Hey Nerds... I'm Building a video editing PC. Help me.

SixPapaCharlie

SixPapaCharlie

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I have searched the internet and gotten an insane amount of advice.

I am basically planning on building the machine in the linked video below.
For reference, I am coning form an intel i7 2600 (dell optiplex 990) with onboard graphics and no bells or whistles.

The primary problem I am trying to solve is the machine I have was never intended to run Premier and it is a nightmare trying to edit / render, etc videos. I have to close and reopen premier once for about every 20 minutes I spend editing because it just starts to act wonky and lock up as I tax the machine.

I assume this will be a significant step up but do any of you others see any things here you would recommend steering away from or using an alternate component?

Thanks!

 
Welcome to the 'PC master race'.
 
weilke said:
Welcome to the 'PC master race'.
Click to expand...

I know. Back in college @# years ago, I kept up with all of this stuff, constantly upgrading components to improve performance.
Then I went the software route and now I am out of patience when it comes to time wasted on glitches and waiting for the PC to catch up.
I have gone back into looking at hardware and it is all over the place
 
In classic PoA fashion, you should be using davinci resolve. It’s free, as functional as premier, and doesn’t suck. And it’s free.

Or add a metric fk-ton of ram to your current system and be done with it. But while you’re doing that you can just switch to resolve, which is free.
 
eman1200 said:
In classic PoA fashion, you should be using davinci resolve. It’s free, as functional as premier, and doesn’t suck. And it’s free.
Or add a metric fk-ton of ram to your current system and be done with it. But while you’re doing that you can just switch to resolve, which is free.
Click to expand...

I may take this resolve thing for a spin. I love premier but I loathe SAAS.
 
Haven’t watched the video, but if you want insane I/O which usually is the biggest bottleneck, get a few SSDs , then create a storage tier on it. Get a couple of large HDD just for storage, not for editing. If you stick them together with storage tiering , I/O will be taken care of.

There are many other expensive route to take .... just like avionics
 
In a galaxy far away, I used to sell such systems... Back when you would use frame accurate VCRs, a/b roll, and serial control..

Also did some 3D animation.

Best case was always a dedicated machine for the task... Logic dictates unopened programs shouldn't effect a running program.

But, it SEEMS they did...

Also, save often....

Oh, and reboot every 20 minutes or so.. seems to be a law in desktop video...

HTH
 
eman1200 said:
In classic PoA fashion, you should be using davinci resolve. It’s free, as functional as premier, and doesn’t suck. And it’s free.

Or add a metric fk-ton of ram to your current system and be done with it. But while you’re doing that you can just switch to resolve, which is free.
Click to expand...
How much does it cost?
 
a few years ago - maybe 2,3,5? generations ago in Technology the biggest, fastest Mac with the biggest, fastest storage and Final Cut Pro was the answer, at least according to my son-in-law, who's in the TV Production company space, and my son who was in college studying film at that time. Final Cut Pro shot themselves in the foot with licensing (hmmm, kinda like Oracle is trying to put the screws to us ... worse than normal now) ... so, yeah, ... sorry, I got nothin'.
 
Unless you find enjoyment in choosing the components and assembling it yourself, you might be better off just buying an off the shelf solution. Then you’ll have a warranty, support, won’t have to deal with an OS/driver install, etc...

With margins being so thin, the savings of doing the assembly yourself aren’t what they used to be, and may not be worth the time and hassle unless you’re a specific kind of nerd or gamer. Which if you’ve been running an Optiplex with onboard graphics all this time, you’re probably not. :D

Regardless, you’ll be happy with whatever you buy/build - it’ll be a huge upgrade.
 
kayoh190 said:
Unless you find enjoyment in choosing the components and assembling it yourself, you might be better off just buying an off the shelf solution. Then you’ll have a warranty, support, won’t have to deal with an OS/driver install, etc...

With margins being so thin, the savings of doing the assembly yourself aren’t what they used to be, and may not be worth the time and hassle unless you’re a specific kind of nerd or gamer. Which if you’ve been running an Optiplex with onboard graphics all this time, you’re probably not. :D

Regardless, you’ll be happy with whatever you buy/build - it’ll be a huge upgrade.
Click to expand...

