Low cost/Minimal modern laptop capable of running VCVRack

Lounge
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I know what I’d specify just in general for running VCVRack: Intel i5 or i7, dedicated graphics, and 16mbyte memory. Those are about $1000 laptops these days.

But I also had a company windows laptop on a trip that I stuck Rack on, and it seemed to perform decently - something like an i5 with Intel built-in graphics.

What has been people’s experience with inexpensive laptops and running Rack? My current laptop runs Rack, but seems underpowered & can’t handle very large patches. It’s from 2010 though. :grin:

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well, it they use good modules they can make patches 4X bigger than if they use bad modules. And that doesn’t cost anything…

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i used to rock a 2012/2013 lenovo s400 ideapad mostly for simple office stuff. it had a 3rd gen i5, with integrated intel hd 4000 graphics, and upgraded ram to 8gb and os to win8.

i could make very simple patches on it, but anything a little complicated would cause crackling (resource starving). so i’d recommend something newer than that, and with dedicated graphics if possible.

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smaller is nearly always possible :slight_smile: - the (most probably) smallest vcvrack installation :)

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great question and thanks for asking! Im going to keep an eye on this. I have been wanting to add another laptop and this could come in handy.

I plan on going non apple this time. but I have had really good luck with their refurbished models. I have never punched a refurb pc product. any good tips on this front?

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I have a HP Pavillion Ryzen 4600H cpu and a Geforce 1650 graphics card laptop
with 8gb ram,
I haven’t yet done any patch that made it crackle,
and most of the time I use only 2 to 3 threads
today the HP Pavillion comes with a ryzen 5600H and 16gb ram and a RTX 3050
which should be pretty capable.
you get something like this for about 7 - 800$; see here:

or maybe something like this secondhand?

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set a budget and spend it all! that’s my only tip!

idk where you are, but there are some MSI gaming laptops with i5/i7 (10th gen) + rtx3070, brand new, for about 1k$

p.s. I think it depends on where you live and the fact that you should be lucky to find one in the moment you need one. I’ve purchased a refurbished dell precision 7710 (17.3" fantastic display, quadro M5000M 8 Gb, 1 M2 + 1 SSD, 48Gb RAM, i7-6920HQ 2.90GHz) for 1500€ about 3 and a half years ago…I use it a LOT for my job (mostly weird CAD/CAM molds projects), for my studies and for my music projects (vcv rack of course) and it’s still a little beast. ok, I take care of it properly, but it’s still like brand new (still on win10 because it’s said that win11 is not supported on this machine).

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