First PC Purchase Since 2001!

Nicholas Sorrell

Nicholas Sorrell

Nicholas Sorrell

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14 Feb 2019
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47
Evening all!

You read that right, I am looking to acquire a new PC for the first time since 2001 (if you don't count the Macbook Pro from 2007!), and hellfire there has been a whole world of change since I last looked at PC parts!

I am looking to build a machine for video editing, and am looking for advice from the hive mind in regard to spec.

I have a budget of circa £2500 to spend, and I plan to edit mostly 1080p footage, with a move to 4K in the next 12 months. Software would be Lightworks and DaVinci Resolve, moving to Adobe PP soon.

I'm pretty sure I want to go Intel based on reviews I've read showing them to be consistently better than the AMD chips when it comes to editing video. Also pretty sure I want 32GB RAM, and an NVIDIA graphics card of sorts (be it a high end gaming card or a Quadro I'm not sure).

Any particular hints and tips from people doing the same sort of thing?

Cheers,
Nick
 
tbh, if you can wait...then i suggest waiting. ryzen 3000 is rumoured to shake the market up.
3giJaKz.png
apparently the midrange 3600x performs similarly, in cinebench to the i9 9900k which costs USD 499.
even if the prices end up as 10-20% more expensive, it's still miles cheaper than current offerings.

again, these are all rumours, so a large pinch of salt is required.
 
tamzzy said:
tbh, if you can wait...then i suggest waiting. ryzen 3000 is rumoured to shake the market up.
3giJaKz.png
apparently the midrange 3600x performs similarly, in cinebench to the i9 9900k which costs USD 499.
even if the prices end up as 10-20% more expensive, it's still miles cheaper than current offerings.

again, these are all rumours, so a large pinch of salt is required.
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Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing, will keep it in mind.
 
if ryzen 3000 is going to shake up the market as rumours say it will - then buying anything new now, unless you have to, will probably leave you with buyers remorse
especially if you're hunting for a computer worth £2500. it's no chump change.
if you've already waited that long, a few more months won't hurt
 
Video editing can hog CPU cores/threads like unmonitored bankers/corporate elite suck society dry.
So if not needing PC precisely now waiting can give lot more bang per buck.

8 core performance equality with 9900K at lot lower power consumption was demoed month ago in CES with engineering sample.
So in anything well multithreading Intel is likely going to get crushed to dead.
Until getting their SNAFU for already three years 10nm working, Intel just can't make anything with equal amount of processing power without it sucking huge amount of power.

AMD's 50 year anniversary in end of April-start of May is quite likely time to hear more information.
 
no point splashing out on any CPU if your pushing 4K editing until you've got GPU selected . CPU will become limited by the performance of the GPU .

Dual 2080ti's my justify ryzen 12/16 cores, Thread ripper 24 cores or intel 14 cores but not by a huge amount

Fusion within Resolve is dependent on core speed per core... the more cores at the faster speed the better - again provided you have a GPU powerful enough to keep up.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/DaVinci-Resolve-15-CPU-Roundup-Intel-vs-AMD-vs-Mac-1310/

x570 should be priced roughly the same as Z390 and VRMs will match from MSI and Gigabyte pretty much.

Would spec your GPU first then build the core system around it

adobe products - finally given better coding for Prem Pro bu Aftereffects still favours Core speed along with core count - so intel currently .
Adobe doesn't utilise GPU as well as Resolve currently as well which is a shame
 
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orbitalwalsh said:
no point splashing out on any CPU if your pushing 4K editing until you've got GPU selected . CPU will become limited by the performance of the GPU .

Dual 2080ti's my justify ryzen 12/16 cores, Thread ripper 24 cores or intel 14 cores but not by a huge amount

Fusion within Resolve is dependent on core speed per core... the more cores at the faster speed the better - again provided you have a GPU powerful enough to keep up.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/DaVinci-Resolve-15-CPU-Roundup-Intel-vs-AMD-vs-Mac-1310/

x570 should be priced roughly the same as Z390 and VRMs will match from MSI and Gigabyte pretty much.