I already have the SSD hard drives with OS and programs on them so it will be simpler to just throw them into a new build versus copying everything over.
I guess I could swap them into a pre-assembled machine as well.
 
kayoh190 said:
Unless you find enjoyment in choosing the components and assembling it yourself, you might be better off just buying an off the shelf solution. Then you’ll have a warranty, support, won’t have to deal with an OS/driver install, etc...

With margins being so thin, the savings of doing the assembly yourself aren’t what they used to be, and may not be worth the time and hassle unless you’re a specific kind of nerd or gamer. Which if you’ve been running an Optiplex with onboard graphics all this time, you’re probably not. :D

Regardless, you’ll be happy with whatever you buy/build - it’ll be a huge upgrade.
Click to expand...
I vote that he's still some specific kind of nerd.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I have searched the internet and gotten an insane amount of advice.

I am basically planning on building the machine in the linked video below.
For reference, I am coning form an intel i7 2600 (dell optiplex 990) with onboard graphics and no bells or whistles.
Click to expand...

Are you using proxies in Adobe Premiere? I finally did after my 4K drone videos were bogging down Premiere so badly it was unusable. It's gotten me a couple of extra years out of my editing system. Import video, wait for the proxies to create, and boom. No lag. It's like an instant upgrade to your system.
 
I am confused. I thought that you make your living as an IT manager. Wouldn’t that give you the skills already to do computer builds? Oh wait, management...Never mind
 
Premiere does have so many weird bugs and quirks that I'm thinking of giving Resolve a try as well.
 
You can always go old-school and save hundreds of dollars:

97dea8a3b6da54cdd40b0ecbd437d851.jpg
 
Morgan3820 said:
I am confused. I thought that you make your living as an IT manager. Wouldn’t that give you the skills already to do computer builds? Oh wait, management...Never mind
Click to expand...

HA! no no no. Get my hands dirty? Bite your tongue... That's for the riff raff and unwashed masses.
 
F01LA said:
Are you using proxies in Adobe Premiere? I finally did after my 4K drone videos were bogging down Premiere so badly it was unusable. It's gotten me a couple of extra years out of my editing system. Import video, wait for the proxies to create, and boom. No lag. It's like an instant upgrade to your system.
Click to expand...

I tried proxies and found once they finally import, they are smooth but the way I do things is a trainwreck so I am always importing another clip here and there throughout the editing process and the proxy import takes a good bit of time. I do most of my editing after everyone has gone to sleep before the alcohol kicks in so I have a very limited window of useful consciousness to edit these things.
 
I recently built an i7-9700K system using a Designare motherboard and 32 GB of ram. Haven't put it through its paces, but seems to outrun the P7 system it replaced. Get as much RAM as you can afford. Also, M2 drives outperform SATA SSDs significantly.

I've been using Shotcut for video and DXO/gimp/Affinity for photos. Shotcut and Gimp are open source (free) DXO and Affinity are very reasonably priced and do a great job. I gave the boot to Adobe... Not paying for rental software.
 
Premiere is a slut for RAM. The rest doesn't seem to matter as much, although the SSDs will make life nicer.
 
Alrighty Bryan,
I have to weigh in on this. I'm a video editor for a living and I also literally just upgraded to a new edit suite for my home setup last week. If you don't follow my advice, you are just flat out wrong! hahaha.

Glad to hear you are using Premiere. As others have said, Resolve is an option. It started it's life as a robust color correction product but has morphed into an all in one piece of software. I personally much prefer Premiere and all the Creative Cloud products that accompany it. Resolve does have better benchmarks in many ways, but with either one, you will need a beefy setup to get smooth performance. There's also Final Cut Pro X, which is blazing fast on current machines, but I still haven't forgiven Apple for ditching FCP 7 for the new FCP X style of editing.

