Back in '14-'15 I figured if I was serious about music I’d need a proper work machine.
I poked around on some forums and bought a preconfigured build suitable for audio production. It took a few days to build as it was my first ever project.
Due to moving cities, covid and the switch to Mac it has gotten little use last 3 years. Actually, its been unplugged, collecting dust and always a waste of space.
Well! not anymore, I decided to build up my “traditional” studio setup again. PC, Display, Speakers, Interface and Gear. And im actually quite pleased with my decision as im constantly running into storage issues with my Mac so I want to use my MacBook on the go and for finalising ideas.
However, my pc is quite old and outdated (I think?!). Mind you, it works well but I feel it could use some TLC if im serious about using it proper again.
A few questions:
Is windows 11 worth it over windows 10? and if so what specs would I need to upgrade parts?
I like a clean slate, would it be wise to reinstall windows and start fresh? Everything is functionally now and I don’t want to mess things up
If there are old projects you want to open you might want to just leave it as is. I kind of wish I had a snapshot of one of my old pcs because I had so many odd free vsts.
Otherwise may as well go with a clean install.
From what I’ve read and experienced there’s no performance hit running Windows 11 and is in some cases faster. Not necessarily better but if you’re not trying to preserve anything it shouldn’t do any harm to upgrade, assuming you meet the system requirements.
It’ll also take care of all the visuals.
There’s a pc health check app from Microsoft that will tell you what components, if any, are incompatible with Windows 11. It should show up in windows update with the notification to upgrade to 11.
From memory, I’m fairly sure Skylake isn’t a supported CPU generation, I believe it’s 8th gen (Kabylake R) or higher for official Windows 11 support.
And you’d need a mainboard with TPM 2.0, a quick Google looks like that mainboard can accept a TPM module board (if you can source one). But you’d then still need to create a custom installer with something like Rufus to get past the CPU generation restriction.
If it’s all still working well right now, doubling the RAM is probably the most cost effective upgrade, and sticking on Windows 10 a little while longer.
I don’t know from experience (yet) but I didn’t upgrade to 11 because I read some of korg’s drivers which work with 10 aren’t quite compatible with 11. Don’t know what your whole set up is but might want to browse around a bit to see if there are any known w11 compatibility issues with any manufacturer drivers for your existing hardware that you want/plan to interface with.
thanks for all the answers! getting extra ram should be easy enough.
I guess i’ll stay with 10 a while longer. I might do a clean install later doen the road of I get more grip on my files.
I have a 500gb ssd laying around so when I do a clean instal i can swap the 128 ssd for the 500.
what will double ram give me performance wise? any brands i need to consider or is compatibility not really an issue? Also, should i consider replacing my current ram or is the performance as good as 8 years ago?
max out your ram, that said it probably won’t take more than 16gb combined. I got a good deal from crucial. If you have one 8 just buy another 8, if you have 2 fours replace both with 8’s. Modern ram sticks don’t really need to be matched to see equal performance from what I understand.
Google your model and check the max specs before you commit to purchasing things you don’t need. I thought I had 2 four gigs and it turned out I had one 8 gb already so I ended up buying more than I needed. oops.
so if possible, open up your machine first and verify if its one stick or 2 currently installed. that’s the moral of the story.
If you have the mainboard manual (or see if its on the asus support site as a pdf), that should tell you what kind of RAM to buy, I’d imagine it’s max supported is DDR4-3400 and you may well have 4 slots being an asus gaming board.
Check the memory that’s already in there, it will be have its type and speed on the sticker.
RAM can be run mismatched, but all RAM will run at the lowest spec sticks frequency and latency. (Which is likely fine for audio production work).
