgm pro 32gb (2x16)
1 tb memory
750 master wat power supply
Gigabyte Z690 UD AX DDR4 mother board.
Would thay be enough?
Sounds good to me! I would check the recommended system requirements for the DAW you'll be using though, as this is a factor. It also depends on how many tracks/plugins you'll be needing.
@@JoeAtClaricast alright sweet. Thanks alot!!
Unfortunately I just built a very expensive PC with 10 Lian Li fans and a LianLi bi chambered case, which means more glass panels, and no where to put any sound dampening. A Lian li 360 AIO which has a fairly noisy pump when turned up. The case, cooler and fans alone was almost $700 so I guess I am not doing any serious recording any time soon. I just want to run amp emulators for my guitar for now though so I hope I’ll be ok.
Hi Nathan, that is a shame if the fans are affecting your recording. Can you record away from the PC? Like set up a recording space in another room or move the PC?
@@JoeAtClaricast Put the pc in a closet, close the door when recording, open it when you are not. You could fashon a large plywood box with soft black rubber insulation glued to the inside and cover the pc when recording a track, open it when listening. You could cut openings and make baffles in this box. Inside of these baffles you could bolt 4 140mm fans in a row. Since the fans are well inside of the box and the air needs to travel through several 90 degree chambers the fans should not be loud, You could do the same thing for the exhaust. Id seen people simply build custom wood enclosures like this that hid the fans well i side of the enclosure and the large volume of the box being furniture like kept them very quiet because the fans were just barely at half speed. They used a small home AC duct filter to keep out dust. Something like this but with a duct at the entrance and exit with dampening insulation to kill sound ua-cam.com/video/CB-_JIjhAyA/v-deo.html insulation like this can be glued to the inside of your wood case using rubber cement and a roller.and the duct bringing air in and out of the pc www.amazon.com/Neoprene-Sponge-Multi-Function-Soundproof-Conditioner/dp/B0B5TMHR26/ref=sxin_16_pa_sp_search_thematic_sspa?content-id=amzn1.sym.4a292f39-c27c-4e62-9abd-d68116d07607%3Aamzn1.sym.4a292f39-c27c-4e62-9abd-d68116d07607&cv_ct_cx=black+insulation+foam&keywords=black+insulation+foam&pd_rd_i=B0B5TMHR26&pd_rd_r=21eedfc2-6f3d-4683-b475-abb44c310dfa&pd_rd_w=Uib8n&pd_rd_wg=9qyQ7&pf_rd_p=4a292f39-c27c-4e62-9abd-d68116d07607&pf_rd_r=C6YS4DMDWAW5QAV8TGZF&qid=1690670133&sbo=RZvfv%2F%2FHxDF%2BO5021pAnSA%3D%3D&sr=1-2-2b34d040-5c83-4b7f-ba01-15975dfb8828-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9zZWFyY2hfdGhlbWF0aWM&psc=1 Good luck. You can sell that fancy glass case on Ebay and get some of your money back. The wood pc case can then be used to place equipment on like FX pedals or a homemade rack of outboard gear. Good luck! Hope the idea helps.
When building a PC for audio how do you prevent "hard page faults" and "DPC latency" ? I have a new computer with state of art or technology specsin terms of CPU, grpahics card and ram etc, yet I get all kinds of crackle and stutter in my audio. I'm ready to just buy a new computer and have it built specifically for audio production. The problem is I don't how to prevent or avoid this. It's driving me crazy. And yes I thought of buying a gaming computer, but those computers can also be victim to this plague. What do look out for when building it ot having it built?
@@muhammedalitoya1505 Thanks for your reply.. This is interesting. I'm not smart enough to change my motherboard, but I will try to disable core parking. I was suggested to use windows 10 too . I might look into that. Maybe on a seperate hard drive so I could boot in either O.S
@@hoffy1003 I personally dont see any significant performance hit from using win 10. Benchmarks show about 3% lower scores. Also to keep in mind is that Nvidia gpus introduce about 250 us latency just on their own. If your system is otherwise stable, it might require to switch the gpu to amd.
@@muhammedalitoya1505 Switching to Windows 10 might not affect the the performance other than just to stop the clicking and popping. I don't know. It's one thing I haven't done yet.
aren't hard page faults Normal?
