Recently my whole system went down, mobo dead, so I rebuilt.

Frankly most 64 bit laptops and PCs will run BIAB, an external sound card for a laptop is best. If its a Desktop, get a good audio card or system.
I understand USB 3.1 is significantly faster than 3.0. However, MIDI works just fine with all speeds.

Its overkill, but an X99 motherboard and a good one such as Asus, Gigabyte, will let you load DDR4 and the new on board SSD called M2 seems also to be a good idea. This is a futurish system, it costs a lot more, but it will run everything fast. The X99s from ASUS reek quality, and the BIOS (with mouse) is a leap forward.

I had a few issues with Win 10, my focusrite Liquid 56 is firewire and old tech, I bought a firewire card PCIe, but the VIA chip set is apparently incompatible with the L56 - sometimes. So I am waiting for a Texas instruments one. I had some trouble running an old 1TB via USB 1, but when I took away the housing and satad it, it was fine.

Win 10 is at least potentially a lot better to use than Win 7. There are small improvements everywhere that make it more intuitive. It's very customisable.

Win 11 64, Asus Rog Strix z390 mobo, 64 gig RAM, 8700k