Aren’t RAM and graphics card important?
Does it have to be quad-core?
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Dorico itself is not especially demanding of computer resources – the main consideration is what sort of virtual instrument VST’s you want to use. Some top end libraries can put a considerable strain on the processor and RAM. The graphics card is relatively unimportant – you don’t need a gaming card (I have only basic onboard video) for the majority of music projects
I’d suggest that any new computer will have at least 4 cores. The cheapest Windows desktops and laptops I can find have got 8 to 12 cores.
A CPU with a good single-core speed is important, as some processes can only be performed sequentially. At the same time, other tasks can be split up, so more cores will do better than fewer cores.
E.g. an 8-core CPU with a 4 GHz clock speed will do better than a 4-core CPU at the same speed, and it will also do better than a 14-core CPU at 1 GHz.
You can run Dorico on 8Gb RAM, but these days, I’d recommend at least 16 GB as the minimum for any new computer; and, as said, more if you want to run third-party sample libraries.
There’s a nice analogy I like: using a computer is like baking a cake in a kitchen. Your disk storage is the cupboards; RAM is the table. You get the ingredients out of the cupboards and put them on the table to make the cake. If you haven’t got enough table space, you have to keep putting stuff back in the cupboards, which slows you down.
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