Would spec your GPU first then build the core system around it

adobe products - finally given better coding for Prem Pro bu Aftereffects still favours Core speed along with core count - so intel currently .
Adobe doesn't utilise GPU as well as Resolve currently as well which is a shame
Click to expand...
That was an incredibly helpful article, many thanks for sharing :cool:
 
So the guys (well, Damien) at OCUK have put together a spec for me, and on the face of it, it looks pretty tasty!

i9-9900k, 64GB, and the graphics card being an RTX2070 8GB from Palit.

The deliberator in me is now researching each and every component listed...hopefully not long and I'll have a rather decent machine in my hands :)
 
even if you have such a huge budget there is no reason to spend it all if you can meet/exceed your requirements for less, I would avoid the intel 9900k because runs so hot its silly with most I have seen in testing hitting 100c on watercooling and in real world performance terms the i7 8700k is so close in performance in the tasks you are interested in but uses 30-40% more power to achieve it that there is no point wasting money on the 9900k (also many multi-threaded programs still aren't great at using all the available threads effectively past about 8 threads which is why you see diminishing returns on performance when there are more than 8 threads available on the CPU).

it might be better aiming for a PC that is good for what you require now and ensuring you get an excellent PSU something platinum (I believe Superflower and EVGA platinum and titanium are the best available) with an appropriate case for your requirements (good airflow, dust suppression and support for large watercooling rads if you are comfortable with water cooling) and a lot of fast RAM (as far as I'm aware Gskill is still the best for quality RAM)
these components as well as any storage (SSD, HDD) will carry over to any future upgrades (assuming you don't wait 18 years for the next upgrade). and you could quite easily change the motherboard and processor for a new platform (AMD or Intel) should something impressive come along
as for graphics cards you should really check some reviews for thermal performance because the better cooled cards will usually outlast inferior models significantly especially as you will be using them on high loads for long periods of time so I would suggest picking a series of card that you want and then checking reviews for thermal performance and look specifically for ones with good GPU cooling but also good VRM and memory cooling as I have seen examples of cards that had huge heatsinks much larger than reference but the VRMs /memory ran hot so they still failed much faster than cards with smaller heatsinks but better VRM /memory cooling.

There is a lot of intricacy especially with higher end PC components but if you have questions there are a lot of people with specific knowledge in the forums and I'm sure willing to help.
 
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tamzzy said:
@Jigen dude, what you smoking to come out with that drivel?
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Reading around, it does highlight that the i9-9900K does indeed run hot, so am looking at the cooling option specced by OCUK to ensure I'm not going to run into stability issues during a render :)

I'm sticking with the 2070 based cards, as the bang for buck shown in tests seem to suggest it as the best option within my budget.
 
Nicholas Sorrell said:
Reading around, it does highlight that the i9-9900K does indeed run hot, so am looking at the cooling option specced by OCUK to ensure I'm not going to run into stability issues during a render :)
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it does run hot when it's overclocked silly (like 5.2ghz all core at silly voltages), yes. for a small overclock and with adequate (read, sensible) cooling, it'll be okay.

EsaT said:
Video editing can hog CPU cores/threads like unmonitored bankers/corporate elite suck society dry.
Click to expand...
going to quote this again as it's relevant.
 
tamzzy said:
it does run hot when it's overclocked silly (like 5.2ghz all core at silly voltages), yes. for a small overclock and with adequate (read, sensible) cooling, it'll be okay.


going to quote this again as it's relevant.
Click to expand...

I feel like you are quoting things you have seen in articles, just because it is using all the cores does not mean it is using them efficiently above a certain number of threads and this is not the fault of the CPU but its
to do with how well optimised the programs using them are and they are mostly pretty badly optimised, which is why higher frequency still outperform more threads at lower frequency.

and a 8700K overclocked to 5ghz will perform within about 5% of a 9900K overclocked to the same 5ghz
and anyone who buys a K series processor and does not overclock it is wasting potential and might as well have bought a non-k variant.
 
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