I need to do something about my current DAW, but I'm not sure what to do.
The current system spec:

• Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.70GHz
• (overclocked, but stable at approximately 42 °C under load)
• ASRock Z97 Extreme4
• 32.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 800MHz
• ATI ASUS HD6450
• Windows 10 Home 64-bit

And I'm not running into problems with most of my projects. Every once in a while I do run out of memory when I try to load "one more" library in Kontakt. But I have plenty of horsepower for plugins and audio, so upgrading is not really high on my list.

Except...
 
I need more audio inputs. I have an Apollo Twin USB (dual chip) and I have an Audient ASP-880 feeding that, so I have 10 inputs. You'd think that would be enough! And usually it is, but not always.
 
I would like (not need?) more memory so I can keep my template in VEPro all the time. And of course I want to load more stuff into said template. Again not the end of the world, but a nice to have.

My options seem to fall into three categories:

1. Leave this as the master DAW, build a second machine to act as a VEPro host, I should be able to use an i5 and a motherboard that supports 64GB for not too much money.
2. Use this as the VEPro host, accept the 32GB limit for now, and build a new fire-breathing dragon, and add Thunderbolt this time so I can add an Apollo rack later (after I recover from this purchase.)
3. Find another use for this DAW and build two new machines - this is just not practical at the moment, but I include it in the spirit of completeness.

Am I missing options?

Anyone with experience with a machine similar to mine have comments?

Thanks!

Option 1 - that's still a killer system. How are you cooling that CPU?
 
 Unfortunately with that generation of Intels, 32gb is the max for RAM.
 
 Memory is really expensive now.

I agree with the above. That system is still up there, so a look at your work flow may give you best gain in resources. Being over clocked, I would also recommend running latencymon and looking at page faults. My 2600K actually got better performance without OCing because of the faults it threw if over clocked very far.

Even 7 years later and with 50% more cores, the 8700K CPU is less than double what the 2600K was, but the associated architecture makes a massive difference.

Workflow (I.e., bouncing/archiving, etc.) and choice of plugins alone will have a massive impact on system performance. Throw enough of the right CPU hogs on even the best machine will drive it to its knees.

I'm still leaning heavily towards building an inexpensive host for VEPro and keeping the current system as the main DAW. As noted above, the system is still powering through most of my projects with nary a hiccup.

The real challenge for me is finding the best path forward. I know I want to move VEPro off to a new machine, and I know I want to (eventually) migrate to Thunderbolt on the main DAW. These are conflicting requirements<G>!
 
Six DSP chips is providing enough horsepower to run the UAD plugins I need, but I get closer and closer to hitting the ceiling as new plugins arrive. Possibly replacing or augmenting my quad card with an octo card might be a good interim solution. And yeah, probably augmenting. That would give me 14 chips, more than double what I have now.
 
The Audient ASP-880 solved the I/O problem for now - while not inexpensive that turned out to be a really good decision. I do like it when that happens.
Fortunately this is not a decision I need to make today!!
 
Oh, I am using an Arctic Freezer 13 cpu cooler - it was the only one I could find that would provide sufficient cooling at low noise levels (it is essentially silent) and fit in a 4RU rack mount case. I tried three or four before I settled on this one.
 
The system was build in September 2014, so it is still relatively young. Or at least I hope it is!