Budget video editing build

[Tetras]

Or £1200 for an entirely new build, though looking at prices for high end gpu's that would take a big chunk of the funds.

Factoring in savings (black Friday, etc) from other site, what could this get me for a new build?

I'd usually suggest an AM5 build, but since it is productivity-oriented I went with the 12700K instead:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i7-12700K 3.60GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-69Z-IN) = £194.99
• 1 x MSI PRO B760-P DDR4 II (LGA 1700) DDR4 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-MSI-03380) = £109.99
• 1 x Team Group 8Pack Edition 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C18 3600MHz Dual Channel Ki (SKU: MEM-8PK-02586) = £59.99
• 1 x MSI GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER Ventus 2X OC 12GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-MSI-01573) = £539.99
• 1 x NVIDIA - Star Wars: Outlaws Game Bundle (SKU: DIG-NVI-03030) = £0.00
• 1 x Team Group MP33 PRO 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TMG-02682) = £99.94
• 1 x Antec C3 ARGB Midi Tower - Black (SKU: CAS-ATC-02727) = £80.00
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming 750W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply (SKU: CA-061-AS) = £79.99

• 1 x Arctic Freezer 36 120m Black CPU Cooler - 2x 120mm (SKU: COO-ARC-02420) = £22.99

Total: £1,199.87 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

 

[AyeAyeAhoy!]

I currently have a small NVMe m.2 drive for windows and a 1tb SSD for storage, so was thinking of similar, maybe upping capacity a bit or adding another SSD in the future, but also adding a much larger hdd for storage only, hence needing a bigger case.

So i'd use the SSD for working from in resolve and the hdd for backing up older files and storage.

Or is there another avenue to venture down now

Great, sounds like a good idea.

If you want to make use of mezzanine workflows (proxy workflows) then that 1tb won’t go far, but is a good start. I’m a big fan of Windows Storage Spaces for working drives, which you could use to add another drive to the 1tb in the future.

 

[famas]

I'd usually suggest an AM5 build, but since it is productivity-oriented I went with the 12700K instead:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i7-12700K 3.60GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-69Z-IN) = £194.99
• 1 x MSI PRO B760-P DDR4 II (LGA 1700) DDR4 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-MSI-03380) = £109.99
• 1 x Team Group 8Pack Edition 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C18 3600MHz Dual Channel Ki (SKU: MEM-8PK-02586) = £59.99
• 1 x MSI GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER Ventus 2X OC 12GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-MSI-01573) = £539.99
• 1 x NVIDIA - Star Wars: Outlaws Game Bundle (SKU: DIG-NVI-03030) = £0.00
• 1 x Team Group MP33 PRO 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TMG-02682) = £99.94
• 1 x Antec C3 ARGB Midi Tower - Black (SKU: CAS-ATC-02727) = £80.00
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming 750W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply (SKU: CA-061-AS) = £79.99
• 1 x Arctic Freezer 36 120m Black CPU Cooler - 2x 120mm (SKU: COO-ARC-02420) = £22.99

Total: £1,199.87 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

That's amazing, thanks Tetras, this gives me a good place to start.

Just for comparison, what would an AMD build look like?

How does the 4070 SUPER compare to the 3090?

I noticed this spec uses DDR4 memory, how much performance increase would a DDR5 spec have, and would it push the budget way over?

 

[famas]

Great, sounds like a good idea.

If you want to make use of mezzanine workflows (proxy workflows) then that 1tb won’t go far, but is a good start. I’m a big fan of Windows Storage Spaces for working drives, which you could use to add another drive to the 1tb in the future.

Looks like I need to research a few more things

 

[AyeAyeAhoy!]

I noticed this spec uses DDR4 memory, how much performance increase would a DDR5 spec have, and would it push the budget way over?

It'd be about another £60


My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x MSI B760 Gaming Plus WIFI (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-37M-MS) = £139.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance EXPO/XMP 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C36 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRS-00996) = £89.99

Total: £233.98 (includes delivery: £3.99)​

 

[Tetras]

How does the 4070 SUPER compare to the 3090?

