£1000+ video editor - parts list complete - please review

[Harmonaz]

Hi guys,

Looking to build a machine that I can use to edit my massive collection of old videos (mostly HD at most, but a few are higher quality). I've spent almost two weeks trying to decide on the parts, and the list below is the best I can come up with given my extremely limited knowledge.

I would like the machine to have no issues playing two 4k vids simultaneously, even better if it can play three. Main use will be movie editing. I have tons of old videos (1080p or less) that I need to trim. Occasionally I may need to dynamically rotate vids (due to phone being held at random angles through the entire vid), or stick a few cropped videos side by side, but thats about it. No effects or colour correction or any of that fancy stuff. I may have to work with higher quality source like 4k or above thanks to all the new phones me and my family use, but just to do the operations/edits mentioned above.

Now my current 8 year old PC can almost manage the tasks I'm talking about. So why the hell do I want such an over the top spec? Simple - I need to do these things quickly, mainly the final render. So a hefty example in my case would be something like - three 1080p vids from my phone. I want to create one video with all three playing side by side with each of the vids cropped or rotated throughout the timeline. The editing process in Premiere Pro on my current machine will take me around 25-30 minutes (lets say each vid is about 10 minutes, with almost 7 minutes trimmed away) if my final video is going to be about 5 minutes long. Rendering the finished video will take more than an hour on my current machine. If I was working with two instead of three vids, the render will take about an hour. For trimming a single 4k video, it will take around half an hour.

There isn't too much I can do about the time I spend editing. Yes a faster machine will help me see the results of my edits quicker so maybe I can cut a few minutes off my editing sessions, but the rendering of the final video is what kills it for me and is pretty much why I haven't bothered anymore. If I can get a new rig which will render a 1080p 5 minute video in a minute or so instead of half an hour, then I will be getting back to work on all the old footage.

I'm thinking of using Da Vince Resolve as its free - but does that mean forking out more on a graphics card? Would I be better off buying software like PowerDirector and getting a cheaper GPU? Perhaps its more related to the actual work I want to do so what do you think based on the scenarios I explained above?

Here's a list of parts that I've come up with. Started off with youtube and amazon recommendations and refined based on some of the things I've read on this site after searching for threads related to video editing and/or Ryzen builds. PLEASE ADVISE on these and what I should change. Once it looks like people approve of the build, I'll go ahead and buy the parts. The prices listed are all from amazon, but once I've finalised the parts list, I'll be shopping around for the best prices.

• CPU - Still not sure. 2700X vs 3700X vs 3900X?
  Motherboard - The most confusing part for me to find out about. Here's a few I've looked at but by no means do I have a preference. I just hope it can take full advantage of the CPU/RAM/GPU. Two M2 drive slots would be nice, but not necessary. USB-C would also be nice as it sounds like many peripherals tend to use it yet most of the motherboards I checked don't seem to have it?
  • MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX ~ £85
    MSI B450 GAMING PRO CARBON AC ~ £120
    MSI B450-A Pro Max ~ £60
    Aorus X570 AORUS Elite ~ £191
    ASUS TUF X570-Plus - £180
    Gigabyte B450M DS3H - £60
  SSD - Sabrent 1TB M2. Maybe this is overkill, but I think this new M2 tech is really cool so I want! If you end up recommending a motherboard with two M2 slots, I might get two drives.
  RAM - Corsair CMK16GX4M2B3200C16 Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4 3200 MHz C16 XMP 2.0 ~ £70. Haven't gone 32 GB since I'm not editing large 4k videos (yet). Is 3200 MHz good enough or is it worth getting something faster?
  Graphics - as mentioned earlier, I'm really not sure what to do here. Buy some editing software and use a cheap GPU, or use Da Vinci Resolve and use a more expensive card? Then there's the issue of me possibly not having monitors that do more than 1080p (not forever as I will get new monitors, just not now). I'm currently running an Asus VE278H which is 1080p and an old Toshiba TV which does HD, but a friend MAY end up giving me two 4k displays. In case he doesn't, it may be awhile before I buy any 4k monitors. After searching this site and reading a couple of threads, it appears that sticking with my 1080 monitors can affect the parts I decide to go with? In addition to movie editing, I want to be able to play two or three 4k videos simultaneously on my non 4k displays, as well as on better displays in the future. Again, no gaming, just high quality movies or videos that I create. The few graphics cards I was recommended from youtube are listed below but I can't tell whats good or bad and how suited for my needs they will be.
  • ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER EVO OC edition 8GB GDDR6 ~ £410
    MSI RADEON RX 580 ARMOR 8G OC Graphics Card '8GB GDDR5, 1366Hz ~ £170
    XFX Radeon RX 570 RS XXX Edition 1286MHz, 8gb GDDR5 ~ £127
    ASUS GPU Nvidia GTX1650 Dual OC 4G Fan ~ £156
  Case - from youtube - NZXT H510 ~ £75. I am really not bothered about looks. Just want a case that'll do the job. If there's a dirt cheap case out there that will house all my parts and allow enough air flow etc etc - I'm happy.
  PSU - Anything that is Gold standard and gives out 650 Watts or more is good right?

