cooltouch,

Sorry you're having audio playback issues.

My initial thought is the cpu, motherboard and ran you currently have should be more than sufficient for audio playback of Band-in-a-Box files. This computer has a dual core Intel i3 with 8 GB of ram and it does not experience audio playback issues.

Having said that, both of our computers will soon become orphans. Microsoft is dropping Windows 7 support soon so now is the time to update computers.

I prefer Intel cpu and motherboard chipsets over AMD mainly because more audio components such as audio interfaces are validated on Intel hardware. However, AMD based hardware typically costs less.

Your 16 GB of ram should be more than enough unless you're using MANY VSTs at the same time or you're using a VST that loads multi-gigabyte samples into ram.

Cakewalk by BandLab and Sonar automatically balance cpu load over all available cores. That helps prevent the cpu from overheating. I do not know if Band-in-a-Box balances cpu load.

It is worth your time to check your computer power settings. The default Windows power settings are not good for audio. Make sure the cpu isn't going into power saving mode and that USB ports are not going into low power mode. You want everything at full power all the time, no sleep or hibernate allowed.

I'm sure I will be upgrading pretty soon. I WANT a computer with an Intel i5 or i7 cpu, 16 GB of ram and Windows 10 Pro. I'll likely GET what's on sale and be perfectly happy with it.

Jim Fogle - 2025 BiaB (Build 1128) RB (Build 5) - Ultra+ PAK
DAWs: Cakewalk by BandLab (CbB) - Standalone: Zoom MRS-8
Laptop: i3 Win 10, 8GB ram 500GB HDD
Desktop: i7 Win 11, 12GB ram 256GB SSD, 4 TB HDD
Music at: https://fogle622.wix.com/fogle622-audio-home