I learn that S1, Reaper and Ableton all support multi-core but some said music production is best on single core so i confuse.. can you help explain about besr core for music production software as of current date?

 

Multi-core CPU handling
https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209067649-Multi-core-CPU-handling

It's worth going into a fanless graphics.
Example: MSI GeForce GT 1030 2GH LP OC

Graphic Cards
The dark days of incompatible graphics card drivers are for the most part history. All three leading graphics cards manufacturers (AMD, NVIDIA, Intel) today offer solid drivers, so these vendors’ products are viable options. However, it is important to install the core drivers only! Additional software components (e.g. GeForce Experience) can have a negative impact on the performance.

It is also important to mention that some of our applications use hardware accelerated rendering for the graphical user interfaces (GUI). Therefore, using rather old low-end cards is not recommended. Instead, aim for modern middle-class solutions for best results!

DAW Components
https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/206929270-DAW-Components

 

Single core performance is important for single very demanding plugins since rare plugins use multiple cores, but having many cores is also important so you can spread the load, or rather run different plugins on different cores. I'd say that single core performance is still a bit more important factor for music production, especially if you run some very CPU hungry plugins, but having multiple cores that perform great is of course better.

Most of the plugins are not that demanding on the CPU, so usually having more cores will handle your projects better. Reaper is especially good at that, and oftentimes it's advisable to turn off multicore processing in the plugin if it has it and leave it to Reaper to handle it. It's always best to test it yourself and see what works best. Steinberg says that since Cubase 11, optimal number of cores for Cubase is up to 8.

Sorry, I don't know how Ableton Live or Studio One deals with multicore processing, but some other knowledgeable people will surely chime in.

Having said that, these days, I would go with the CPU that has top single core performance and at least 8 cores, but having more cores will perform better, especially with Reaper.

 

Spoiler: Multi-Core Processing

Multi-Core Processing

Nearly all modern PC’s have multiple processors or multiple processor cores. In essence this means the computer is able to execute two pieces of code at the same time. (In this book I use the term “processor”, “processor core” and “core” interchangeably) Say for example you have two virtual instruments – a piano and an electric piano in a keyboard split type setup.

With a single-core machine each instrument would be processed sequentially, i.e. one after the other.

On multi-core machine both instruments can be processed in parallel – one on each processor
core effectively reducing the total time to process both of them.

However, there’s also additional overhead to manage these multiple cores. The audio software
needs to schedule each instrument to run separately, needs to ensure the other processor core
is up and running and might need to wait for the other processor to finish.

The thing to remember here is that multi-core machines can usually do more work in less
time however a single-core setup can almost always do it more efficiently.

Because of the obvious performance advantages that multi-core processing can provide most audio programs do include support for them. Similarly some instrument and effect plugins (particularly those that are CPU intensive) also leverage multi-core processors to improve performance.

This presents a complicated situation. Imagine for example you have two plugins that both
support multi-core processing and your host program also supports multi-core processing
and you’ve got a dual-core processor. You’ve now effectively created the situation where the
computer is being tasked with completing four tasks at once on two processor cores. This is
a not an ideal situation and can result in the plugins fighting each other for CPU resources
and actually slowing things down.

Unfortunately there’s no hard and fast rules for the best way to set this up and it can depend
greatly on the plugins and effects you’re using, how many of them, how they’re chained
together and more.

In general I recommend this:

• If you’re running many plugins enable the multi-core support in your host program and
disable multi-core processing in any plugins that support it.

• If you’re running just a few very CPU intensive plugins that support multi-core
processing, disable the multi-core support in your host program and enable it the
plugins.

• If you’re running just a few lightweight plugins, disable the multi-core support in your
host program – it’s probably not necessary and might actually make things slower.
Having said all that, Windows is pretty good at scheduling CPU resources and in general
most combinations of enabled/disabled support will work. By playing with the different
combinations however you can hit on a more efficient setup and that can make for a more
stable machine.

Source. Brad Robison