For the OS, I'm going to try and install Win10 pro myself. From what I've read, I need to create a usb boot disk, buy the key off ebay or something and then hopefully the rest will be smooth sailing right?

So based on the needs I mentioned, will a ryzen 7 3700X render my videos much faster than a 2700X? If yes, I don't mind forking out the extra £150 or so. Heck, if it renders faster, I don't mind getting a 3900X.

Many thanks in advance
-Naz

 

[Harmonaz]

Thanks for the response!

Ok, so possibly hold off until the b550... you've also mentioned the 3700x - not 3900x or possibly the 3950x which should drop in a few days? I don't mind paying for those if I do get a noticeable speed up in render times.

Also wondering if the GTX1650 is the GPU I should get as the LTT video on youtube mentions that the higher end card they tested never had a high load so they went with this card instead. Thoughts?

 

[Harmonaz]

Based on feedback I got on another thread, here's what I'm looking at now:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core 4.4GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £289.99
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus (AMD AM4) DDR4 X570 Chipset ATX Motherboard= £189.95
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 16GB (2*8GB) 3600 MHz AMD Ryzen Tuned DDR4 Memory Kit= £79.99
• 2 x Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive= £179.99
• 1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER Mini-ITX OC 6144MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £209.99
• 1 x CoolerMaster MasterBox NR600 ATX Midi-Tower Case - Black Tempered Glass= £69.95
• 1 x Corsair CX-M Series 550W 80 Plus Bronze Semi Modular Power Supply (CP-9020102-UK)= £73.99

Total: £1,287.04 (includes shipping: £13.20)
​

The two M2 drives I'll have to get elsewhere since they're so much more expensive at OcUK...

Black Friday doesn't seem to be doing much for the prices of these parts. Any reason to wait? Might as well order right now if not.

 

[Harmonaz]

Aorus Elite and 3900x

Interesting. I was trying to decide between the 2700x and 3700x, and decided that even though £120 extra for maybe a 10% improvement in encoding/render times isn't as cost effective as I would like, I want something a bit more recent/powerful so went with the 3700x. But another £220 on top of that for the 3900x resulting in maybe another 10% improvement? If the improvement is much more, then I might consider it but how will I find out before buying...

Would you mind explaining why the Aorus Elite over the ASUS TUF? I'm not into overclocking, so not sure what other benefits I would get.

 

[Harmonaz]

• 1 x MSI B450-A PRO MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £88.99
• 1 x TeamGroup MP34 1TB NVMe PCIe M.2 Solid State Drive= £99.95

Thing is, I really want (no particular reason) two M2 drives, and since a cheaper motherboard would disable all other PCI slots, I went with the TUF. What do you think?

• 1 x Team Group Vulcan TUF Gaming Alliance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Blac= £59.99

I also went with 3600 RAM since its only £20 more and apparently its better suited for the 3700x?

• 1 x Gigabyte Radeon RX 5700 XT Gaming OC 8GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £375.00

That graphics card - I have no idea. Will it contribute to faster encoding times in Resolve or any other editing suite? Just that its £150 more than what I was recommended, which was in turn £70 more than what I got from youtube recommendations. Would really appreciate an explanation so I can decide whether I should use this GPU instead.

• 1 x Super Flower Leadex III 550W 80 PLUS Gold Modular Power Supply - Black= £59.99
• 1 x Kolink Inspire Series K1 RGB Midi Tower Gaming Case - Black Window= £28.99

That PSU and case is much cheaper than what I listed - I'll probably go with those. Any reason not to?

Many thanks for the response!

