Ordering of standardization, pca, and/or tfidf for neural network

I have 60k rows of text data. I have tokenized it into 55k columns. I am using a neural network to classify the data but have some questions about how to order my preprocessing steps. I have too much data for my hardware (doesn’t fit in memory/too slow) so I am using PCA to reduce dimensions.

1. Obviously, I need to scale before PCA. I am currently standardizing the columns, but I am wondering if I can use tfidf instead of standardization. Some rows have 50k+ tokens while others have <1k tokens so I am worried these rows have undue influence on the outcome of scaling which will trickle down the pipeline. Is this a good/bad idea? Would I maybe use tfidf then standardize before PCA?

2. Generally neural nets prefer standardized data. After PCA the first few columns have much greater magnitude than the rest b/c they capture so much variance. Should I standardize after PCA and before training? The reason for standardizing before training is so no feature has bigger influence on the model just b/c the scale is bigger, but isn’t PCA telling me that the first few features are actually more important? FWIW, I’ve tried both and not scaling seems a little better.

3. What about performing tfidf after PCA and before training? Again, rows with 50k+ tokens will prefer a network with orders of magnitude larger weights than rows with <1k tokens. Wouldn’t it be hard for the network to set weights for both types of rows?

Diagram for clarity: data -> tokenize -> ?standardize/tfidf? -> PCA -> ?standardize/tfidf? -> neural net