I'm in the same boat. I bought it last week, and I went back and bought the Custom & Vintage SDX as well. I was going to get an EZX pack for half the price, but the SDX pack came with more than twice the kits, so many snares, and so many more cymbals it made financial sense. That's what I convinced myself anyway...
Yeah, it's hard not to grab a lot of that stuff at these prices. Especially when they're this high quality!
I'm using my work PC (lucky enough to work from home with my kit in my office!) it has an i7 processor and 14GB of RAM. The latency is actually really low with no extra audio interface but I think I'll add a Focusrite Scarlett to get it a little better when funds allow.
I've got SD installed on my iMac in my office upstairs (I'm a home worker too) but there's not enough room up there to set up the whole kit, so I have it in my conservatory downstairs (much to my wife's annoyance!). So the iMac handles SD with aplomb, as expected (3.4 quad core i5, 32GB RAM) but I was concerned that the laptop might struggle, given the size and quality of the SD library. I'm not a massive Windows fan, although I use it every day, and this laptop is a bit creaky by today's standards, so I was pleasantly surprised by how well SD ran on it, particularly as I'm considering using it for live work. I'd rather not have to buy a new laptop just for this task and an iMac isn't designed for gigging
I'm actually considering buying a dedicated audio interface though. Annoyingly, I have a lovely little Firewire interface that doesn't do much at the moment, and my laptop actually has a firewire port, but sadly, there are no Windows 10 drivers for the interface anymore. There's not even any for Windows 7 so retrograding the OS isn't an option either, unless I want to suffer the trauma that was Vista :O So I'm on the lookout for an affordable 1U 19" rack mount interface.
My only gripe is that I can't play along to an ipod or similar with the current set up. I may have to add a mini mixer before the headphones.
That would be one option. You should be able to mix audio in your PC using a software mixer, depending on your audio card. I run everything through a mixing desk here, so it's all handled in hardware.
I'm using Toontrack's own player, is there any advantage to using a DAW? I'm not recording at present, just playing.
The only advantage really would be when you want to record and multi-track. It might also help with mixing multiple audio sources (as discussed above). If you're looking to dip your toe in the water, you can try Reaper. It's shareware with an indefinite and unrestricted evaluation period. It has a bit of a steep learning curve but that's easily handled by loads of helpful online advice and tips. Most DAW's have demos or trials. I'd never recommend one over another as different DAWs suit different peoples way of working. I used to be a heavy Cubase guy, but moved to Reason many years ago. Been there ever since. When I need another tool, I use Reaper or Mixbus.