As far as the system goes, have you considered getting an iMac? Sure, you can probably build out a PC cheaper and all that crap, but the Mac OS is more elegant and everything just works out of the box. I recently got the 2019 27" iMac but upgraded to the 8-core/16 thread i9 processor, Radeon Vega 48 for graphics, 1TB SSD, with the 8GB RAM and then upgraded the RAM myself (much cheaper) to 64GB. This thing is a fast fast machine and is built for video editing. You could use the internal SSD for storage, but I'd highly recommend getting an external SSD thunderbolt drive for media storage. Butter smooth playback of gopro 4K mp4 footage all day long along with most other video codecs that you throw at it. I'm a 2-monitor kind of guy, so I added another 27" monitor, but a single 27" would suffice.

You'd end up dropping about 4 AMU's for this setup. Again, I know there are cheaper ways to go, and I'm sure others will chime in saying Mac's are crap and all that....but I can tell you that almost ALL of the editorial post-production companies out here in LA LA Land edit on Macs using Premier or Avid. And for a reason. They just work.
 
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I always find it funny how people state get a Mac; it just works. That so used to be true.
But recently the hands have switched. My brother's very expensive Mac, dies. My home built PC has never had an issue....

The problem is you get what you pay for. So people often compare a $300 PC to $2300 Mac and wonder why the PC is not as reliable.... (I am dealing with this now as my daughter compares an $800 iPhone against a $100 android).

Anyway, how often do you edit? My step-son actually uses an Amazon Virtual Machine for his occasional editing.

Tim
 
mr_happyland said:
Alrighty Bryan,
I have to weigh in on this. I'm a video editor for a living and I also literally just upgraded to a new edit suite for my home setup last week. If you don't follow my advice, you are just flat out wrong! hahaha.

Glad to hear you are using Premiere. As others have said, Resolve is an option. It started it's life as a robust color correction product but has morphed into an all in one piece of software. I personally much prefer Premiere and all the Creative Cloud products that accompany it. Resolve does have better benchmarks in many ways, but with either one, you will need a beefy setup to get smooth performance. There's also Final Cut Pro X, which is blazing fast on current machines, but I still haven't forgiven Apple for ditching FCP 7 for the new FCP X style of editing.

As far as the system goes, have you considered getting an iMac? Sure, you can probably build out a PC cheaper and all that crap, but the Mac OS is more elegant and everything just works out of the box. I recently got the 2019 27" iMac but upgraded to the 8-core/16 thread i9 processor, Radeon Vega 48 for graphics, 1TB SSD, with the 8GB RAM and then upgraded the RAM myself (much cheaper) to 64GB. This thing is a fast fast machine and is built for video editing. You could use the internal SSD for storage, but I'd highly recommend getting an external SSD thunderbolt drive for media storage. Butter smooth playback of gopro 4K mp4 footage all day long along with most other video codecs that you throw at it. I'm a 2-monitor kind of guy, so I added another 27" monitor, but a single 27" would suffice.

You'd end up dropping about 4 AMU's for this setup. Again, I know there are cheaper ways to go, and I'm sure others will chime in saying Mac's are crap and all that....but I can tell you that almost ALL of the editorial post-production companies out here in LA LA Land edit on Macs using Premier or Avid. And for a reason. They just work.
Click to expand...

4 AMUS!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am not a real Cirrus pilot, I just borrow it. Even my Grumman is a traveler. You rich pilots!

I can't do a mac because I am super duper heterosexual but I understand their popularity.

Truth: I have been working on PC for 30 years and I am stubborn as a mule so I refuse to learn new habits. I bought a mac mini once and I gave it 2 weeks before I began making up reasons why I hated it and I gave it to a homeless man in downtown Dallas. I think he hated macs too because he cussed me out. He was panhandling outside a MacDonald's and asked for a Big Mac. All I had was the Mac Mini. Entitled b**strd!

Has to be a PC though. Looking to keep it at a grand or less. I tend to shoot everything in 4k, and then resample down to 1080. I only use 4k for cropping needs.
I want to up my video game but my motto has always been "Nobody comes to my channel for quality". #Truth
So I am not so concerned with high quality output, more just wanting to speed up the editing process.

