They don’t seem to be hardware requirements per se, just artificial restrictions on the Windows 11 installer that can be circumvented (Google it!) . I’ve got Windows 11 running on a laptop from 2011, and it even runs Cubase 13, after a fashion, well enough to play the C13 demo tune, or simple projects with mainly MIDI tracks and a few audio tracks.
Of course it’s not supported, but I’m not chucking it in the dump simply because Microsoft want me to.
I upgraded from that same Generation last year and had windows 11 installed without issues. AFAIK, the only requirement that’s given you issues of the 3 is the cpu as the other 2 can be changed in the bios. Only issue is you would need to do a fresh installation (no need to use a pirated version, just download the latest from microsoft) and all the updates will work fine. Your cpu is still nice and you have a lot of ram!
Really… absurd to think Steinberg has to support 10-year-old hardware. Not even apple does that and basically, they sell you the hardware. I see some frustration here.
Exactly!
Absolutely no frustration , i have my opinions on the way the tech world is evolving and if just Microsoft say your commuters obsolete doesn’t mean it’s worthless or useless and im pretty sure some other OS will jump in and take some of the market and some of us might even jump ship .
Why should they drop 4770k ? If they do the question will be asked , why haven’t you dropped the 6700/7700/8700/9700 and 10700 as they all have great processing power for Cubase , just the infinity setting are different BUT who knows what’s happing after the 15700 ? Longevity is over and companies is this situation are forced to think on their feet for the future .
Anyway you have your Opinion and i have mine .
It’s only been 10 or 15 years now that electronics have been classed as antiques , give it another 10 years and PC’s and musicians the way we were will also be , it’s progress obviously
So much of this ‘longevity’, ‘futureproofing’ or ‘obsolescence’ is dependent on what we do though. I think for some who were chasing the maximum quality emulated synths for example hardware didn’t last long at all as the synth developers kept making their algorithms better and better. What was good enough year 1 with the best soft synth was on its knees three years later, or so it seemed (to me).
For us in post it was pretty stagnant for several years I think until plugins really started taking advantage of CPU cycles. Professionals were using hardware - either mixers or DSP solutions (PT HD TDM/HDX, UAD-2) for quite some time before switching over to ‘pure’ native. Restoration software is one example of things that were pretty heavy on the CPU.
And then there was the shift from 16-bits to 24-bits standard, and for some moving to 88.2kHz and above.
In my situation I think my current build, which his a 4th gen Ryzen 5900X from a year and a half ago, could last me another 2-3 years minimum unless my projects get noticeably bigger. I don’t foresee any big changes within that timeframe. But around then I could see how AI based processing is more demanding, and even if it is possible for me to use it offline there could be significant time savings by getting a faster CPU.
Anyway… we live in an amazing time for compute power. All first-world problems we’re lucky to have, discussing when to upgrade to the next best thing.
No - they are requirements, at least for a supported configuration. Whether you agree with Microsoft’s justification for the minimum hardware requirements or not, Microsoft decided on a step change in hardware-enforced security and reliability that mandated a considerable leap in the minimum system requirements.
It is well-known that you can install and run Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, but these unsupported systems could be broken by future Microsoft updates and might not run Windows 12 at all when that emerges. Windows 11 showed a new seriousness from Microsoft to deprecate older technologies.
Ultimately, every user must decide on their own pathway. The only relevance here is that Steinberg releases after mid-October 2025 will likely have no official support for hardware that does not support Windows 11, so if you are on an older processor, you will be on your own at that point.
… unless they release the Linux version before then! 
I honestly don’t see anything wrong with Microsoft changing the requirements ( an intel 8th gen min req for win 11 as even my older build had the other 2). They have supported very old hardware for years and nobody seems to acknowledge that. Having to add all that bulk to support old hardware just makes the system have unnecessary bulk and in the end creates more problems and a less snappy OS. With all the competition why should Cubase add more unnecessary bulk to their software? If your build was fine with Cubase 11, why not keep using it (oh you wanted the newer and better stuff without making an investment on ancient hardware ( but that’s your opinion and I respect it).One of the reasons I stop using apple was because they kill expensive and very capable hardware with their OS, and you were forced to use old applications as companies would kill support for old OS as that made things easier for them and force you to upgrade to newer version. This practice has been going for years. If you buy a mac you are forced to pay extreme amount of money for ram and HD as everything is solder from factory. But asking for companies to support 10 year hardware is just nonsense (the way things are going at this point of time). One of the advantages apple has is creating an OS for limited hardware while Microsoft needs to create compatibility with multiple hardware which is the reason it has more issues, so why add 10 year hardware to add problems to an OS??? If it last 5, you should be happy and I think that is not difficult to achieve with a good pc.
