A new PC, what should I spec it with?

Some will disagree with me . . . . of course.

PC's have not really moved on since around 2013(ish). I have a very highly spec'd (not just for the time) 10 year old laptop running Win7 professional and it absolutely wipes the floor with ANY Windows 10/11 anything. New Windows is more akin to Apple products, ie: can't really tweak/change things as much to your likeing or to improve performance. Using Win7 I can do pretty much anything I want (cut power to non essential programs/systems, fully customise what the PC is augmented towards, playing music etc). Yes you can do that on newer software’s/systems but it's more of a headache and it's nowhere near as customisable.

New Windows seems like it's made for kids (touchscreen generation) with the layout/configurations geared towards apps and touchscreen nonsense.


Anyway, new vs slightly less new rant over . . .


You already have an SSD (good) and the i5 is fine, speed is a little slow but won't make any difference to your SQ.

Not sure what you mean by "safeguarding" do you fear it may just die one day? Highly unlikely (although a credible worry!) but if you do backups and have it on your NAS drive you have nothing to worry about, upgrading to a new PC is not really going to impact anything but if you're worried that's your call as of course newer 'should' be more reliable and last longer (just on a technical logic).


Slightly confusing as you say you're looking at 'improving' your music source but then you're 'not looking for a massive increase in music quality'??


Do you mean improving the usability/experience of it? Is it slow or unintuitive?



Ultimately I don't like PC's for music anyway, even if you tweak them and address their inherent problems (noise, power hungry etc) they still won't sound as good as most streamers running an SSD in my opinion.

EDIT: Also with PC, you're usually limited to USB output for audio . . . . it can sound okay but it's not optimum, again only in my opinion. Comparing to a dedicated coax/AES/optical etc, something always sounds a bit off about them.

Oh they do the job mate . . . and they do it well.

But their philosophy is so closed-format that if you want to tweak it to your liking, it's a no from Jobs.


I don't like the "we have perfected it and you mere peasants cannot improve things" . . . that's how I read all that approach. 

Emm, how deep does the rabbit hole go? Yup, endless. I'd say it's far less about a better PC and far more about config options to limit, focus or turn off features and services in Windows that are unnecessary and to tweak the config of your music player software. There are various discussions over at the AS forum and some software scripts that faciltate that -- though one can easily go too far if not making incremental changes and make the OS not work well. I got tired of making a hardware change or OS update and then trying to figure out what config changes I had been using most recently so I could get back to that.

Or you can get a built for purpose music server/player that has done all that commercially, and probably runs on a highly modified version of Linux.

Or what I'm about to try is Euphony, which is an integrated operating system and player that runs on PC hardware. You can download a trial copy for 30 days I think.

Don't forget putting a linear power supply on the PC as an option to improve things and changing the clock speed of the CPU's.

etc, etc.

As I am now mobility disabled, I spend a lot of my time on the PC, and always have some music playing on it. A few months ago I invested in a SPDIF (Matrix Audio) and an Artisan Silver USB cable, so have a decent sounding system now, pc to SPDIF on USB, then SPDIF to my PS pre/dac on a decent HDMI using the i2S connections. So was just wanting to change the PC to see if I could improve things, music quality is very good for what I have in way of amplification/speaker/ interconnecting cables

I'm trying lol

Yup, that's kind of what I was hinting at, a sensible conclusion you have made.

Assuming it is the same as the NUC I happen to have right next to me, a 19V (3.42A) LPSU could well improve your setup. At least it's not going to make things any worse. Although that isn't going to be super cheap due to the high amperage requirements.

Having said that you may be able to use a slightly lower spec (cheaper) LPSU, say rated at around 2A. I don't know how much it actually draws (as they usually go on the side of caution). This area is for someone more knowledgeable than me to advise though.

It won't make your PC any faster but it may make it electrically 'quieter' which could certainly yield audible benefits.

Good luck!

Hold up, has this forum just prevented someone from spending money? My God....whats happening here?! lol

I3 core totally underclocked ALL BIOS WORK, LPS 19Vdc AROUND 5 AMPS solid will transform it, Linux OS, on a NVIE samsung 980 pro, output card either a rednet or Dante enabled you can deliver Is2 via RJ45 as well pretty sure the ps audio has an input for this. Rework on the motherboard also pays dividends. Playback M-connect/ Bubble UpNp plus HQplayer you'll be happy

Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing but dare not write it!!🤣