[SOLVED] Pro audio on a SSD drive Laptop

[CrocoDuck]

Hi guys!

I have recently purchased this sexy thing. I configured it with a single SSD drive. It ROCKS and I feel confident in recommend it. However, I did not tested it extensively. I will publish a review later on.

Anyway. I will remove the standard Ubuntu it came with to install Arch Linux. I am gonna read this very carefully to make the most out of the SSD drive. Do you have any tip on pro-audio configuration and SSD drives you wanna share?

[j_e_f_f_g]

Did you get the i5 and 8 gig? That's more important than the ssd. Especially 8 gig for a 64-bit os.

[CrocoDuck]

Did you get the i5 and 8 gig? That's more important than the ssd. Especially 8 gig for a 64-bit os.

8 Gb were a must for me and I got them. SSD were a must as well as I wanted it fast and silent. I got the i3 though as I was going out of budget.

[gimmeapill]

For audio work on a notebook, I'd say you did well with the cpu choice.
The main difference between an i3 and an i5 is the turbo boost feature that will inevitably push the thermal envelope beyond what it should be, which has the nice effect of causing throttling - the last thing you want during audio work... (on a desktop things would probably be different due to lesser cooling constraints).

I've got a slightly older notebook with an i5 Ivy Bridge class cpu, and that Turbo Boost is best left disabled in BIOS. This allows me to set the CPU to perf mode and maintain a stable frequency without getting into any thermal issue.

If we compare the i3 5010 and i5 5200 offered for the Apollo and make abstraction of that max turbo boost frequency of 2.7 Gz, you just get a nominal clockspeed of 2.2 GHz vs 2.1 GHz. so you probably don't miss much here...
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php ... cmp[]=2440

Nice machine by the way

[CrocoDuck]

For audio work on a notebook, I'd say you did well with the cpu choice.

Phew! I was afraid someone was about to say "you kinda wasted your money, dude...". When configuring it I was fine with choosing the i3 as each if these cores is a good boost over the T4300 inside my Compaq Presario CQ61, which I feel it is still kinda fast and capable. Thanks for the cool considerations about the thermal stuff. That is an important thing since, as you said, notebooks are not dissipation champs.

Nice machine by the way

I am already loving it .

[JohannesTress]

Hi! I'm planning to buy a Thinkpad T450s with the following specs:

35 cm (14.0") Full-HD IPS LED matt (1920 x 1080), Intel® Core™ i7-5600U DualCore (2.60 bis 3.20 GHz), 512GB SSD, 12GB RAM, NVIDIA® GeForce® 940M with 1GB, No OS, no Docking Port

What do you think about this one?

Thanks indeed

[CrocoDuck]

Dang! You are gonna kill it! Every time I see a Lenovo I feel like they are well built. Also, they seem to have a fairly high amount of ventilation ports, so maybe it will not get too hot inside. Usually Lenovo has good Linux compatibility. Look at this, this and this for similar laptops compatibility (couldn't find anything on your particular one).

My only concern is the video card. Nvidia should be good on Linux, but it can span issues with audio depending on the kernel you are going to use and the card eventual audio capabilities (through HDMI for example). Also, make sure you read the configuration issues about Nvidea Optimus if this is the case for you.

[gimmeapill]

That T450s looks like a good one, with a better thermal design that the average - and seems to play well with Linux:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Thi ... 248.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Thi ... 700.0.html

If corners have to be cut, I'd skip on the i7-5600 and go for the Core i5-5300U.
Reason: according to the review above, the i7-i5600 cannot maintain it's max turbo boost frequency for more than about 30 seconds before throttling kicks in.
For audio work, this may not be particularly useful...

And my personal gripe: Nvidia...this causes problems sooner or later. I'd prefer Intel and no proprietary driver (unless gaming is high on your list).

Cheers,

LX

[CrocoDuck]

Done the Arch Linux install. It works very good after audio optimization, ~7 ms of latency (measured by jack_iodelay) using this configuration:

Code: Select all

/usr/bin/jackd -t5000 -dalsa -r96000 -p64 -n3 -D -Chw:USB -Phw:USB

where the USB device is my Scalrett 2i4. It is very very nice considering that I am running a full GNOME 3 with pulsaudio. Seems I don't need a realtime kernel at all, although it is installed (repo). Quite a performance boost with respect my previous Compaq Presario CQ61. I also got tlp running for battery life...

Using this as a base I have made a single ext4 root partition and configured a swap file slightly bigger than the RAM, just for the suspend function. Swappiness is 1. For the rest, it is the usual mantra: follow this until realtimeconfigquickscan says that everything is good.

By the way, the review is out.