Looking for Advice on Desktop Builds to Run Premiere and After Effects to Their Fullest

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
January 31, 2021
4 replies
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Hi there,

I am looking for some advice on which Computer build I should go with to get the most out of rendering(including previews) and exporting in Premiere and After Effects. The type of video work I do have taken a toll on After Effects in the past and had made me come to the conclusion that I need to get a new machine. I'll do some minor 3D work, OBS Streaming, and even occasinly play Minecraft(I'm such a nerd sorry haha) that is why both builds have an RTX GPU in it.

Which one would be best to take advantage of Adobe's Hardware Encoding and GPU rendering?

Intel Build(https://www.digitalstorm.com/configurator.asp?id=3753347)

AMD Build(https://www.digitalstorm.com/configurator.asp?id=3753349)

Thank you!

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R

RjL190365

Legend

At this price there is not much that you can do. Most newer CPUs and all newer GPUs right now cost much more money than they are supposed to cost.

Unless you absolutely, positively need a new PC right now (because either your current PC is outdated or obsolete or you do not have a properly working PC at all), I would hold off on buying a new system until the prices go back down towards their intended price points.

R

RjL190365

Legend

Neither build is ideal for Premiere Pro. The biggest shortcoming with both of them is the reliance of a spinning hard disk for all media files. And since all decent NLEs decompress compressed video on-the-fly for viewing, even playback is heavily reliant on the disk throughput. Unfortunately, no single spinning disk can sustain more than about 200 MB/s maximum - and that's on the very outer edge of the disk. It plummets to less than 70 MB/s once that disk fills up beyond about 60% full.

And the i9-10900X is, if anything, actually slower (weaker-performing) and more expensive than newer, more modern CPUs because the i9-10900X is just a Cascade Lake X rehash of a Skylake X CPU that made its debut three-and-a-half years ago. And that CPU has, relatively speaking, low performance per clock compared to other currently available CPUs. That Intel system will consume more power than the AMD system while performing no better (in other words, higher cost and greater power consumption for zero performance gain over the AMD system with fewer cores). Plus, right now LGA 2066 and X299 are in a very tough spot with regards to future upgradability: Either go cheap on the CPU and you'd end up in a situation where there would be no economically worthwhile CPU upgrade in the future, or you just overpay for the most powerful CPU that's compatible with that socket and chipset and still fall behind in performance.

Now, if the Intel configuration were based on the mainstream i9-10900K instead of the HEDT i9-10900X, then the i9-10900K system would have been better, especially if you're going to work with H.264 and HEVC video content directly (as opposed to transcoding to an intermediat format) - but at a higher cost.

99ryanAuthor

Participating Frequently

So, @RjL190365, I am looking for the best I can get while still keeping the cost low. I would like to spend less than $3,350 if possible. @John T Smith, Suggested an Intel machine unless AMD has caught up, which I believe they have, and calling back to what you mentioned would use less power.

I honestly did not know that regarding the i9-10900X CPU, it was the one listed before i9-10980XE Extreme Edition on the PC Builder's website, so I just went with it to keep the costs low.

Regarding using H.264 and HEVC video, we'll be using H.264 when the project calls for it, so getting an Intel machine would be wiser? I read somewhere on Adobe Communities that Adobe was working on AMD Hardware Encoding? Also, to give a little more context to the video projects, it won't be crazy work in After Effects, just some multi-layered compositions with either 4k or 1080p video files. I'll work with Proxy files where necessary to use my resources more carefully since I am looking for a cheap machine. In Premiere, we do a modest amount of light->mildly heavy editing. So far, on our personal machines both me and my friend could complete our tasks without issues in Premiere. I do editing on a 27 iMac from 2017 with 32GB of RAM. He works on an iMac from 2012 with 16GB of RAM (if I recall). Though, his iMac does run into some hangs every now and then.

I need as much help as possible, I had a few tech friends look at my AMD build, and they said it would work, but they aren't filmmakers, they are programers. I appreciate the help so far and look forward to hearing back! I'll also take another look at pugetsystems, the price for the General Ae Workstation isn't so bad.

Thanks!

R

RjL190365

Legend

John T. Smith actually used the mainstream (as opposed to the HEDT) Intel platform. Unfortunately, your builder suggested the HEDT platform, which absolutely required a discrete GPU just to even work at all. Thus, the performance of that 10-core 10900X is no better overall (as far as video editing and rendering performance is concerned) than that of the 8-core AMD 3800X. You do not get even Intel's QuickSync for encoding or decoding because unlike mainstream Intel CPUs, HEDT Intel CPUs have no built-in hardware encoding or decoding capability or an integrated IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) that's required to even have a hardware decoder or encoder at all.

In addition, Cascade Lake X (the architecture that the i9-10900X is based on) lacks some of the optimizations that the Comet Lake-based i9-10900K (the CPU John T. Smith uses) has. Because of that, the i9-10900X's performance is much, much closer to that of an i7-10700K CPU as far as most video rendering is concerned.