No problems at all with the pico, the SS does the pulsing externally so a lot of the work is taken away from the PC itself. Integrated graphics are not a problem due to the fact that the software pulsing engine is not used.
The most I have seen on CPU was 30% and that was with a test of Rev4 of Mach, normally sits at 10% or less CPU.
The Pico has SATA and IDE for fitting hard drives, I use 2.5inch SATA drives.
Hood