Hi Alex,
sorry for this long post, but it's not easy to answer this question, because there is so much hardware out, that really nobody can test all combination. Especially because audio has near-realtime demands. The usual benchmarks will fail here to determine, whether a system is really good for audio processing.
Next problem is, that audio workloads can be so different. Pure recording has the lowest requirements (you can work with highest ASIO buffersizes as RTL is not critical). But working with VSTi and CPU hungry VST's or with many inserts in one or more tracks can be very time critical.
I would recommend to get a PC with components / drivers that have been tested for audio to get the most out of it.
IMHO most critical points
- get a CPU that suits your workload well (in terms of number of cores, base/turbo clock, single thread performance ..)
- to get hardware components (mainboard, driver) which allow for low DPC latencies (good drivers)
- mainboard with a good chipset and good implementation of USB according to standards (otherwise you might need an additional PCIe card for CPU with known good chipset/driver combination)
Proper CPU selection is an art of itself. You should talk to an experienced person who knows this topic very well for audio processing, as audio workloads can be so different. Also DAWs differ in how they can utilize a CPU with many cores.
To be flexible and also be able to run CPU hungry VSTi which run on one CPU core you should look, that the CPU has a still high enough base clock and excellent single thread performance.
The more cores a CPU has, the lower the base clock and the single thread performance usually is. Many cores are brilliant for certain benchmarks where the computing load can be spread across many cores and where it is not critical in what time or order the results arrive (e.g. rendering of pictures).
In contrast to such benchmarks which can utilize a lot of cores audio processing has strong real-time requirements, there the processing of data is time critical. If you have e.g. a project where you use CPU hungry VSTi or where you put a lot of inserts into one track ... then all the processing needs to be performed in a certain order by one CPU (many inserts in a track) and also "in time" which requires a CPU core which can process this all fast enough. This workload needs a high single thread performance as it usually can not be split across many cores.
Next critical thing is that you get hardware with well written drivers that follow programming conventions, not to block a CPU core for too long. Bad written drivers allocate a CPU core for too long. If there are audio processes, that are scheduled to run on this core, they need to wait for execution. You might get audio drops if your ASIO buffers are set too low for the a) workload and b) for such a system which bad drivers.
You can only compensate that by using higher ASIO buffer sizes, which results in a more efficient I/O, lowers CPU and Interrupt load of your system a bit, but it's worse for a small RTL (round trip latency) and near-realtime processing performance.
There is nothing / nobody which can tell you, whether this or that hardware has good drivers, so that you get a brilliant real-time performance and that you can work with lower ASIO buffersizes without audio loss (and this depends also on DAW and your DAW project). This is why you pay for such an audio turnkey system more compared to a normal system, as testing components takes much time and needs experienced people.
Driver updates (be it Microsoft drivers or installation of newer 3rd party drivers by Microsoft) can result in problems, that the updated drivers cause more DPC latency. Besides a good presales support you will also need post-sales support from a company which can give you advice what to do, after an automatic driver updated changed the performance behaviour of your system.
If you know a company which is good in it it can save you worries and you can get an excellent PC where you can use as a tendency lower ASIO buffersizes and maybe also higher samplerates in your projects compared to other PCs and you will get support as I sad, if something fails after updates.
If you have worked with VSTi's then you know that the round trip time between recording interface and PC should be less than 10ms. So with single speed (44.1/48kHz) you need to use ASIO buffersizes in the range of 32 .. 128 buffers. 256 buffers are already too much (around 13.x ms). So you have 32, 48, 64, 128 as a choice for ASIO buffersizes. Depending on your HW / drivers (DPC latencies) and the complexity of your project this can be challenging. You might even need a DAW which is able to freeze tracks (like e.g. Cubase), so that tracks with CPU consuming VST/VSTi can be pre-computed and will be played back only as wave file to save CPU time ...
I can't give you a recommendation, which company is really good in this business and has a good support so that it's worth spending this extra money.
Of course there is a good chance to get a proper product, on the other hand nobody wants to be under the ~5-10% of people who did a bad selection or who need much time/effort to try different HW components and at the end of the day it turns out that you have most likely a bad mainboard and BIOS updates can not fix it.
I had myself a case in the past, that with one MSI mainboard I couldn't reach DPC latencies under ~220us (microseconds). Because I needed USB3 and SATA6 and the add-on combi controller didn't perform I decided to use the successor of this mainboard (the same but with USB3 and SATA6 directly on-board). And voila, same Windows installation (I only switched the mainboard) and I could reach DPC latencies under 20us which was not possible with the other mainboard. Alone by this difference (fewer DPC latencies) I could use as a tendency lower ASIO buffersizes or in other words had "more threshold" / "more safety" that audio loss does not occurr even with smaller buffersizes, because cpus had a higher availability for other processes if they are blocked lesser by driver code (DPCs).
I hope this little overview introduced you into the thematic .. either you have "good luck" or can get a good recommendation from another person (which you need to trust) or you go to a specialist who can deliver you a tested turnkey system for audio (which you need to trust as well).
BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13