 

[Harmonaz]

Forget about the £1k budget - just want something that'll render my videos super fast

 

[Harmonaz]

Doubt I'm going to go Adobe. I think its too expensive. Resolve not being free for H.265 - not exactly sure what implications that has for me. Whats so good about it? Mind you my current export settings in Premiere use H265 though I can't remember why I chose it. Size perhaps? Just did a quick search on the topic and someone appears to have resolved the issue of not being to import H265 by installing some paid for extension. Anyway, this is sounding like hassle so maybe I'll ditch Da Vinci. I've included a more concrete example of the kind of simple work I plan to do, so maybe a free editor really will give me all I need?

I fired up Premiere after probably a year and edited an old video from my S3 phone. Here's an example of what i would refer to as a 'lot of work' for one video. 1080p 30fps, trimmed off footage from beginning and end and some bits in the middle. I was filming a game on a CRT screen from an angle, so I had to zoom/crop the video so that the game footage took up as much of the screen as possible, and had to adjust the rotation quite often to keep the game looking 'straight'. In some places I would split the screen 50/50 ish and play portions from a more recent video taken on a OnePlus 7 (a video of a player's hands using an arcade stick). This was also 1080, but just looked so much better. End result was about a 12 minute video, about 7 minutes of it consisted of that side by side stuff and it took 1 hour 14 minutes to render. I have no SSD, i5 650 3.2ghz, 6gb ram and a geforce 315 512mb ddr3 gpu. That sounds quite bad lol, but dayum - for something that I bought in an emergency off the shelf from a superstore around 9 years ago, its keeping up bloody well. I could probably speed this thing up a fair bit with an SSD, but if I can't bring that above example down to less than 10 minutes, I'm not going to bother. Less than 5 minutes and I'll pay for any build!

Assuming I'm ok using Resolve without H265 (yet to be confirmed I guess), you're saying I should dish out the extra £150. If I don't use Resolve, and go for a tool like, say, Powerlink for £100, is the GTX 1660 Super good enough or maybe too powerful?

 

[Harmonaz]

I've drawn up a similar build but with the 3900x, one M2 drive instead of two and the cheap case recommended above.
£1185.

I think the only unknown factor left is the GPU. That'll probably be the deciding factor in which build I go for...

 

[Harmonaz]

Budget Video Editing rig on LTT:

Probably the first video I watched. The GPU I initially listed was from here, but everyone seems to think its too low end. He also chose a Ryzen 5 instead of the 2700x which I didn't understand, since everyone says that more cores = faster renders.
Besides, the inner fanboy is getting stronger so I'm no longer on a budget but I definitely want to get as much bang for my buck as possible. Hence the indecision between 3700x and 3900x.

 

[Harmonaz]

Great idea re: second hand 3900x's. What 2nd hand sites are you referring to? gumtree, ebay amazon?

 

[Harmonaz]

I could be wrong, but I'm beginning to think that the 2700x is more than good enough for my needs. If the 3900x (theoretically) renders one of my videos in 5 minutes, the 2700x should be able to do it in 8, and I don't think I want to fork out an extra £350 just for that. Once I get to finally see real numbers, I'll know whether or not I made the right choice in going for or holding back on the more expensive cpu.

Considering how the prices are almost the same, why a sata ssd instead of another nvme? If I'm not worried about the wear life, any reason not to get a 2nd nvme?

Honestly getting very confused as to whether I need a good graphics card or not even if I don't use Resolve. I was suspecting that even £220 for the 1660 super is too much, but now I have no clue. I'll be sticking with that if I'm still unsure when I finally order everything.

 

[Harmonaz]

Intel 660p 1TB nvme for £90. Guessing I can't post links.

I think the final question really is simply - is it worth the extra £350 for the 3900x because everything else will stay the same. I might ditch an nvme drive if I go that route. Thats still £260 extra.

 

[Harmonaz]

I think I'll stick with the ASUS TUF. Should be a good fit for the 3900x (if I go for it) plus can't really see a reason to swap it out for an aorus elite.

While I'm still not sure, I am currently bidding on a used 3900x lol. Lets see what happens...

 

[Harmonaz]

Thats almost identical to what I've decided on.

Sorry to repeat myself, but should I not get a nvme 1TB for £90 instead of the SATA?