For gaming performance, they're fairly similar (albeit the 4070 Super is more efficient), though double the VRAM is no joke.

I noticed this spec uses DDR4 memory, how much performance increase would a DDR5 spec have, and would it push the budget way over?

This might be of interest, though note they're using a 4090 and testing at 1080p, the gap will be smaller with a lesser card and a higher resolution:

Edit: new video released today, this is with a lesser card and CPU:

Just for comparison, what would an AMD build look like?

If you're happy importing or waiting for a good deal, I'm sure you could pick up a 7700 for this price.

AMD equivalent GPU is a 7900 GRE, which I don't think is an issue for Resolve, but it might be for Premiere Pro?

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 5 7600 Six Core 5.10GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DW-AM) = £179.99
• 1 x MSI PRO B650-S WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-MSI-03371) = £134.99
• 1 x Kingston FURY Beast EXPO 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C36 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KF556C36BBEK2-32) (SKU: MY-29U-KS) = £89.98
• 1 x MSI GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER Ventus 2X OC 12GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-MSI-01573) = £539.98
• 1 x NVIDIA - Star Wars: Outlaws Game Bundle (SKU: DIG-NVI-03030) = £0.00
• 1 x Team Group MP33 PRO 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TMG-02682) = £99.95
• 1 x Phanteks Eclipse P400S Glass Midi Tower Case - Noise Dampened Gun Metal (SKU: CA-06A-PT) = £54.54
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming 750W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply (SKU: CA-061-AS) = £79.99
• 1 x Arctic Freezer 36 120m Black CPU Cooler - 2x 120mm (SKU: COO-ARC-02420) = £23.00

Total: £1,202.42 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

 

[AyeAyeAhoy!]

I would strongly recommend sticking with an Intel. Simple answer is that you're probably going to want to have Intel Quicksync - you may see almost double the performance over a similar AMD setup.

Less simple answer... Back to those proxy workflows I mentioned. Basically, the codecs that cameras shoot to (like your phone shooting h.264/h.265(HEVC)) are generally highly compressed, which means that whilst the files are nice and small, your computer has to work hard to decompress them on the fly, constantly, as you work in your NLE. Which is hard work for it.

So to counter this, and make it easier for the system, we create a new copy of the media before editing - transcoding / converting all footage to a mezzanine codec, such as ProRes, Cineform, or DNxHR. These are very minimally compressed formats, which make it very easy for the processor to handle. They may also be relatively low quality - a low bitrate HD copy. This is called 'offline' media (which is why I'm known as an 'Offline Editor', as I work with the 'offline' copy of the footage).

The 1st downside of offline footage is that, being minimally compressed, it's now huge. As a result you need lots of storage, and that storage needs to be fast. The 2nd downside is that you have to make the offline footage in the first place, which means quite a lot of transcoding and organising before you can even begin editing.

Once you've finished your edit, you then re-link to the original camera files (the 'online' copy) and do your final export (this is part of the 'Online Editor's' job). This way you get a smoother edit by using lower quality footage, but end up with the best possible quality final export.

Hope you're still with me!!

So, if you don't fancy doing all that just yet, and you want to work with h.264/h.265(HEVC)/AV1 footage directly on your timeline, then your CPU will need all the help it can get. Intel have their Quicksync technology, which decodes those codecs on the fly, massively helping out your system, and giving a huge boost over any AMD system.

An Nvidia GPU has something very similar also, but not quite so good.

 

[famas]

That's great, thanks for the detailed replay @AyeAyeAhoy! I followed most of it

Think I'll certainly stick with Nvidia and Intel, I've always had Nvidia GPU, but this will be my first Intel build.

I'm going to spend some time looking at parts and specs to see what I can cram into budget going off of @Tetras spec.

I'll post here again when I'm ready to go to triple check it's all compatible.
Big thanks to all who took the time to post with advice, it's much appreciated.

Also, if anyone can shed any light on my current ram issue, feel free

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/boot-issue-faulty-memory.18994511/#post-37447578