Looking to upgrade Video Editing PC

[RC1917]

Hi all,

Really hope this is the right place to post this, and apologies if not.

I currently have a PC that I bought already made. I make very simple youTube videos with it and all in all it has been fine and has been relatively useful. The problems that I encounter with it is that in Premiere Pro, it really struggles to implement any motion graphics, including callouts, etc, and even when it manages to it is incredibly slow. I have to scrub in very low resolution to even have a shot at seeing it in the preview screen, and when rendering and also outputting, it takes an age.

As I said, my footage is only 1080p screen recordings, so I'm not working with hi res footage or anything, nor do I intend to, I'd just like to be able to add simple motion graphics, scrub through and watch the preview in near full quality without it taking an age to buffer, and also if it can output faster, that's a bonus but not the be all and end all. I don't use the PC for anything else except making these videos so power isn't being used up elsewhere.

I'm in no way smart with PCs, but I can loosely work my way around them. I'm going to attempt to list what I'm aware are the PCs components, if I get some wrong or are missing them, please feel free to tell me what to look for and I'll find it ASAP. I'm on a very tight budget so as few upgrades as possible would be great.

Thanks:

Motherboard: Supermicro C7P67 V1.03
Processor: Intel Core i5-2500 CPU @ 3.30GHz
Power Supply: Corsair CX430
Tower: Tsunami Dream
RAM: 24GB Corsair Vengeance
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 630
Drives: TOSHIBA THNSNJ060GCSU 60GB 512bytes? + WDC WD5003ABYZ-011FA0 500GB drive.

Again, sorry if any of that info is wrong, or if I need to include other things. And thanks in advance for any help.

 

[mickyflinn]

Hi

My knowledge is limited of premier pro but are you using gpu acceleration in the settings, if its greyed out then the gpu us not supported .

 

[Quartz]

That’s a very old system. Perhaps a decade old. It’s going to be slow. You might want to try lighter software. You should check your GT 630 as there are two different versions. One has hardware video encoding and the other does not. You want the one with a GK208 GPU.

 

[jigger]

Nice motherboard. Maybe consider dropping in a Xeon E3 1270v2 and overclocking.

 

[Armageus]

Nice motherboard. Maybe consider dropping in a Xeon E3 1270v2 and overclocking.

It's certainly an option, but they typically go for around £70 and although it will add 4 more threads via HT, it's still not going to be a huge boost over what he has.

Another option would be a used Nvidia Quadro M2000 4GB graphics card, which can be had for around £100, as this is probably the cheapest "Supported" card for GPU acceleration on Adobe's list:
https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/system-requirements.html#gpu-acceleration
https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/gpu-acceleration-and-hardware-encoding.html
(Again it's not necessarily the best option - just another possible option).

Additionally, it looks like you only have a 60GB ssd and a 500GB hard drive. Scrubbing through footage on a hard drive will be painful regardless, so again another option that may help would be to replace the old (and likely much slower 60gb ssd) with a newer model (Worst case this could still be carried forward to a new machine as a second drive etc, as newer SSDs come in the NVME M2 format rather than SATA):
My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x WD Blue 500GB 3D NAND SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive (WDS500G2B0A)= £52.99

Total: £61.69 (includes shipping: £8.70)​

​

As others have said, the whole system is old and would benefit from a complete refresh. Even a previous generation "budget" processor like the i3-10105 offers more than double the raw performance of an old i5 2500, and would have the benefit of some video codecs etc being hardware accelerated, even if full gpu acceleration isn't supported.

 

[RC1917]

Message below.

 

[RC1917]

It's certainly an option, but they typically go for around £70 and although it will add 4 more threads via HT, it's still not going to be a huge boost over what he has.

Another option would be a used Nvidia Quadro M2000 4GB graphics card, which can be had for around £100, as this is probably the cheapest "Supported" card for GPU acceleration on Adobe's list:
https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/system-requirements.html#gpu-acceleration
https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/gpu-acceleration-and-hardware-encoding.html
(Again it's not necessarily the best option - just another possible option).

Additionally, it looks like you only have a 60GB ssd and a 500GB hard drive. Scrubbing through footage on a hard drive will be painful regardless, so again another option that may help would be to replace the old (and likely much slower 60gb ssd) with a newer model (Worst case this could still be carried forward to a new machine as a second drive etc, as newer SSDs come in the NVME M2 format rather than SATA):
My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x WD Blue 500GB 3D NAND SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive (WDS500G2B0A)= £52.99

Total: £61.69 (includes shipping: £8.70)
​

As others have said, the whole system is old and would benefit from a complete refresh. Even a previous generation "budget" processor like the i3-10105 offers more than double the raw performance of an old i5 2500, and would have the benefit of some video codecs etc being hardware accelerated, even if full gpu acceleration isn't supported.

Hi all,

Thanks for the great suggestions so far.

So aside from everything being old and outdated (which I will eventually get to fixing up completely) can we assume that the GPU would make the biggest difference so far as for improving performance?

So if I suggested in the immediate to replace the CPU and GPU with:

- Intel Core i3-10105F
- Nvidia GTX 1060-6GB

This would be roughly a £280 upgrade with a second hand Nvidia. Do we think that I would see a drastic difference with this? And also, would the motherboard that I currently have support those two upgrades?

Thanks so far, and for anything forthcoming.

 

[Armageus]

So aside from everything being old and outdated (which I will eventually get to fixing up completely) can we assume that the GPU would make the biggest difference so far as for improving performance?

Someone with more knowledge of Premiere Pro than me would have to confirm how much difference GPU acceleration would make, but in theory it should offload a lot from the CPU.

Nvidia GTX 1060-6GB

This would be roughly a £280 upgrade with a second hand Nvidia.

Assuming the 1060 is ~£200 snap their arm off and buy it - you're unlikely to find anything better given the current GPU market.

And also, would the motherboard that I currently have support those two upgrades?

Your motherboard should support the GPU, but definitely won't support that CPU.
Unfortunately if you change CPU, and motherboard , you'd also need to change RAM, as things have moved to DDR4 (and now DDR5) as well.


I'd go with the GPU and a bigger SATA SSD for a starting point and then see how you get on.

 

[RC1917]

Someone with more knowledge of Premiere Pro than me would have to confirm how much difference GPU acceleration would make, but in theory it should offload a lot from the CPU.


Assuming the 1060 is ~£200 snap their arm off and buy it - you're unlikely to find anything better given the current GPU market.


Your motherboard should support the GPU, but definitely won't support that CPU.
Unfortunately if you change CPU, and motherboard , you'd also need to change RAM, as things have moved to DDR4 (and now DDR5) as well.


I'd go with the GPU and a bigger SATA SSD for a starting point and then see how you get on.

Thanks Armageus.

Just a quick final question, if I could pick up an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 6GB Twin Fan for £255, is that a good deal? And would that work with my motherboard too?

 

[Grimley]

/\/\ Yes (given the current market with GFX cards) & Yes