Its funny. People (me included) are always looking to improve stuff. The most popular video I ever made was with a Galaxy 6 cell phone duct taped to my head.
I should just get a new roll of duct tape and go back to the simple life.
 
tspear said:
I always find it funny how people state get a Mac; it just works. That so used to be true.
But recently the hands have switched. My brother's very expensive Mac, dies. My home built PC has never had an issue....

The problem is you get what you pay for. So people often compare a $300 PC to $2300 Mac and wonder why the PC is not as reliable.... (I am dealing with this now as my daughter compares an $800 iPhone against a $100 android).

Anyway, how often do you edit? My step-son actually uses an Amazon Virtual Machine for his occasional editing.

Tim
Click to expand...

I am editing 4 nights a week.
 
My stepson builds computers.
He had the following questions:
1. Can your existing case be re-used?
2. What memory do you currently have?
3. Current SSD and HDD?
4. What storage capacity do you need?
5. Are you comfortable over clocking and know what you are doing here?

He can then put together a spec for you geared toward video editing.

Note: He built my photography PC, and also the family VR machines, plus his video editing and multiple gaming machines for him and his friends.

Tim
 
tspear said:
My stepson builds computers.
He had the following questions:
1. Can your existing case be re-used?
2. What memory do you currently have?
3. Current SSD and HDD?
4. What storage capacity do you need?
5. Are you comfortable over clocking and know what you are doing here?

He can then put together a spec for you geared toward video editing.

Note: He built my photography PC, and also the family VR machines, plus his video editing and multiple gaming machines for him and his friends.

Tim
Click to expand...


1. Can your existing case be re-used?
No. Small form factor
2. What memory do you currently have?
Crap memory. Has to go
3. Current SSD and HDD?
I have 2 fast SSD drives that I would like to keep using
4. What storage capacity do you need?
I am good here. I have 6 Tb in my Drobo NAS device and I have a 1 tb external drive.
5. Are you comfortable over clocking and know what you are doing here?
I don't know and no.
 
tspear said:
I always find it funny how people state get a Mac; it just works. That so used to be true.
But recently the hands have switched. My brother's very expensive Mac, dies. My home built PC has never had an issue....

The problem is you get what you pay for. So people often compare a $300 PC to $2300 Mac and wonder why the PC is not as reliable.... (I am dealing with this now as my daughter compares an $800 iPhone against a $100 android).

Anyway, how often do you edit? My step-son actually uses an Amazon Virtual Machine for his occasional editing.

Tim
Click to expand...

The first Mac-attack has already come! haha. To each their own. No computer is full proof from having issues. I'm not trying to start a PC v Mac war. Use what works for you. I'm just offering up my opinion based on my experience. I do this stuff for a living and Macs have been reliable. Most editorial-based post production companies agree. Time is money with these guys and they don't wanna be messing around with tech support. For many other computing needs, Mac's probably aren't the best and certainly not the most economical solution.

Cloud editing would be nowhere near robust enough for his kind of workflow.
 
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SixPapaCharlie said:
4 AMUS!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am not a real Cirrus pilot, I just borrow it. Even my Grumman is a traveler. You rich pilots!

I can't do a mac because I am super duper heterosexual but I understand their popularity.
Click to expand...

Haha. That's chump change for you. You own an airplane. You must love to burn money!! Seriously...I was working on my 9 year old mac at home before that. I milked that baby for all it was worth, and then some. Besides, those Apple commercials are so cool...how could I resist the shiny elegance! LOL
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I have searched the internet and gotten an insane amount of advice.

I am basically planning on building the machine in the linked video below.
For reference, I am coning form an intel i7 2600 (dell optiplex 990) with onboard graphics and no bells or whistles.

The primary problem I am trying to solve is the machine I have was never intended to run Premier and it is a nightmare trying to edit / render, etc videos. I have to close and reopen premier once for about every 20 minutes I spend editing because it just starts to act wonky and lock up as I tax the machine.

I assume this will be a significant step up but do any of you others see any things here you would recommend steering away from or using an alternate component?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

upload_2020-1-14_12-15-49.jpeg
 
@SixPapaCharlie - I don't think I saw it mentioned specifically above...but think a bit differently.

