PT Ultimate, PC/Interface advice

[Nopulosaurus]

Getting back into audio after a long hiatus (most recent system is PT HD8, 96i/o, windows xp, yeah it’s been a while). My goal with building a new system is to run PT Ultimate, as well as exploring ambisonics/vr/360 etc. I just received a pc from a friend, here are the specs:

MSI MS-B902 Aegis X
i7 6700k processor
Intel Z170 chipset
Windows 10 Home
32GB RAM
No available PCIe slot

So my questions are: will this machine be capable of running PT Ultimate? Is the i7 enough, I think in my research I saw the i9 is required for Ultimate? Will a USB interface be sufficient, or am I better off getting a different PC to be able to use a PCIe or Thunderbolt interface? Thanks in advance for any insight someone could provide!

[junkgear]

Your new system is certainly capable of running PT Ultimate. How far it will go really depends on what your sessions look like.
One piece of advice is to use SSD drives with at least one for the OS and PT install and another for session storage.
As far as USB, some are better than others, but most will handle small to mid sized sessions quite well. If you have demanding projects, look at RME who’s USB interfaces are solid.
32GB of memory should be fine unless you are running lots of sample based VIs.

[Nopulosaurus]

Great, thank you for your response. Mostly small to midsize sessions, and like I said I want to explore immersive audio and such, won’t be using much in the way of virtual instruments, so it sounds like I just need to add a second hard drive, choose an interface and I’m good to go. Thank you for the help!

[Nopulosaurus]

One more quick question, is USB 2.0 sufficient, or do you really want 3.0, or is the difference negligible? Thanks!

[sw rec]

Any USB interfaces I have are USB 2.0. No issues.

[Nopulosaurus]

Cool, thanks!

[The Weed]

Another vote for RME. They write their own USB drivers and support their interfaces for a long time, well after they're legacy.

[Nopulosaurus]

The RME interfaces were a bit beyond my budget, ended up going with the Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 3rd Gen. Thanks for the help everyone!