Suggested hardware spec. for Cubase on Windows?

[Xenon 6]

I want to put together a new computer for Cubase. I am using Windows because have a a considerable amount of interface (RME FireFace 800) and camera equipment using FireWire that is no longer supported by Apple but I can easily get a PCIe FireWire card for a Windows computer.
So my questions are, based on your actual experience what would you recommend for:

• CPU? Intel or AMD, which one and why?
• How much RAM before I have diminishing returns? I am thinking 16GB or 32GB.
• Primary hard disk 2TB NVMe, with a secondary SSD, and a backup 6TB HDD. Other backup in on pCloud.
• I have had good results with Gigabyte motherboards.

What workloads do I need to provision for?
I record at 48kHz and 16 bit. 40 to 60 tracks of mixed audio recordings and virtual instruments. I usually render the virtual instruments into a WAV file before mixing for portability and I can more easily return to it later. (Sometimes a singer will come back 2 years late saying she wants to the vocal again and if I no longer have a virtual instrument it can be a lot of work to reproduce something.)
During mix down there may be 4 to 6 bus tracks. I use Waves plugins 80% of the time.
My tracks will have 0 to 5 VST3 plugins on them for the mix but I am fairly conservative on plugins.

Don't tell me to use Apple. That is not my question. I have NEVER had a BSOD using Cubase on Windows 10. I think this is mostly due to the quality of the RME drivers. I am careful not to install random bits of software with unknown functions. People talk about the Windows v. Mac stability, but if you do Windows right you can get 100% stability. I have used other hardware with conflicts in the past, including UA and PowerCore PCI cards and it was a nightmare.

 

[rob aylestone]

You dont exactly encourage responses, by banging on about what you dont want, but i will give you my responses based on my own experience with cubase on PCs and Macs. Your requirements are very, very modest. At home, my Cubase work switched to macs, for no real reason, to be honest, but in my video studio at the office it is PC. I have gone through 4 PCs there, and my standard for recording now is 48K, 24 bit. Again, simply because that makes reusuing bits of old projects useful, now that Cubase makes it easier to bring in random old tracks into new projects.

I have a very large collection of sample packages. Spitfire, Crow Hill and Native in the main, but also lots of ‘specials’. Typical projects will have at least ten to twenty of instances, as I often have one instrument per track, so a simple chord might be three violins, or brass etc.

I also shuffle machines around, so the latest purchase relegates a perfectly sound PC to other duties, with the oldest, doing word and excel in the office, but retaining Cubase, so with a quick activate, i can if I need to, work on music in the office. It usually means the latest samples i have bought are missing, of course.

Just recently i have bought two bottom of the range PCs for specific things. An amazon teeny one attached to the back of the monitor to run a lighting controller. Another replaced a computer that would not update to Windows 11 which I needed for a particular bit of software. Again, an amazon cheapie was purchased. Cubase is happy on all of them.

I now have AMD, Intel and a mix of processor types. NONE considered cutting edge,
16 GB of memory in all of them as minimum, bar the tiny size one which has 8.

ALL have cubase on them. The recently replaced office one was running an old version of elements, which I had not bothered to update despite the elicencer warnings. The new office one did not have the capability to run that as the licence system expired 4 days ago. The cheapest cut down version was £80, so I asked Steinberg if thre was any special pricing for a customer who started in black and white on an Atari 520 in 1984. They gave me an extra Cubase 14 licence!

Processor speed is largely irrelevant now. Even with lots of samples, my projects never tax the processors, with my size projects. On ANY of the computers. I do suggest other things are vital though. Storage for samples. Big, fast SSD storage is vital because even your lowliest processors can draw data faster than the drives can supply it, and even with large amounts of memory, Cubase demands data almost randomly it seems, and if transfer speeds are bottlenecked, your internal memory will be working hard. Typical symptom is mouse cursor waits before you can select things while the machine catches up. At this stage, if you have the processor monitor visible you dont see the processor struggle, but you see the drives struggle to supply.

