Hey all. I know this topic has been covered, but nothing recent. With whats currently out there i cant really go off of the questions from years ago due to better prices for better parts. Here is what im looking to do...
I want to make the cheapest video editing rig i can. It will only be used for smaller videos from recording PC games. We dont really care about high-end graphics since this computer will be used just to edit not game on. I know that a good CPU and decent amount of RAM will help us, but id like to make the rest as cheap as i can.
I do not have any concern over brand (AMD v Intel...or nVidia v ATI) just what is cheap and get the job done. I have not really looked into things since there is a lot of conflict on web searches of you can use on-board graphics, single channel memory should be fine with good RAM (im very skeptical about), etc... Im looking for part recommendations and the goal is to keep it under $500 if possible.
I trust this community's knowledge and judgement and enjoy the videos which is why im a monthly supporter, i just dont ask a lot of things. Thanks all!
Dell T5500's can be had pretty cheap. ECC ram on ebay is cheap too. You could get a dual quad core xeon machine with 16 threads and a plethora of ram for under $600 or $700. Plus it comes with a windows licence.
ebay. get a xeon 2670v3 and a x79 motherboard. 8 core 16 thread and then get a 500 watt bronze cheap psu, 16gb ddr3 ecc is possible and a hyper 212 evo cpu cooler. the rx480 is pretty good at opengl/cl rendering and other computing task. oh and get a mushkin reactor ssd for the boot and some of the software.
edit: be sure not to get a ES chip cause engineering sample sometimes dont work on certain motherboards with certain bios versions.
I got my T5500 with 12 GB Ram for around $200.00 off ebay....AND it had a windows 7 Pro COA for refubished PCs on it. It came with a WD Black 1 TB. It came with a Quadro NVS 290 but I bought a MSI GTX 660 for $160.00 new. This was about 6 months ago. I recently upgraded the video to a Gigabyte Windforce GTX 960 (4gb version) for $100.00 used. The only other thing I added was a 2 TB WD Green, another 1 TB WD Black and a PCI-E USB 3.0 4 port add in card.
I will repace the WD HDDs with Seagate Constellation ES 2 TB HDDs and add another 24 GB Ram.
Get a mac pro 1,1 with 16 GB ram, your GPU of choice, and do this. Cheaper than anything else and the processor upgrade to X5355's is like 10 bucks on ebay.
POW! Intel i5-6500 3.2 Ghz Quad: $150-$180 on Ebay ASRock B150M-ITX LGA 1151: $70 on Newegg Raijintek Metis Black Case: $50 on Newegg 2x 8GB Crucial DDR4-2133 Model CT8G4DFS8213: $40ish each Newegg Refurbished EVGA 100-W1-0500-RX 550W PSU: $35 on Newegg 1TB Seagate or WD HDD: $50-60 from various vendors Gigabyte R9 280x 3GB GPU: $35-60 on Ebay Deepcool Gammaxx 400 Blue CPU cooler: $25 on Newegg -There's no optical drive space in that case so you'll just have to borrow an external version. Then you can drop the OS of your choice. "Acquire" it as you see fit, but be careful with Windows 7 on a Skylake CPU. I know they didn't play well together for a while. I'm assuming that it's been fixed though. Oh, and do more compatibility checks. I just rushed for the cost requirement.
Correction: @fredrich_nietze@The_Zookle it's the Xeon E5-2670 v1 not v3 he was talking about - but yeah you need cores more than speed for editing but bare in mind the speed of the 2670v1 is still more than enough for most tasks still today.
Honestly build a system with an I7 6700 or similar processor and 16 gigs of ram and then fill in the rest to personal preference based around the Editing software you will be using.
to the people saying Cores matter more or clock matters more, Please stop, There are a bunch of different editing options out there and they all are built around different methods of attacking the problem, so start with a good processor and as much ram as you can afford but no less than 16 gigs and build out from there.
You are right but for instance lets talk Premiere CC 2015 vs BM Resolve vs Sony Vegas.
Premiere Uses 4 cores efficiently and then sees dramatic nose dive on core usage there after so clockspeed and IPC matter most, Blackmagic Resolve is well optimized and will max out as much as you can throw at it, and Sony Vegas Likes High Clock speeds over core count.
Its just that there is no one method that Video Editing software uses and as such with out knowing the specific software its generally best to go with the Fastest I7 you can and not worry about Xeon's unless your software actually can utilize it well.
Cores and clock matters...but to a point. For instance 4k h.264 export can utilize as many cores as you have...yet...it is 98% effecient at the 8 core mark...more cores than that you start to have dimishing returns.
Good points you made. Sony Vegas is more accessible price wise than Adobe Premiere or Resolve and as you pointed out Sony Vegas likes clock speed over cores....and Vegas can use your GPU...
Price wise Resolve is the most accessible as it is free unless you are talking unlocking functions like remote View of Editing with live comments, Render farms, and a few other functions.
All Three of the listed Editing software will use a what ever graphics card you have, Premiere uses graphics cards the least efficiently of the three but all three will use your graphics card.
I have pulled up system monitors on Premiere and Resolve and on final h.264 renders they both use different amount of cores there is no explicit your software will use x computational power to run y render as a universal statement it is completely dependent on the software that is being used not anything about the actual codec being rendered.