 

[Harmonaz]

I currently have an external HDD, so not too worried about long term storage. Plus if I do get the extra 1TB nvme, stuff can sit there for some time before I need to move it off. In addition to all that, I'll probably move the 3 HDDs in my old system (2 SATA and 1 IDE) to the new rig if I can make space in the case - assuming that's not a bad idea? I really hope I can run my old rig as a VM on the new setup. I can't see a reason for it not to work, other than sod's law lol

I'm ok to pay the extra for the X570. 99% sure I don't need to, even if I do get the 3900x. But I just want to have those two m2 drives and not worry about the PCI slots being disabled - even though I have no idea what to do with them lol. I don't have any hardware, nor can I think of anything that I'll need that uses PCI. In case I get a 2700x now, the X570 should leave me in a good position to just swap it out for a 3900x or 3950x in future. Rather than worry about all the what ifs with the other motherboards, it sounds like I can just rest easy with the X570.

Going to flip a coin to choose psu and case. I've been brainwashed into believing that anything less than one of these three cases will give me a lot of headache down the line. P400, NR600 and H500. Slightly leaning towards the H500 though only because of looks. Not too bothered about PSU since all the suggestions seem good. I'll get the one that I can get the best deal on.

It would be so nice if someone here sold me their old 3900x? Pretty please?

 

[Harmonaz]

The price difference justified me giving it a second thought. You're right - if I need to deal with the BIOS update and just DO THAT INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT AND COMPLEX TASK, there is literally nothing for me to gain with the X570. I'll go with the Pro Carbon just for the extra M2 cos that I will definitely use as opposed to the SATA or PCI which, as you pointed out, I won't.

I wouldn't mind one large SSD, except its stupidly priced compared to the 1tb (£90). Plus I thought it was good practice to keep my source footage on a separate drive from the OS/Programs and if its on another nvme, isn't that ideal? I'm beginning to realise that I've been struggling with non SSDs for way too long and am trying way too hard to make up for it by getting two nvme drives. I would have thought that enthusiasts would love something like that.

The other two SATA drives are very old ~ more than 12 years. And they're currently running in raid0, 250gb each, and haven't had any issues since I put them into my current PC 9 years ago, after the one before that died. Any reason to not use them in the new system?

Thanks for saving me some cash. What case would you recommend? Do I really need anything fancy or with additional fans? I'm not overclocking or gaming and will probably spend a few hours a week editing vids. Watching vids and youtube etc will be very frequent.

 

[Harmonaz]

For now I'm going to stick with one nvme 1TB. With the Pro Carbon, I can easily stick another one in whenever. Plus I don't actually need more storage thanks to my external HDD, which is damn slow but who cares...

16GB ram should be more than enough for my needs. I should be getting it from OcUK for £80 - 16GB 3600 MHz

You've just given me something to think about with regards to the case - Do I stick with stock NR600 for £70, or spend £90 on the case and cooler you've recommended? I'm guessing that means I won't be needing the stock cooler that comes with a Ryzen?

Interesting because there's a used 3900x going for £445 with no fan or box... Though I already placed a £480 bid on another 'bought but never used' 3900x which hasn't moved for a day... maybe that bid was too high lol. Its only £40 less than new. Got till tomorrow night for the auction to end. Might search around for an extra few days for a used 3900x if I don't win this one.

Got a basket on two sites comprising all parts needed, except CPU. £230.47 and £484.41. So with a 3900x at £520 total comes to 1233.88, or with a 2700x at £165, total is 879.88. I could save about a tenner if I order the Palit 1660 Super StormX from a third site. Potentially add another £20 for going with your case/cooler option. That, with the used, fanless 3900x would come to £1160 total.

 

[Harmonaz]

£480 is the normal price of the 3900x - it's currently being gouged by etailers due to supposed "lack of stock"

Oops sounds like I might win it then. Hope its not dodgy in any way...

3200 is enough, but £20 extra for 3600 is a waste?

 

[Harmonaz]

Could I have some more advice on the case? Would you prefer that £43 case over the £70 NR600, both stock configuration?

Can't seem to find any English reviews for the Zalman i3, but I gotta admit it looks nice and the 4 fans has got to be a plus point...

Still doubt I'm going to be loading the CPU enough to justify a different cooler. Right now I just want to get the case right.

 

[Harmonaz]

Ok thanks a lot. Gonna think about the case and maybe the motherboard for a bit, but really its about seeing if I get that (or can get a nicely priced) 3900x.