As has been mentioned in many threads and conversations about Rack performance, there are three characteristics of a computer that determines whether Rack runs well, and the size of the patches you can build. Rack requires these three things from a computer:
- The highest possible single-core CPU performance. You can find a list here.
- Good graphics (aka. GPU) performance, which means a discrete graphics card in the computer (e.g. Nvidia or AMD) rather than builtin Intel graphics in the CPU. It doesn’t need to be a top-notch GPU, like you need for the heaviest games, but if the GPU performance sinks below a certain point the performance of Rack starts to suffer, since it uses graphics resources (OpenGL). You can think of Rack as a moderately demanding computer game with great sound.
- Good cooling. Rack puts a sustained load on the CPU (and GPU as well) and if the CPU cannot get rid of the heat it will start to reduce its power to protect itself, which means that its performance goes down quickly. This is what’s called “thermal throttling”. If your laptop fan is running like crazy when you’re running Rack, this is the reason. This means that typically a desktop computer will be a lot better than a laptop for running Rack, since it has much better cooling, and that a laptop with a big, bulky cabinet will be better than an ultraslim model, since, again, it will have a better cooling system.
In other words, the closest thing to a good pre-built Rack computer you’ll find, is a so called “gaming computer”.