DPC you ain't jessa whizzlin' dixie. that shit wasted $7000 on a machine I Just Knew would beat it. Micro$oft doesn't care.
My build: Intel Core i7-12700K, Deepcool Assassin 3, 32GB DDR5, Corsair 5000D Airflow case (with the two stock fans), two 1TB NVMe SSDs and a 2TB hard drive. I don't hear the fans when the CPU is 100%.
1 year latter, buying a very good and efficient graphics card is impossible.
Nice build! Yeah I'm seriously hoping my graphics card doesn't fail any time soon!
thanks dear .. but want to know which better i5 12400 or amd rezen 5600 G ?
i5-12400
@@saricubra2867 thanks dear
5700G or 5600G can be setup with AMD ROCm to perform AI & ML stuff also.
Allyaneedizzz get an X570 mobo that has memory QVL listing some RAM that four will work at full speed.
X570 Aorus Master w/ 4x32GB G.SKILL 4000 CL18 Ripjaws V , configure 32GB or 64GB RAM to the GPU in there, leaving 96GB or 64GB to CPU.
B550 is fine as long as you do not have need for extra M.2 NVMe SSD
Apple v PC? I’ve been thinking about building a new music production machine based on the Mac mini. I fell in love with Mac over PC way back in 2009.
Reaper is a great DAW that works on Mac and PC.
If I was going to play games on a PC the first game I would be interested in is half-life Alyx!
I currently play games on a Quest 2 and I love it.
I'm a PC guy but I've had Macs in the past and many studios have them. It's personal preference really for the audio side of things. I don't think PC can be beat in terms of gaming, though!
If you wanna use a Mac Mini, use a Mac Mini. They're really both as capable nowadays. If you want a Mac Mini for music production and a gaming PC for gaming, go for it.
My biggest flaw is that I only can find workstations as expensive as a gaming rig, so I get lost and want to choose the gaming rig over the less impressive sounding workstation! I’m not one to know the difference, so I see poor performance in workstation’s, where as I can game and take my time to make music as my second hobby on a gaming rig.
Yeah you normally get the most power out of the gaming rigs. Building one yourself lets you choose whatever you need, obviously a lot more work though!
Try cakewalk
Use wave plugins instead of stock
Many studio, Pro, for rent, personal pro, amateur and all, now I see many are using Windows PC Desktop as opposite as how it was some years ago. I think starting with the Trash Bin Mac Pro, they start to migrate to PC. Perhaps the good news about Apple Silicon Mac Studio or even Mac Mini can live up back again Mac 'desktop' on majority of studios.
Windows is fucked the way they do their DPC Deferred Procedure Calls, just fucked.
Yes you can. I started doing it 20 years ago, and have had many releases since then :P
Bro gaming pcs a literally perfect for making music, they run so smooth, I started off using a laptop 😂😂😂
I'm a music producer who wants to use gaming pcs for production only.
Yeah I can't find a graphics card at a reasonable price... unfortunately :( I was planning on building a PC but I didn't wanna spend TOO much on it.
They're so expensive at the moment! I feel your pain 😣
Now they have GPU audio plug ins that use your GPU RAM! 🤟💀🎸
It's expensive but if you want a dedicated audio pc try rokbox
that heartbreaking moment when I have used logic for years :') of course thats the one that isn't compatible! lol
Ahh yeah. I wouldn't mind keeping up the practice with but it's the only DAW I don't have access to.
A very importen thing is that a laptop send less radiation out then a gaming pc, So if you are close to a gaming pc it can go into your recordings. So you need some space to have the pc 3-4meter away from you. So a laptop would be better for less noise interference.
Do you mean electrical interferance? Radiation from a PC wouldn't affect your recordings. Ideally you'd be over 3-4 metres away anyway to avoid picking up fan/disc sounds.
Does the soundcard matter?
Hi Christopher, good question. If you're producing music on your gaming PC I would suggest getting an _external_ sound card/audio interface. Which would be used instead and would bypass any internal sound card.
@@JoeAtClaricast does an external interface improve sound quality and resolution? I've read it doesn't it only improves recording quality
A good audio interface gives you far more flexibilty with your inputs, outputs and recording options. And yes, a good one would likely give you better sound quality on the way in and out than using the PC's built in sound card.
