Question Helping a friend build a video editing rig. $1400 budget

[jana519]

I'm helping a friend build a video editing rig. His budget is $1400. He's looking to maximize his bang for the buck, performance wise.

His list so far: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rGgfdm


1. What YOUR PC will be used for. Video editing using Premier Pro or Davinci Resolve.

2. What YOUR budget is. $1400

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from. USA

5. IF YOU have a brand preference. None, but he was looking at the NZXT H510.

6. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are. Monitor, keyboard, mouse.

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds. No.

8. What resolution, not monitor size, will you be using? 1440P

9. WHEN do you plan to build it? Starting next week.

10. Do you need to purchase any software to go with the system, such as Windows or Blu Ray playback software? No.

Thanks in advance.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

You can get a 1660 super for that price, making the vanilla irrelevant. And I do not know a lot about what those programs need for editing, but if storage speeds plays any role in performance, I would spend less on the nvme and more on the 4TB. I work with dozens of different systems in a shift, and at this point I consider 5400RPM a crime against humanity.

 

[whm1974]

You can get a 1660 super for that price, making the vanilla irrelevant. And I do not know a lot about what those programs need for editing, but if storage speeds plays any role in performance, I would spend less on the nvme and more on the 4TB. I work with dozens of different systems in a shift, and at this point I consider 5400RPM a crime against humanity.

I will second not getting a 5400RPM HDD as those things are slow. I will advised your friend to go with at least a 2TB SSD for a main drive and use large USB HDDs for backup only.

Is he doing this professorially. You did get this right by speccing 32GB of Memory instead of only 16GB

 

[jana519]

I will second not getting a 5400RPM HDD as those things are slow. I will advised your friend to go with at least a 2TB SSD for a main drive and use large USB HDDs for backup only.

Is he doing this professorially. You did get this right by speccing 32GB of Memory instead of only 16GB

This is the final build we settled on:

System Builder

pcpartpicker.com

We ended up getting a 5400RPM drive after all because he wanted RGB effects and his budget was a little tight. He wanted a 6GB GPU and chose the MSI 1660 Gaming X.

Eventually we got 2x NVMe drives, 500GB and 1TB. So he has 1.5TB total SSD. The plan is to install Windows on the 500GB Crucial P1 and use the 1TB 970 Evo Plus for projects files.

The Strix B450-F has two m.2 slots but using both makes the PCIe x16 drop to x8. I think it's alright since it's PCIe 3.0 and shouldn't affect bandwidth too much.

I gave him the option of a business conservative build without RGB that cost $150 less, but he didn't want that.

Any opinion on having two m.2 NVMe drives?

 

[whm1974]

This is the final build we settled on:

System Builder

pcpartpicker.com

We ended up getting a 5400RPM drive after all because he wanted RGB effects and his budget was a little tight. He wanted a 6GB GPU and chose the MSI 1660 Gaming X.

Eventually we got 2x NVMe drives, 500GB and 1TB. So he has 1.5TB total SSD. The plan is to install Windows on the 500GB Crucial P1 and use the 1TB 970 Evo Plus for projects files.

The Strix B450-F has two m.2 slots but using both makes the PCIe x16 drop to x8. I think it's alright since it's PCIe 3.0 and shouldn't affect bandwidth too much.

I gave him the option of a business conservative build without RGB that cost $150 less, but he didn't want that.

Any opinion on having two m.2 NVMe drives?

He skip the extra NVMe and RGB and get a large RPM HDD. 5400 is way to slow an option to be worth considering.

 

[jana519]

He skip the extra NVMe and RGB and get a large RPM HDD. 5400 is way to slow an option to be worth considering.

Well it's a bit too late, he already pulled the trigger. I put that on him though, he kept saying he would look for storage options but he never did. Eh, what can you do.

My main thing helping out was with motherboard, case, PSU, and quality/aesthetics. I mainly build gaming PCs, so I don't know much about editing rigs but I guess not getting a 7200 RPM platter was a mistake.

Probably not a huge issue though. He can swap out storage drives later if he wants.