Modern CPUs seem to now only need serious attention if you are running dozens of virtual instruments using huge sample packages, especially if you run at 96k. 16gb of ram is easily made into 32 at little cost now, and my video studio pc has 64, because video needs are much higher. 16 works ok though, just those little delays. The most powerful one has a 1tb C drive, and that is nearly full because some installs insist on using C drive, and they're getting bigger. That computer also has two 8gb spinners and a 2tb ssd for storage, and i have my everyday sample stuff on the ssd for speed reasons. however, this is a real pain with older projects which use samples relegated to the spinners, and that is a major bottleneck, when a perfectly behaving project now hangs fairly often when unlike when it was produced, it now needs the data from a slower source. Occasionally cubase will crash when it cannot keep up. No such thing as a stable machine, because the user causes most crashes. I’m waiting for the load to free up the pause, but insist on pressing something. For me, I also run more than one app at a time, so while running cubase I might also have Premiere running, and maybe even audition at the same time. My video studio machine can just about cope with this. The office one cannot. Cubase is not a huge issue at all, but shifting video files is. Audio demands now are modest compared with 4K video.

Motherboards i select for their in/out. I do not really care if it has the right number of USB and monitor ports. My elderly firewire interface got retired simply because i could not find a motherboard that supported firewire on board, that worked for me. A plug in card was out because the extra deep video card prevented these being fitted! The studio computer has a motherboard. No idea what it is. your card should be fine in most, as I doubt you have the massive video card I have.

It sounds like your workflow is similar to mine with returnees requiring old projects reloading. That is ALWAYS a pain because by this time, those samples I loved are now the B team, on the big spinners, and slow! Library manipulation is a total pain.

For what it is worth, my mac back home crashes more than windows in the video studio. Always caused by loading bottlenecks, not the old mac vs pc thing. I also run a NAS drive so by the time i have eaten, i can load the pc created project into the mac at home, do a bit, then carry on next day back at the office. I dont know which OS has created my music any more. It is not important. For me, the biggest issue is hard drive speed, not memory or processor speed or type any more. Cubase allows so much now, but data wrangling is where speed and money matters. I want big SSD storage for samples. At the moment, price for large ssd drives is prohibitive. Better next year maybe?

 

[ecc83]

Rob, your post is both timely and encouraging for me! I am just about to pull the trigger on a refurbered laptop for my son. I don't want him to be stuck with his 14" Lenovo win10 machine for the future.

I have pretty much settled on a Dell Lattitude i5 gen 10* 512G SSD and 16G ram. 1 year warranty for £397. 15.6" screen because at 53 he is like most of us getting dimmer! He does not run Cubase, been into Samplitude for over a decade so knows it well. Also uses Reaper and the free Cakewalk.

*You have saved me some grief! The ram and hard drive were fairly easy to nail. He has 8G but wants to dabble with video. His 240G SSD is pretty rammed so 512 will help. More of course is always better but, budgets you know! What was causing me such handwringing was CPU specc'. Do I go i7? How do I compare speeds? You have said most processors are well fast enough so I think an i5 g10 will be fine? Faster than anything else we have ever had!

Dave.

 

[rob aylestone]

The cheaper computer I have in the office is an AMD ryzen 5 pro with onboard graphics 3.7GHz and has 16GB of RAM. It runs cubase fine - and today I have completed the sample installation - my drive space total is now 10.9TB - Cubase no issues, a bit laggy on premiere with 4K, OK on HD with real time graphics - rendering speed isn't brilliant, but I can use it as a backup. The image is with a pile of VSTi tracks and shows very little stress. Does this help?

 

[ecc83]

Not a lot but thanks Rob! I don't know how that Ryzen CPU compares to an i5 gen 10?
My Lenovo has a 2 core i7 620M in it and I just ran the 28 track demo in Samplitude Pro X6 through my MOTU M4 without a glitch. Took 54% of the CPU mind!

Son's T430 is I think about the same and he has never reported any glitching problems to me. He does not do massive projects in any case. ANYHOOSITS! 400 quid is all dad can afford so at least he will have something with W11 on it to keep him going for the next few years!

Dave.

 

[rob aylestone]

This page may help a bit?