I can finally say my new pc is fully functional and meeting it's specs! I owe a lot to great pc tech and friend Jim Roseberry. He's gone a great distance out of his way to see me get here. I highly recommend anyone considering a upgrade/new system to seek Jim's expertise and recommendations out. Here's how it went...
Complete reinstall form the ground up - 3rd in 6 weeks. Jim had been in my system, making tweaks remotely, but the underlying issue wasn't showing up there. So he felt another clean install was in order. This time, for whatever reason, when I went to install Win 10 (7 was installed already, so I don't know how this can even happen) but it refused, saying the disk was GPT! I deleted the partitins and created a new one, now able to carry on with loading it all up. A stress test project I made that has over 100 plugs of all kinds in it that I could barely get to run at 44.1/16 1024ms with 60ish% cpu, now runs at 256ms with 35% cpu. A bit more like it, don't you think?!? 36 Slate VTM alone was previously hitting the cpu @ 20% at 512ms, now 8% at 64ms.
And the extra dsp and Unison pres by adding the Twin Duo USB is most welcome. tans to all who made efforts on my behalf here as well. I appreciate the Sonar family. - Shep