Power-saving and CPU-throttling turned out to be the cause of the high ASIO levels I had when I bought this machine. They were defaulted to save-the-planet mode, which, while worthy, isn’t Cubase-friendly. I ended up changing C-State OFF, SpeedStep ON, TurboBoost OFF, I even messed with the Hyperthreading setting, so maybe you should look for equivalents on your machine and change them one at a time to see what works. Since then Cubase has run like a dream and I can throw anything at it…