Well… what can i say. Probably the main reason for that is the heavy decline we have these days with musicians. Music nowadays is trash. We just don’t see the quality of music from years ago (PF, LZ, Beatles, ELO, and the list goes on…). Even with all the advantages they have now, it’s all more artificial, fake voices, in conclusion TRASH, etc. Eventually AI will be doing music (absurd).
You thought about that way better than I did… I just thought, “What’s FASTEST?” “What has most POWER” “What has 32 mfking cores??” So I went for z790 Hero and 13th gen i9 about the same time you posted this, maybe a cpl months later. I also went for 2x32GB, but DDR6. There’s so much room to grow, though, so I think of it as future-proofing. I re-used my semi-custom extended water cooling and also my Antec 1200 case from my old build (I LOVE that case). My water cooling radiator sits quite far outside, so the build is quite quiet. I bought some lightening fast M.2 cards, but kept my mega-samlple-library and other “grab once” things in my External USB3 HDD group. I may upgrade that next, but I find HDDs more trustworthy for that kind of thing.
The only thing I’m mortified with is I can’t connect my old and trusty E-MU 1616M to the PCI slots! I knew it would happen but thought I could get an adapter, but it didn’t work.
It’s a freaking beast, though. My larger mixed compositions haven’t broke 50% CPU yet, with all power and other settings on normal use. That includes my Reaktor creation, which used to burn around 67% alone on my old system. It wouldn’t even run on my quad-core AMD laptop. BTW, since my laptop has been no end of trouble, I’ve lost faith in AMD. I also went for Windows 11 Pro, which I HATED until I manually switched everything I don’t want off and stopped Windows accessing the internet without permission. Now, almost everything’s cool with that. Back to a Windows 10/Windows 7 feel (mostly).
Have to agree with your trash music comment.
2024 marks my 60’th year of recording ( yes I am old ) and I think the Earth was going through a special spot in the Universe in the 60’s-70’s as that special music has gone now IMHO.
I have been using Windows since 1985 but Win10 for me is the last version I will use, I don’t like MS’s data collection policies, sure you can bypass most of it, but it is getting tiresome and I am tired of constantly having to tweak something or wondering what MS update will break next.
For me, recording is meant to be fun, turn everything on and get on with recording.
There was something special about using real tape recorders and splicing tape. Now in 2024 the technology is absolutely great and it’s amazing what you can do digitally, but for me it’s lost it’s simplicity, and I miss that.
Rant over and I’m going for a nap now…
It was the pre-industrial phase of popular music. Maybe a little analogous to making clothing at the time before weaving machines and everything that followed.
I agree, that the magical time in music is long past. – However I’m excited about the next phase we’ve entered and where I think we can thrive for quite a while.
Making clothing as an artisan/crafty hobby is alive and well - including some pretty amazing computerized sowing machines, associated software, websites catering to that crowd, and many small but vibrant communities around that activity,
And many other activities in the “maker” communities.
Funny enough, even the much more charming Internet of the 90s is having a resurgence as a “maker” community, where it’s crafty, where people have “homelabs” (kind of like having your own tiny micro datacenter at home – I now also have one 
) and others are having their own blogging websites far away from the big social media empires and they don’t give a hoot about SEO and all that stuff.
So, while popular music is now highly industrialized, much like the clothing industry and the commercial Internet, there’s a bright future for the activity de-coupled from big business.
And there’s still some charming stuff being made, but one has to look harder to find it. And it’s not likely to make much money.
So my hopes are high that we’ll be fine.
I don’t miss having to demagnetize the tapeheads or replace the belts or to change the capacitors in aging hardware.
… what about the hissing and humming that made our mixes “more cohesive” and “transparent”?
Not to mention the random speed variations and tape-stretching for that “analog authenticity”.
haha - I have several plugins for that, including my current favourite
Ohhh, this is the sort of Attitude that’s caused Steinberg to get the ‘Elitist’ tag and for other DAW companies to evolve into a less expensive options to rid the market of Elitism .
I totally disagree with your statement about the music in our days is TRASH , this is NOT the fault of the creators , this is the fault of global media , that doesn’t mean music is trash , it just means you have to sieve through the disposable music , That’s all to do with the media world , nothing to do with the individuals TRYING to create their own sound scape’s .