Its a GPU that Adobe Premiere will utilize and speed up things. A lot of people throw tons of DDR3 and SSD's at it...and they help. But I was having troubles editing some 4K on my old i7 which is at least 7yrs old. About 3yrs ago I needed a new video card and got one with a decent GPU. I think I spent about $200 on the video Card. I just wanted it to be able to drive a 4K TV to look at 4K video from a Sony A7rII. But I noticed one thing right away...Premier with that GPU sucked a lot less :)

Maybe do a quick search on best GPU's for Adobe Premier and pick something in the $200 range. GPU's got crazy popular for bitcoin mining so not sure if the prices are still up for that.

I would then want 16GB DDR3, one moderate sized SSD to hold your installed programs (Windows, Adobe, etc). You can also use that SSD to render your output videos to. Then have a second larger SSD to hold all your raw stuff.

I will say that once I have been editing with 16GB of fast memory, small SSD and large HD and GPU I have not had a Premier Crash in quite a while. But I do not edit that often. And I am at most 3-tracks simultaneously and very light on titles. However I do use the Lumetri (finally CameraRaw) which can hit it pretty hard for Curves, etc.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I already have the SSD hard drives with OS and programs on them so it will be simpler to just throw them into a new build versus copying everything over.
I guess I could swap them into a pre-assembled machine as well.
Click to expand...

You may need to build your own. Newer pre-assembled computers are using the M.2 NVMe SSD and booting from a SATA SSD may be problematic. I ended up having to clone my SATA SSD to the M.2 NVMe SSD which worked for the most part. So if buying pre-assembled, check that it is using a SATA and not on-board M.2 interface for the SSD.
 
I recently upgraded my rig specifically for the purpose of getting better Premiere performance. It's now a:

* AMD 3950x
* NVidia 2080 Ti
* 64GB of 3600mhz CL16 memory
* PCIe4 NVME SSDs
* Water-cooled overclocked CPU, GPU, memory and X570 Motherboard

It works out quite a few times the cost of Linus's recommended rig. But even the rig above is not nearly enough for editing 4k footage in Premiere without using proxies in a 9-way multi-cam. You can't even view all the cams without it dropping frames. You can edit a single track no problem, but once you go multi-cam you don't go back.

What the rig does give me is very fast "create proxy" support, as well as very fast "export", which is still nice, but really, realistically you need to incorporate proxies in your workflow for any kind of decent experience in Premiere.

I've learned to just import all the clips I have for a video and create proxies before I even start organizing.

As a rough guide to perf: I imported 2 hours 53 minutes (132 GB) of raw 4K footage last week, and it took just under 40 minutes to convert it all to proxies. It's worth the step.
 
I built a new PC last year so of course this is now all out of date but at the time the AMD had finally caught up with Intel again and the Ryzen CPUs were the best deal going. I built mine around a Ryzen 7... who knows what a year of development has done. I used to keep up with this stuff too but now I only bother when I need to build another machine.
 
wsuffa said:
Also, M2 drives outperform SATA SSDs significantly.
Click to expand...

Slight nitpick, but your statement is incorrect. M.2 is a form factor that can support a variety of communication protocols, including SATA. What you likely meant to recommend is an M.2 NVMe SSD, which is faster than traditional SATA and M.2 SATA drives.
 
deonb said:
But even the rig above is not nearly enough for editing 4k footage in Premiere without using proxies in a 9-way multi-cam. You can't even view all the cams without it dropping frames.
Click to expand...
Yup. That'll do it. I haven't tried that with my new setup yet but I would expect similar results, at least with my current USB 3.0 RAID drive. My next purchase might be the OWC Thunderblade external SSD. 2800 MB/s transfer speeds :eek:
 
pcpartpicker.com

has some builds with current parts prices. You might find it helpful

I’m not an expert but it seems like intel and nvidia stuff is worth it.

I built an i7-8700k machine with 32gb ram, 1080ti and SSD’s. It’s a beast. I think it will stay relevant for at least another 3-4 years.
 
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