Hi, I recently bought a Dell desktop, intel i7 12700K, 16 Gb, Windows 11, and upgraded to Cubase 12 elements. I have now had to cease using Cubase as it is unusable, continually crashes due to audio dropouts.
I have had continual problems ever since I started about 4 months ago.
I record guitar, bass, e drums, and vocals in real time, no midi, loops etc.
Most projects have 8 or 9 tracks and basic processing such as eq, reverb, compression etc. so all very simple.
Projects that I recorded on 10 and 10.5 on my 10 yr old desktop would also crash when played on 12.
I use a Motu M2 interface and try to keep RTL to about 6-7 ms, I have scoured the net and tried disabling/adjusting various settings in windows, updated drivers etc. but to no avail.
I understand that this may be a combination of my stupidly powerful desktop being unsuitable for real time audio processing + windows 11 latency problems, but am wondering if anyone has similar problems or perhaps some advice.
Thanks.
p.s I have switched to Reaper but prefer Cubase
there is a lot you could check. if you can playback in Reaper but not in Cubase, I would first double-check that you are using the correct MOTU Asio driver inside Cubase. I would assume that is the case if you are able to record and playback 
Then if you are using the correct drivers, install the latest updates, etc for everything., I would run LatencyMon to check if there is some other hardware on your computer causing problems for real-time processing audio. if you are still none the wiser I would continue to check for Bios updates for my motherboard, latest chipset drivers, and so on. Then I would look at the options for USB and power states in the bios too. I remember there was a setting called C-state that needed to be disabled on my old Intel machine for me to get the best latency performance, maybe there is something in the Dell bios that needs extra care to perform over save power.
Also, remember to check your power plan settings.
There should be no problems running 10 audio tracks with plugins on any modern computer. I have had quite a few struggles with Cubase 12 crashing on me in the first versions, but that seems fixed now in the latest version. And if anything I feel v12 is more snappy and responsive since launch day than v11.
Make sure you have added an exception in Windows Defender for your projects directory and export directories. If you have an Nvidia GPU, uninstall geforce experience and do a complete removal and reinstall of your video card drivers. I have a UR28m and a cc121 on windows 11 and cubase 12.0.30 running at 6 0r 7ms and all is well after I added the AV exception.
NOTE: i forgot I also removed any reference to VST2 paths in VST plugin manager a little beforehand, so not sure if that was involved either.
Hope this helps - Good Luck!