quote:

Originally posted by junkproject The SSD in macbooks are just M2 SSD. Which is pretty common nowadays in laptops\motherboards.

Its just becoming a more common things in higher end PCs nowdays but it wasn't even till very recently that there was a decent consumer M2 SSD available. Most PC laptops are still stuck on SATA3 for SSDs.

Its been a common thing for several years on most Macs.

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Originally posted by djnitride Its just becoming a more common things in higher end PCs nowdays but it wasn't even till very recently that there was a decent consumer M2 SSD available. Most PC laptops are still stuck on SATA3 for SSDs. Its been a common thing for several years on most Macs.

High end? I have a one and a half year old motherboard that has m2 slot. Any z97 motherboard has that slot. Mac didn't start using m2 drives until 2\3 years ago.

Before that Mini PCIe drives where out for pc before mac started to switch to ssd.

M2 drives in macs are nothing special."Most PC laptops are still stuck on SATA3 for SSDs." That's not true at all, alot of laptops have been using m2 drives for awhile now.

Zenbook ultra books started to use m2 drives since 2012.

Last edited by junkproject on Apr-17-2015 at 02:37

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Originally posted by junkproject High end? I have a one and a half year old motherboard that has m2 slot. Any z97 motherboard has that slot. Mac didn't start using m2 drives until 2\3 years ago. Before that Mini PCIe drives where out for pc before mac started to switch to ssd. M2 drives in macs are nothing special."Most PC laptops are still stuck on SATA3 for SSDs." That's not true at all, alot of laptops have been using m2 drives for awhile now. Zenbook ultra books started to use m2 drives since 2012. Where do you think mac get's it's drive from? Samsung and intel.

Well most of the ones I looked at didn't have that. Granted I must have missed it on the Zenbook somhow as I do take a look at the various laptop offerings from time to time.

My z77 motherboard on my desktop does not have an M.2 slot and I have only had it around 2 years or so.

Will z77 is almost 3 generation behind, with x99 being the latest and greatest.

Most ultra books from 2012 have m.2 drives or some form of mini pci ssd.

Last edited by junkproject on Apr-17-2015 at 02:54

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Originally posted by junkproject Will z77 is almost 3 generation behind, with x99 being the latest and greatest. Most ultra books from 2012 have m.2 drives or some form of mini pci ssd.

Yep, that's when Macbook Pro Retina adopted the drive as well I believe.

Yeah, the only reason to upgrade from z77 is M.2 at this point for me. We will see if Skylake offers enough of a performance boost to get me to upgrade my desktop. Sucks that Intel has really been slacking lately because they have no competition

I appreciate the discussion, but at least for my purposes the technical banter is kind of outside my understanding.

One of my two questions I haven't seen addressed: Is there a savings of buying a say decent $550 laptop and installing a higher end $200 processor yourself instead of buying an $900 laptop with a high end processor already included? (in the same way it is cheaper to change the oil in you vehicle yourself since you are saving money on convenience and labor) Is the installation of a new processor reasonable for an novice?

___________________
Songwriter/artist and reluctant producer.

My Soundcloud

Almost all of the newer laptops the cpu is solder on the system board. So that's not an option.

Even if it was an option you would likely run into all kinds of thermal / power issues. Most laptops are barely designed to dissipate enough heat for the CPU they come with, much less a cranked up one.

Trancelover03591, just curious what does your typical DAW project look like? What are your most used / CPU heavy plugins? How many tracks playing at the same time is a typical project for you? All of that factors into how good of a CPU you need.

The reason people recommend quad core is because it gives you headroom allowing you to add more plugins/effects without having to constantly bounce after a certain point. Its possible to produce just fine on a dual core, it just has no headroom when you really need to crank it...

@nitride and Junkproject - you relaize that as of the end of last year, there wasn't actually a single SSD that could saturate the full available bandwidth of Sata3 (at 6gb/s), let alone m2 (10gb/s).

M2 was designed to keep up with PCIe SSD speeds but in a smaller form factor and instead of using multiple lanes like a desktop PCIe protocol can, the M2 protocol just uses 2 x PCIe 2.0 standard lanes, where full PCIe can use 3.0 protocol.

The last time I bought an SSD was at the end of last year and unless something changed in the last three months, there's really little to no advantage of using an m2 over a Sata 3, apart from form factor and the ability to future proof yourself.

Back on topic,

Buy the best laptop you can afford right now and slap in a samsung SSD [/thread].

quote:

Originally posted by djnitride Trancelover03591, just curious what does your typical DAW project look like? What are your most used / CPU heavy plugins? How many tracks playing at the same time is a typical project for you? All of that factors into how good of a CPU you need.

Here is a screenshot of my project "Spring Song"



Here is the audio to give it context:



I make simple, melodic EDM. It isn't as CPU heavy as most styles but towards the end of a project I can't play my projects to do a final mixdown without constant skipping. I'll have any combo of like 3-10 sylenth and 2-10 nexus instances. Those are probably the main things taking CPU.

___________________
Songwriter/artist and reluctant producer.

My Soundcloud

Last edited by Trancelover03591 on Apr-17-2015 at 18:30

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN @nitride and Junkproject - you relaize that as of the end of last year, there wasn't actually a single SSD that could saturate the full available bandwidth of Sata3 (at 6gb/s), let alone m2 (10gb/s). M2 was designed to keep up with PCIe SSD speeds but in a smaller form factor and instead of using multiple lanes like a desktop PCIe protocol can, the M2 protocol just uses 2 x PCIe 2.0 standard lanes, where full PCIe can use 3.0 protocol. The last time I bought an SSD was at the end of last year and unless something changed in the last three months, there's really little to no advantage of using an m2 over a Sata 3, apart from form factor and the ability to future proof yourself. Back on topic, Buy the best laptop you can afford right now and slap in a samsung SSD [/thread].

Hence, that's why i said M.2 drives are nothing special...

Also PC's already hitting 1.2 gig speeds with ssd way before any mac has. I'm not a pc fanboy by any means. I'm on my fifth mac laptop and own a mac laptop since the power pc days.

Windows\linux PC have always been the forefront of the technology edge.

Anyways, back to the topic. The best bang for your buck laptops are probably the new Dell 13 xps.

Last edited by junkproject on Apr-17-2015 at 19:33