I have a laptop nearing the end of its life with (what I thought was) a good cpu/ram and an integrated graphics card. It was fine at running a DAW but it couldn’t run 10 year old games at a non fucky framerate. I would include its details but I didn’t memorize them and don’t have access to it right now.

I’m looking at replacing it with a minipc because laptops are getting more user hostile but I like the idea of having something I can move around occasionally. So I look on the reddit spreadsheet, and I’m struggling because there often seems to be a gap between the listed specs on the spreadsheet and the actual thing itself (ie “this thing has this gpu” vs “this thing has a slot for you to install a gpu”).

I absolutely need something that will run Reaper or an equivalent well with a billion tracks and add ons at the same time. I would very much like to run ten year old games reliably at a good framerate. And if possible I’d like to badly run a local ai which I understand basically requires a decent standalone gpu, but it isn’t that important because they’re a dumb toy that has no actual use. Is there a minipc that I can buy prebuilt that does that, and if not how close can I get? I don’t know enough about hardware to answer my own question with the spreadsheet sorry.

  • sic_semper_tyrannisEnglish
    3·
    11 hours ago

    I don’t know anything about Reaper besides a quick search. Most people say memory is important and I don’t see any mention of GPUs.

    Minisforum makes great mini PCs. Get one with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with lots of memory/RAM and storage to suit your needs. The APU is very capable for gaming, plenty strong for 10yr old games, and these also have an NPU for AI work.

    https://www.minisforum.com/collections/elitemini-series/products/elitemini-ai370

    https://www.minisforum.com/pages/ai-x1-pro

      • sic_semper_tyrannisEnglish
        1·
        42 minutes ago

        The dedicated GPU on that is much more powerful than the integrated APU on the other ones I listed. However, since Reaper doesn’t seem to care much about the GPU (from my basic research) you’ll be plenty happy playing old games with the iGPU (it’s very powerful still) and benefit from the NPU for AI with the two examples I gave.

  • e0qdk@reddthat.comEnglish
    3·
    13 hours ago

    SteamDeck + Dock might work for most of that? Pre-built, can play games (obviously), it’s portable, 16GB RAM + 4 core/8 thread CPU. Use the Dock (or at least a USB-C dock) to hook up a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Can probably run Reaper in desktop mode – though I’ve never tried that personally. Doubt you’d get much in the way of AI on it (AMD, so no CUDA), but I haven’t really kept up with what crazy things people have hacked together in that space lately.

    • aaa999@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      10 hours ago

      This is an interesting suggestion but I’m moderately worried about having linux as my only os. Low cost though

      • e0qdk@reddthat.comEnglish
        1·
        9 hours ago

        I’ve heard of people installing Windows on it instead, but I haven’t seen one set up like that personally so not sure what the experience is like. There are also copycats/competitors from other vendors that ship Windows pre-installed if you like the idea of the handheld form factor, but for me the fact that the Deck officially supported Linux was a selling point so I haven’t investigated them much.