A colleague of mine has come up with this pick-list of components, but he’s not a musician so couldn’t exactly recommend for a DAW/Cubase 11 user like me.
Nice to see he picked a Be Quiet PSU, but apart from upping the RAM to 32GB, does this list look suitable (for a non-pro like me)?
Part List - Intel Core i5-12400F, Thermaltake S100 MicroATX Mini Tower - PCPartPicker
I have a Be Quiet and it is quiet, but not quiet enough if you use a condenser mic. I had to put my machine in a cabinet that I close the door to when I am doing vocals, because a condenser mic will indeed pick up the sound of that computer. It is very quiet with the radiators but it still has a white noise to it. If you are not doing vocals or acoustic guitar near it, it is a wonderful machine.
If you do not plan on using a lot of midi instruments, which store information in ram, 16GB would be adequate, but no reason not to up it to 32GB, since the price is reasonable.
The list seems to cover the required basics, but don’t forget to go through and optimize the pc for recording by tweaking the window settings. Lots of great articles are available on-line to help you in that process.
Ah yes, I do recall setting my 3-PCs-ago PC to offer two Hardware Profiles for that exact reason.
As for the RAM, yes, I’d go for 32GB as I use Spitfire Audio BBC Orchestra. Doesn’t take much use of that to start pushing the 16GB I’ve currently got…