If anything you could actually say it’s Steinbergs fault for the demise of your Elite world but here we are with a person that misses the past agonising way of doing things ( in some respects ) and using what potentially started the whole situation .
I still create raw music , i love the fact of building a song with as least tracks as possible (old school style ) but in a world where Synths are cheap DAW’s are now nearly free who’s to say the creations of these people that are giving it a go are trash , it’s just not your era .
Look back a the experimental 70’s , you could say a lot of electronic music back then ,even the Radio electronic workshop , Delia Derbyshire and POPCORN was all trash BUT it led to new genre’s , the early 80’s were just crud , new romantic was brain piercing torture in my opinion BUT along came Steinberg …
Turning your beloved tape slicing analogue recording realm into a digital, and creating the background for where we are now and what you consider … Trash
Keeping prices high has caused a back lash for other companies to rise and compete for the global leadership of the market to remove the Elitist attitude and to provide ANYONE that wants to press a key on a keyboard to release anything their brain feels and with the right marketing they can take it too the top .
I dislike quite a lot of todays music but i also know that proper musicians will take snippets and evolve the popular into the future and that is where trust comes in with the apprentices of the future and having the ability to create in an ever changing world of tech like we have never known , good things come form trash and also ones mans trash is another mans riches
I really love the fact that one company has changed the face of the music industry in the last few years . Yes , love him or hate him , Uli , for giving those people that would not of been able to afford hardware the chance to buy and create . I suppose you’ll look at his business model and complain about that but in my Hardware loving system he’s keeping hardware alive instead of kids falling into the never ending world of hash sounding Vsti’s .
My point is we are old , we have had OUR era’s tech wise and the music of the days back then was a considered trash by our non understanding older generations and you have just proved that the cycle still continues .
This isn’t a personality attack , just an observation of exactly the same system of thinking as generations with no tolerance before us and the only people that can break the chain are people like us using the latest market leading tech !
End of rant
Since it’s been 3/4 of a year - can you tell whether your a/m strategy worked out or not?
I have a couple of the Noctua 3000 fans , they are great all though , upgrading to an i9 in my old case i had to think on my feet .
The case is an Old Corsair silent ,sound proofed case with not many air vents so i bought a Be Quiet Silent loop2 240 cooler for the front inlet and a Be Quiet Wings 4 for the outlet at the back .
Im running the cooler on 1240 rpm with it’s dual fans at 600rpm and the outlet fan at 800rpm to give positive air flow over the board with great results , even rendering in SL with the GPU acel turned off my Cpu only hits 70/5 degrees on the most strenuous task , Cubase ? it doesn’t even break a sweat and everything is perfectly quiet . Air flow is obviously important but so is silent and for this I9 this comb seems to work well
Be Quiet make some really great stuff
So far so good. The fans have not (yet) revved up, while using Cubase in my projects (pop/electronica).
But to be honest, this is where my experience might be considered non-representative for someone with much younger and therefore more high frequency sensitive hearing than mine. Or a much better sound proofed studio than mine.
In addition, I’m frequently using headphones and am hardly ever recording with a mic, so that makes my use case even less sensitive to whatever gentle fan noise there might be.
So I’m still happy with the chosen case, but I have no idea how well my experience might translate for others.
I was born in the 80’s but my favourite eras to listen to are 60’s and 70’s. I was named Marc after Mr Bolan. That may give you a hint as to why I love Glam Rock, The Stones, The Who, Neil Young, Nina Simone, the Kinks, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence, etc etc etc. It was my Dad playing songs from this era as I grew up. But it really was a golden era of experimentation and creativity, resulting in wondrous music. You had everything from sensational pop like freda payne’s “band of gold” love songs like the transcendental “Nights in white satin” and “I’m not in love” to the awesome hippies bringing beautiful truths with “Old Man” and “California Dreaming”, to the hard-hitting driving force of “Paranoid”. It was all there. By the way, I love raw artistic destruction, and a great example of this is Dave Davies slicing his amp on “You really got me”. I think that creative act of destruction had a massive impact and spread, traversing genres and carrying down through to modern music like drum n bass etc, and so its effects are still present in music today. I used to DJ underground dance music, you’d probably call it “boom boom” music lol and that still thrills me, the more energetic, the better. But when I listen to the 70’s, I hear the seed of that bouncing, repetitive driving rhythm in songs like Spark’s “This Town ain’t big enough” and other songs from bands like Sweet and Dave Clark 5. But anyway, I’ve babbled on a bit. Suffice to say, when I’m just relaxing, nothing beats 60’s and 70’s.!