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New Build for video editing

G

gammaray

Senior member
i am asking this for one of my friend.

he is switching from an old Mac and wanna build a PC for his work.
what he does is:
-using Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Indesign, Première, After Effect)
- converting videos, he didn't specify which kind.
- make videos from a Go Pro cam in 4k
- work on 1gb images in illustrator and photoshop
- website design

he wants to buy a 4k 33inches screen of very good quality.

can you guys recommend what kind of cpu, mobo, ram and video card he should get?

he never plays video games whatsoever.

thank you
 
You missed a few of [thread=80121]these questions[/thread].

Where is your friend? Canada?

How big is his budget?

When does he plan to buy? (Intel comes out with new chips tomorrow.)
 
Ken g6 said:
You missed a few of [thread=80121]these questions[/thread].

Where is your friend? Canada?

How big is his budget?

When does he plan to buy? (Intel comes out with new chips tomorrow.)
Click to expand...

ah yes, sorry.

well, more or less 3000CAN. (computer screen not included in this)
could be newegg, ncix, directcanada, doesnt really matter.
no OC.
hes planning to buy over the next 3-4months
 
hes planning to buy over the next 3-4months
Click to expand...

If he's planning on buying all the parts in one go, 3-4 months from now, I'd recommend coming back and making a new thread when he's ready to buy.

If he's planning on buying components piece-by-piece over the next 3-4 months, I'd say that this is a not-so-great idea. Deals are transient, and commodity computer hardware doesn't retain any value so it really is a good idea to assemble the full build at once so you can figure out if any components need to be replaced while still under warranty.

My advice would be to suggest to your friend to save their money and let you know when they're ready to build, and then we can help you find the best deals and synergistic components when you're ready to assemble.
 
Sounds like he will want an i7. 16-32 GBs of RAM, SSD. If going on the -E platform, a discrete card will be needed as well. 400-500W PSU, mainly for moar cables.
 
@Essence_of_War: :thumbsup:

Torn Mind said:
If going on the -E platform, a discrete card will be needed as well.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't go with the -E platform. Some of those Adobe products really need high single-thread performance.
 
Essence_of_War said:
If he's planning on buying all the parts in one go, 3-4 months from now, I'd recommend coming back and making a new thread when he's ready to buy.

If he's planning on buying components piece-by-piece over the next 3-4 months, I'd say that this is a not-so-great idea. Deals are transient, and commodity computer hardware doesn't retain any value so it really is a good idea to assemble the full build at once so you can figure out if any components need to be replaced while still under warranty.

My advice would be to suggest to your friend to save their money and let you know when they're ready to build, and then we can help you find the best deals and synergistic components when you're ready to assemble.
Click to expand...

but i don't want to find the best deals, i`d like to know what he needs to buy for the job he does and be satisifed with his hardware for the next 5 years!
 
Ken g6 said:
@Essence_of_War: :thumbsup:

I wouldn't go with the -E platform. Some of those Adobe products really need high single-thread performance.
Click to expand...

so what would you suggest? I7 and integrated graphics is enough?

remember, he will do that at 4k on a 32-33inches screen.
 
gammaray said:
but i don't want to find the best deals, i`d like to know what he needs to buy for the job he does and be satisifed with his hardware for the next 5 years!
Click to expand...
5 years?! Well, that's a different story, and not at all easy to do. Do you realize that most parts don't have 5-year warranties?

But if we're looking that far out, x265 encoding starts to become important. Not that an i7 6700k is really bad at that. But if you get a 5820k now, you might be able to pick up a cheap 12+ core Xeon E5 V3 in a few years and almost double encoding speed.

So, here's a ~$2.5K CDN build, which has lots of unnecessary but nice extras:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($498.98 @ DirectCanada)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($37.50 @ Vuugo)
Motherboard: *MSI X99S SLI Plus ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($249.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Memory: *Crucial Ballistix Sport 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($302.50 @ Vuugo)
Storage: Crucial MX200 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($125.11 @ shopRBC)
Storage: Crucial MX200 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($230.97 @ DirectCanada)
Storage: *Seagate 5TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive ($228.18 @ Amazon Canada)
Storage: *Seagate 5TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive ($228.18 @ Amazon Canada)
Video Card: *EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB SuperSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card ($279.99 @ Memory Express)
Case: *Antec One ATX Mid Tower Case ($47.99 @ NCIX)
Power Supply: *EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($93.99 @ NCIX)
Optical Drive: *LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($66.75 @ Vuugo)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM (64-bit) ($179.99 @ NCIX)
Total: $2570.12
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-05 11:02 EDT-0400

The bigger SSD is the main one. The smaller one is a swap-and-scratch drive, for Windows and Photoshop swapfiles, and for writing to while reading a video from the main SSD.

The two 5TB drives can be in RAID if you want. It's "not a backup", but it does help protect against a sudden drive failure. Or, put one in an external case instead and it is a backup.

The GTX 960 is the only discrete card currently capable of native HEVC playback.

And he may be glad it's not 3K when he sees the prices on good 4K monitors! ($1K.)
 
thank you for the list.
Do you think a pci-e ssd card would be worth it over a mx200?

btw, the warranty if it last 5 years all the better, but not needed.
what's the drive failure rate of a seagate 5tbs, compared to a WD black?
 
