Recording with cubase artist and Intel i3 windows setup?

[twangbuck]

Hi, I'm considering getting Cubase Artist 7. I've seen pretty good prices on new pc's with Intel i3 core processors. There are a couple I'm seeing with 6 GB of RAM and 1 TB harddrive. I know that fits into the general specs provided by steinberg for cubase, but I'm trying to get some real world opinions on whether that's going to work well with no latency issues and minimal drop out issues. I record audio tracks almost exclusively at this point with little midi use (just click track). I usually record anywhere from 20 to 40 audio tracks per project (granted some of those are only a few measures long).
Any thoughts? Also do I need to be concerned about whether it has USB 3.0 as opposed to USB 2.0?

 

[joru100]

One of my computers that I use has almost exactly what you're looking for. It's an Intel i5 2500k, and I use Cubase 6.5 Artist on it. I'm using the Presonus FireStudio Project with the Presonus ASIO Universal Audio drivers and I can get round trip latency of around 5-6ms. It's a powerful machine and can support a buffer of 128 for a long time without clicks and pops. Thing is it's a Firewire interface so I'm not sure how it would run with a USB interface. If you still have drops during monitoring and playback just mute those tracks and or disabled the effects and plugins until the mix stage.