Recommendations for a mini-pc?

[Baylo]

Hi all,

My music pc recently gave up on life after 10+ years of sterling service. It was a self-built Intel i5. I initially thought I'd replace it with my laptop, but that's not really working out great for various reasons.

So instead I'm contemplating a mini-pc. There seem to be some compellingly powerful and pretty cheap options these days - from the likes of Minisforum and Beelink though these seem to be targeted at gamers. More established brands like Lenovo and Dell have more expensive options that seem to be targeted to offices. My ideal device would have plenty of ports, be whisper quiet, and be reliable for its primary/only purpose: music.

Does anyone here have any experience using one of these for Reason? I'm not doing any particularly heavy lifting, though it would be nice to have something quicker than the pc that died! I have Reason 12, a bunch of REs, a handful of VSTs (eg, Ozone, BBCSO), a Nektar Panorama, a couple of MIDI'd devices and an SSL2 interface.

Any recommendations or experiences are welcome. I know a Mac mini is an obvious suggestion, but I was hoping to stick with Windows for the sake of compatibility and familiarity. If possible, I'm targeting ~$600 budget.

Thanks in advance!

[miyaru]

Does it has to be small and maybe portable?

If not, stick to normal formats...... This is more cost effective, $600,= ain't much to build a decent PC!

Also the bigger housing of a normal format can house liquid cooling, to keep things quiet and cool easy.

[Baylo]

Thanks for the reply! It doesn’t *have* to be a mini-pc format - it’s been years since I bought a desktop and this was a new form factor to me that seemed to be getting some great feedback. My interest was piqued and, since I rearranged my hardware layout to accommodate the laptop experiment, this seemed like an easier substitution.

Plus, knowing that I could do 90% of what I needed with a 10+ year old i5, I figured that I likely didn’t need to worry about liquid-cooled, high spec machines.

[DaveyG]

You haven't said how you PC died. Given that it was self-built is there anything that can be reused to make a new one? You might get away with replacing the motherboard/CPU/RAM and maybe the boot disk.

[jam-s]

For mini PCs going the used/refurbished route can be quite a cost effective option. But keep in mind that a small case usually comes with the disadvantage of small fans that have to spin fast and thus are more noisy when they have to get rid of heat under heavy load. Used/refurbished desktop PCs from tech companies might be another alternative if they are not too old (e.g. from Dell or HP) as they usually have quite good thermal design and quiet operation demands as they are used in offices.

[Heater]

Yes. An M1 Mac mini.

[PhillipOrdonez]

Yes. An M1 Mac mini.

Nothing will be quieter than this. At least for the moment. While pcs are just now starting to move to ARM with the new Qualcomm chips, it'll take a while for those to be widespread, and afaik they aren't as heat efficient yet compared to Apple's M series chips, and thus not as silent, yet.

Also, have heard that water cooling is actually very loud louder than regular PC fans.

[bxbrkrz]

Hi all,

My music pc recently gave up on life after 10+ years of sterling service. It was a self-built Intel i5. I initially thought I'd replace it with my laptop, but that's not really working out great for various reasons.

So instead I'm contemplating a mini-pc. There seem to be some compellingly powerful and pretty cheap options these days - from the likes of Minisforum and Beelink though these seem to be targeted at gamers. More established brands like Lenovo and Dell have more expensive options that seem to be targeted to offices. My ideal device would have plenty of ports, be whisper quiet, and be reliable for its primary/only purpose: music.

Does anyone here have any experience using one of these for Reason? I'm not doing any particularly heavy lifting, though it would be nice to have something quicker than the pc that died! I have Reason 12, a bunch of REs, a handful of VSTs (eg, Ozone, BBCSO), a Nektar Panorama, a couple of MIDI'd devices and an SSL2 interface.

Any recommendations or experiences are welcome. I know a Mac mini is an obvious suggestion, but I was hoping to stick with Windows for the sake of compatibility and familiarity. If possible, I'm targeting ~$600 budget.

Thanks in advance!

My best advice is to keep an eye on that YouTube channel. This is what they do professionally. Mini Pc, portable game consoles, etc. The latest and greatest. @ETAPRIME 1.18M subscribers

https://www.youtube.com/@ETAPRIME/videos

[avasopht]

I've got a Dell Micro with a 10th-generation i5 CPU and an M1 Mac Mini. Both were used, well priced and awesome!

I've performed live with the Dell Micro with a 5" screen and without any screen.

Without a screen, I configured it to log in without a password and automatically launch Maschine. The musicians thought the Maschine was a standalone device.