You don't think having the OS on a different drive is a good idea? I'm took that idea from here:

Recommended Systems for Adobe Premiere Pro (Storage)

What storage configuration works best in Premiere Pro?

While you could get by with just a single drive, we recommend a two to four hard drive configuration depending on your budget and desired performance level:

1. Primary Drive - OS/Software (SSD) - Includes your operating system and the base Premiere Pro installation. An SSD is highly recommended as it will greatly improve how fast the OS and programs startup, but there is usually not much of a performance benefit to upgrade to a faster NVMe drive.
2. Secondary Drive - Project Files (SSD/M.2 NVMe) - If possible, it is a good idea to separate your project files and disk cache onto a secondary drive. For most users a standard SSD will work fine, but if you work with high bitrate RAW footage there can be a large performance benefit to using a M.2 NVMe drive.

 

[whm1974]

Well it's a bit too late, he already pulled the trigger. I put that on him though, he kept saying he would look for storage options but he never did. Eh, what can you do.

My main thing helping out was with motherboard, case, PSU, and quality/aesthetics. I mainly build gaming PCs, so I don't know much about editing rigs but I guess not getting a 7200 RPM platter was a mistake.

Probably not a huge issue though. He can swap out storage drives later if he wants.

You don't think having the OS on a different drive is a good idea? I'm took that idea from here:

Recommended Systems for Adobe Premiere Pro (Storage)

Actually I think having the OS and apps on one drive and your data on drive on another drive is a very good ideal.

Mind you I don't use Windows as I have Linux installed on my System instead. This is my setup:

First SSD:
/
swap
/home

Second SSD:
/SteamLibrary

The OS and apps are installed in the / partition while users and their data are store in their own folders in the /home partition. Swap is a special partition used of course for swap.

My second drive is used entirely to store games from Steam. Now this may seem odd to you, but at the time I built my system I was using both Win8 and Linux Mint. Thanks both to HTML5 Video and Valve supporting Linux Gaming I no longer need Windows since Aug 2014. So I converted that SSD over for Steam since games take so much space. I've been happier ever since.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The Strix B450-F has two m.2 slots but using both makes the PCIe x16 drop to x8. I think it's alright since it's PCIe 3.0 and shouldn't affect bandwidth too much.

I gave him the option of a business conservative build without RGB that cost $150 less, but he didn't want that.

Any opinion on having two m.2 NVMe drives?

I have two 1TB Intel 660p NVMe SSDs in a Asus B450-F ROG STRIX Gaming ATX board, in RAID-0, using the AMDRAID drivers in Win10 1909. Works alright. I did it for capacity for price, not for speed, but performance is also good. Also using both GPU slots, have both an RX 5700, and a GTX 1660ti.

 

[jana519]

I have two 1TB Intel 660p NVMe SSDs in a Asus B450-F ROG STRIX Gaming ATX board, in RAID-0, using the AMDRAID drivers in Win10 1909. Works alright. I did it for capacity for price, not for speed, but performance is also good. Also using both GPU slots, have both an RX 5700, and a GTX 1660ti.

Thank you, I'm happy there's someone else who has the same setup we're aiming for! Would love to hear your honest assessment of the B450-F. Seems to be a best buy. Nothing much can beat it at the price ($120). I think the closest competition is the B450 Tomahawk and it lacks many of the features on the Strix.

What do you use your PC for? That's a very interesting setup, I'd like to hear more about it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Mostly mining / DC / rarely gaming / lots of browsing (have 1000+ tabs in Firefox right now).

 

[whm1974]

Mostly mining / DC / rarely gaming / lots of browsing (have 1000+ tabs in Firefox right now).

Why in the World do you 1'000s of tabs open for anyway? Doesn't your system have a hug drop in performance?

 

[UsandThem]

Why in the World do you 1'000s of tabs open for anyway?

Larry likes to keep all of the 'Garbage Pail Kids - The Movie' best of scenes queued on YouTube at all times.

That whole movie just cracks him up.

 

[whm1974]

Larry likes to keep all of the 'Garbage Pail Kids - The Movie' best of scenes queued on YouTube at all times.

That whole movie just cracks him up.

Why, what for? After all he can look only watch one video at a time...