Last edited:
I'm going to be "that guy".

My potential beefs with Ken's build:

1) I'd rather match the SSDs, mirror them, and just use a partition on them for scratch space. A pair of 500GB drives is within budget, and if one fails you can hobble along on the other one until a replacement arrives. This is for work, and video editing is a pretty lucrative by-the-hour profession, so uptime++.

2) More HDDs with a slightly lower cost per GB might be more useful. A quartet of these would cost about the same, but be slightly more capacious, and in a striped RAID would be quite a bit more performant. (The individual drives are also probably faster.) 6 of them in RAID-10 would be frightening, as well as redundant.

I do not think a PCI-E SSD is worth it for this. It doesn't really get you any additional performance that you can use, unless you're using it to move around video files. They're nice, and I'd recommend them for ZIL logs for large NAS's or for database servers, or for enthusiasts that have to have the best of everything. But cost/benefit-wise, I'm not sold.

I'm also not convinced on the discrete video card - but if you do get one, make sure it's on the supported list for whatever software you're using. I'm not up on the latest software, but in the past, programs like Photoshop would only recognize "pro" graphics cards like the Quadro series, or the highest-est end gaming cards (I remember noticing once upon a time... maybe After Effects?... that supported the GTX480 but not the GTX460). So if I bought one, I'd get the recommendation from the software developers, not here.

Very few systems have 5 year warranties. If that's important, you might consider a prebuilt workstation with an extended service contract.
 
dave_the_nerd said:
I'm going to be "that guy".
Click to expand...
Good. Without criticism I can't learn. (As much.)

dave_the_nerd said:
This is for work, and video editing is a pretty lucrative by-the-hour profession, so uptime++.
Click to expand...
Hm, I was thinking of "work" as in hobby, or work of art, not as in primary, moneymaking work.
dave_the_nerd said:
If that's important, you might consider a prebuilt workstation with an extended service contract.
Click to expand...
^^^This. Regardless of the need for a long warranty.

I could go either way with the SSD thing. SSD backups should be to the HDD, but it would make sense that the primary partition should be no bigger than the smallest SSD.

For the HDDs I think I was stuck on what I'm thinking about building, which is a mini-ITX with only one big drive slot. Also, it looks like the big drives are less cost-effective in Canada.

dave_the_nerd said:
I'm not up on the latest software, but in the past, programs like Photoshop would only recognize "pro" graphics cards like the Quadro series, or the highest-est end gaming cards (I remember noticing once upon a time... maybe After Effects?... that supported the GTX480 but not the GTX460).
Click to expand...

Recently, I think Adobe's been all OpenCL on whatever platform. And there seemed to be diminishing returns on higher-end cards. Quadros these days don't do double-precision any better than consumer cards, so they only seem to matter on 3D rendering stuff.
 
thanks for inputs again.

yes my friend earns a living with his PC (mac before...) so he is a bit lost, that's why i am asking here.

So Mobo and CPU wise, X99 coupled with 5820k ?
and for the 500gb ssd, worth it to get the samsung 850 or any, like the mx200 is good enough?
 
gammaray said:
thanks for inputs again.

yes my friend earns a living with his PC (mac before...) so he is a bit lost, that's why i am asking here.

So Mobo and CPU wise, X99 coupled with 5820k ?
and for the 500gb ssd, worth it to get the samsung 850 or any, like the mx200 is good enough?
Click to expand...

Good enough.

There isn't much to distinguish the MX200 from the BX100 either, really. (Some security and encryption features, that's all. They perform about the same.)
 
Ken g6 said:
OK, this looks like a decent starting point if looking at pre-built workstations:

http://configure.dell.com/dellstore...-t1700-workstation&c=ca&l=en&s=bsd&cs=cabsdt1

Less RAM, needs more HDDs (which can be added), and doesn't have 6 cores, but it has a good warranty and onsite support/repair.

And, yes, that should be a Canadian price.
Click to expand...

my friend is a DIY type of guy. he will never settle for a Dell or hp whatever. i said the 5 years warranty is not important. if it's there then good, like for some corsair PSU or other brands, WD black and so on.

Why 5 years? cos that's how often he gets a new computer and update with new technology.

so, x99 with 5820k or xeon e3 server? or skylate i7? i should not even ask about amd 8350 right?
 
gammaray said:
my friend is a DIY type of guy. he will never settle for a Dell or hp whatever. i said the 5 years warranty is not important. if it's there then good, like for some corsair PSU or other brands, WD black and so on.
Click to expand...

He's upgrading from a Mac though. Speaking from personal experience, you can be as DIY as anybody, but being your own tech support sucks sometimes.

Why 5 years? cos that's how often he gets a new computer and update with new technology.

so, x99 with 5820k or xeon e3 server? or skylate i7? i should not even ask about amd 8350 right?
Click to expand...

If cost matters, I'd pick the i7 and all the goodies (oodles of RAM, SSDs, gobs of HD space, video cards, super-awesome monitor, fancy software, etc.) over the super-beefy CPU and fewer goodies. Get the best CPU you can afford without sacrificing the things that actually get you features/capability - a slower CPU won't prevent you from doing something, it'll just make it take longer. Conversely, not having enough RAM or HD space will effect your workflow.
 
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