But what about an intern soundcard
I use an external soundcard/audio interface. A Focusrite Scarlet series device. This bypasses your Windows audio. There's no need for an internal soundcard upgrade if you're using an audio interface. If you don't have an interface, though, then it probably would be worth using an internal sound card that can get you higher quality (depending on what the motherboard already provides).
@@JoeAtClaricast thank you very much
How about gaming laptops?
The conversation is the same really. Laptops are more limited in terms of what parts you can replace and generally cost more for what you get. But obviously, you get the portability factor.
Latency.
I remember logic on windows years ago . Didn't take off
SSD is now almost obsolete, motherboards come with PCIe M2 so use it for your boot drive and for main storage its far to expensive compared to fast hard drives.
SATA SSD maybe, which fits in M.2 slot same as NVMe SSD. ;-)
Ofcourse we can produce music in a gaming pc because gaming pc needs very high specs for great performance.
:| music is all about single core performance. If ur single core performance is powerful then ur fine! 12100 is powerful. :)
I5 12400 means ur all good.
here....pc with 2 xeon 10 core each,256 gb ram..and orchestral templates of 800 tracks...no problem..
256GB RAM... yeah I don't think you have anything to worry about 😅
Maybe your upgrade is a $10000 Threadripper PC with 1TB of RAM.
Well iv switched from my mac book pro to a gaming pc just for the fact that it’s quicker
I hope you don't need 2 different PC's
The answer is no shit. Gaming PCs can do literally anything. My problem is that I get too distracted by the games and wont make any music. So now I have a dedicated setup for just music. The computer I got just for music is an M1 Macbook Pro.
I hate that i have to upgrade to this nerdy ass “diy” pc like wtf
Why's this even a question tho? I mean the answer's obvious isn't it?
another video where 0 information emerges what a pc should handle realtime audio with hardware daw at the same time. no one has knowledge of which chips and controllers should be optimized for each other between devices that should handle midi and audio. and how important the components are for signal to noise tatio is with headroom for this, and the handling with intersampling jitter latency roundtrip, the accuracy of the system timestamp, where and what to plug in usb device in motherboard for best results and extremely much more. and people talk about fans and motherboards but have no knowledge of how to optimize them and why. you say that 16 gb ddr is good? yes for small projects and stock plugins and no pro plugins or samplers that eat up frame. and the 16 gb is above everything else when the computer is maxed out. starting to get tired of all the videos where people are standing and talking without knowing in depth what is important and how to select components for an audio system. and you need different os profiles if you are going to have gaming and audio in the same pc.
Hi there, thanks for your comment, you make good points and I could have gone into this level of detail, but ultimately most producers/musicians/gamers who are wanting this question answered only need the basics to get started. Optimizing your fans and motherboard is something to consider down the line is you want to get a few percent performance increase once you really know what you're doing, which is beyond the scope of this video.
I agree that 16gb RAM is more for smaller projects. But I wouldn't want to put people off from getting started by making them think they need to shell out thousands for a build just to get started. I never had to make any of these considerations when I got started and getting started is the most important thing.
Kinda dumb question that title,
Any gaming PC is good for music production. You can even work in Linux. I have music production PC and the only difference from the fastest gaming PC in the world is that I didnt bother spending any money on any graphics card and I am using my CPUs intergrated graphics instead. Yes my PC can swallow that 4090, burp and say this lill boy is not enough, still hungry. Some say its best to buy just some cheap graphics card, but im getting super low latency no matter what I do and CPU runs very cool so I dont think a graphics card would impact my work at all. For sure if I threw a graphics card in my computer it would immediatly turn in to a gaming beast. If I spent fortune on RTX4090 this would be the fastest thing for gaming you can build to this day date. Music production PC is a gaming PC minus GFX and with as low noise cooling as possible.
Why are you advocating so strongly for MAC? They are shit, and well overpriced, judging by performance per dollar (PCU, GPU, connectivity, expandability, realiability and all of the parameters that i did not mention). Please, next time at least try to be fair. The only MAC advantage i can find is the LUNA.
Hi there, I agree. The comments I made were that Macs are more common in recording studios and that Logic is only available on Macs. Which is true. Other than that, I concluded that you can get a much higher-spec machine for the same price with a PC. I only use Windows PC for production. I don't advocate for using a Mac. Of course, part of it is down to personal preference.