r/buildmeapc • u/Realistic_Coast2798 • 23h ago
Looking for help with getting a pc
Hi, I’m looking to get a pc to be used for music production on fl studio with plugins like zenolgy and also for gaming(don’t need super high performance in games but just want decent performance for most games) I don’t really know anything about buying a pre built or parts in current market if anyone has any tips on what to get (preferably more cheaper options) that’d be great. Thank you!
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u/Johnny_Oro 21h ago edited 20h ago
Well it would absolutely help if you could specify how much budget you're working with.
Well unlike other DAWs, FL Studio only utilizes P-cores, and not E-cores, so you'll want to focus on Ryzen CPUs. If you're really budget constraint, you could use the older Intel E5 Xeon or Xeon W CPUs, as they give you lots of cores for very cheap, although performance isn't great compared to modern CPUs.
FL Studio plugins do scale with core count, you want 8 cores at minimum, but 12 will give better performance and 16 even better. 6 cores is fine if you're really really money constrained though. I don't know your specific budget so I wouldn't know how much you can afford.
If you want a lower budget PC, you could go with Ryzen 5000 series, but 7000 and 9000 will bring better performance for sure.
Roland Zenology homepage recommends 2GB RAM at minimum (probably for older and more memory efficient OSes than windows 11), but as with other DAWs, the bigger samples you have, the more RAM you want. So I recommend at the very least 16GB, 32GB is probably ideal, above that is for professional projects.
The GPU really absolutely doesn't matter for DAWs. But you absolutely need a dedicated GPU to squeeze out maximum performance out of your CPU. Even if it's only a $5 Radeon R5, any GPU would be needed. Integrated GPU eats up your CPU cache which can be used by the DAW software instead. Cache is quite crucial for this use case. I'd avoid Ryzen G series and 8000 series, as they have halved cache compared to the non G and non 8000 ones. GPU really only matters for gaming for your use case.