https://youtu.be/GUsLLEkswzE
You might find this video informative. The takeaway I get, is that depending on your interface for various components and how much bandwidth and priority they get with the cpu, determines real time playback efficiency of your computer vs processor speed. In his example, the same computer, daw and project and setup, the only difference being one is using an ssd, probably sata, and a pcie hd. It wasn't mentioned how the audio out was connected, perhaps usb?? So why was the pcie
hd the problem child? i would theorize that because pcie probably has priority over the sata and the usb. That could be why the latency was also problematic. Was the output put through a D/A converter within the computer or taken out as a digital
signal to an external D/A? He was using a Windows laptop, so it's more likely usb than the analogue audio out jacks, and hardly likely at all he had a pcie soundcard installed. Maybe the takeaway, is to not clutter things up with video cards, usb devices,etc. and to stick with a conventional computer over a laptop to run your daw? Maybe a balanced computer is more efficient running a daw for monitoring purposes,pcie in,pcie out, sata in,sata out...