o.k Michael I see you are new to the software so let's give you some valuble information:
1. CPU usage in Ae is depended, among other things, on what effect you use. some effect are multi-threaded effects and some are not but in any case unfortunately Ae is currently not utilizing all your CPU cores so don't expect maximum CPU usage here. it's how the software was built - it was always single threaded application (writing one frame at a time) but as of CC2015 it's has become multi-threaded application internally - the U.I is one thread, the renderer is another. this is only the beginning. we can definitely expect for it to become much more efficient in upcoming versions - this change is the most anticipated there is among heavy Ae users. we need it badly. we want Ae to use all the resource power it can. the debate on why isn't this happening yet tends to get heated and emotional when Ae users talk about it so let us not start a fire talking about it 
2. The Cinema4D renderer is mainly for extruding Ae's native vector layers which are Text and Shape layer. it can also bend other layers to some extent. other then that function, it has no use for you. more about the Cinema4D renderer here. this renderer is actually CPU multithreaded ! (notice the irony here, that this somewhat esoteric renderer that only does one magic thing or two can actually use more of your CPU power, instead of the Classic 3D renderer which you actually use 99% of the time)
3. as for saving cache to disk - the default behavior is save cache to disk. if you have more space then by all means use more than 23GB.
use other drive than your system drive (system drive which I hope is SSD)
4. as for playback - bare in mind that After Effects is designed to playback frames cached to RAM in real-time. this means it has to cache them to disk first before it can plays them smoothly. if you don't have any effects applied, this can happen instantly (this is a relatively new thing in Ae) and give you real-time playback from the start. other times, you should cache it first and you can set your preview settings shortcuts to your liking in the preview panel: Preview without rendering in After Effects
5. one last thing: Ae is not that intuitive. it may seem like that at first that it looks like Premiere and you can mess around with some settings and find your way but it's hard and inefficient to work with it that way. using Ae has been compared here to flying an F-18 with your mom shouting at you in the back seat in a warm summer night! so get your training first. you should start your journey here: After Effects tutorials.
welcome to our crazy family 
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