I have a pretty good I7 computer with Windows 10 on it and I thought I was doing pretty well. Recently, I finally got around to disabling Turbo Boost in the BIOS (https://www.steinberg.net/en/support/knowledgebase_new/show_details/kb_show/optimizing-windows-for-daws.html - #7 on the list). This has given me a huge boost in performance. I suggest everyone read this page carefully.
Brett
If there is one thing Cubase really doesn’t like, its high storage latency. The hard drive being asleep will definitely cause problems. On Mac if you try to export to a sleeping spindled drive, it’s instant fail.
On PC you might also want to disable SpeedStep in the BIOS and set your power management settings to highest performance as otherwise Windows will be throttling your CPU.
I am running Win10 and my ASIO meter is barely hitting the 20% mark, under heavy load. Please see my post here and see if it could be helpful: