$2500 4K Video Editing PC Build

[thomasn23913537]

Hi, I'm planning on building a 4K Video Editing PC to work with Adobe Premiere Pro. I'm interested in what hardware, specifically CPU and GPU are good for 4K Video in Adobe Premiere Pro? But also so I don't get lag when apply effects. Other recommendations such as SSD, Ram, Motherboard, Monitor, Fans, etc. are welcomed.

Remember that this is a $2500 build at most so try to keep that in mind when recommending parts.

Thanks so much!

[Moderator note: moved to appropriate forum]

[RoninEdits]

the amd ryzen platform is a good value option. the 8 core cpu's start at $330 and go up to $500, and all can be overclocked. for intel options you might only fit a 6 core into your budget as their 8 core costs $1k alone. if you want intel and can wait a couple of months, their new cpu's are rumored to be out and might get a price cut to compete with amd.

some general part brand recommendations are, samsung ssd's, asus motherboards, kingston or crucial ram followed by corsair and gskill ram, noctua fans. a gtx 1060 6gb or 1070 will be decent options for the video card, which helps with gpu accelerated fx like lumetri color.

[thomasn23913537]

Ok so what I was thinking was either an intel i7-7700k CPU and a GTX 1070 8GB GPU or an AMD Ryzen 1700x CPU with an RX480 8GB GPU.

Do you think one of these two pairs would be better than the other for Adobe Premiere and good enough for 4K editing smoothly?

[Bill Gehrke]

With that 4 core i7-7700 a GTX 1070 is overkill, a GTX 1060 6GB is adequate.

With that Ryzen 1700x I would stick with an nVidia GTX card

It does not apply here but here is what Intel will be introducing next week an i9-7900X 10-core and an i9-7920X 12-core.  Maybe they will start reducing the prices on the older 8-cores to get competitive with AMD

[RoninEdits]

i would avoid the 4 core intel i7-7700k for 4k editing. if you want an intel cpu right now then look at the 6 core cpu's on x99, like the i7-6800k. the rx 480 should be close to the gtx 1060 for performance, but if you have any cuda only software it wont work.

[thomasn23913537]

So I actually built my PC with:

CPU: Intel i7-6800k

GPU: GTX 1080 8GB

Storage: 960 EVO M.2 500GB, Crucial SSD (SATA) 1050GB, Seagate BarraCuda HDD 3.5 " Internal Hard Drive 4T 7200rpm

Memory: 32GB of Ram

Results: Can playback my raw 4K footage just fine, but when effects are added it's pretty much like by 13" macbook, can barely even playback the 4K. Any thoughts on optimization? I've made it so projects and cache save to the 960 EVO SSD and Adobe Premiere is on the other Crucial SSD. Pretty disappointed with the performance.

[Bill Gehrke]

Is anything project related on the hard disk drive?  Where is your media?

Test your system with my Premiere Pro BenchMark (PPBM) and submit the results.

Monitor your problem timeline with Task Manager and see if your CPU is running at 100%. while it is playing.

[thomasn23913537]

I have the application running on the Crucial SSD, and Source Media, Project, and Media Cache on Samsung 960 EVO M.2 SSD.

When playing back Raw 4K with no effects at full res with no frames dropped, Adobe Premiere uses on average 25% of the CPU, however, when playing back with effects on the 4K footage at full res with frames dropped (I can't playback w/o getting frames dropped unfortunately) premiere uses over 70% of the CPU and up.

Benchmark Test:

http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/3865879

[RoninEdits]

what is the video card usage like? different media and effects will use cpu and some will use the gpu. you can use gpu-z to watch your gtx 1080 usage, watching gpu load %. with the cpu being at 70% and up, it could be the cpu being overworked and not able to keep up with real-time demands. if you are using some demanding effects like a video denoise, it may be to complex for real-time and would have to be disabled till ready for export.

[thomasn23913537]

So I downloaded GPU-Z, seems like when the footage plays back with no dropped frames raw the GPU load averages 8-10%, however, when effects are applied the GPU load is 1% and stays like that.

[RoninEdits]

looks like the gpu isn't having to work hard at all. so it leaves the cpu being overworked and a possible bottleneck. depending which effects you are using, there might be some alternative or 3rd party effects that accomplish the same thing without being so cpu demanding or perhaps use the gpu instead. you could also try lowering the playback resolution from full to 1/2 or lower to reduce the cpu workload.

[thomasn23913537]

Update on the Computer:

Seems like the issue is when editing drone video footage at 4K. May be something with it being really compressed or the codec. However, using my Sony a6500 which is a 4K camera, the computer can edit the 4K like butter with heavy effects.

[RoninEdits]

you might have to transcode that drone footage to get away from any codec or compression issues it might have. cineform would be a good codec to use.

[VHWebMaster]

I am looking for something similar with a 2700 budget... I was looking at the Alienware Area 51 with 32b ram, 500gm ssd and 2tb mechanical. with a higher end processor. Thought about the new mac pro but... I have always ran with a windows shop...

[Trevor.Dennis]

EJ2013  wrote

Thought about the new mac pro but... I have always ran with a windows shop...

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Premiere-Pro-CC-2017-Mac-Pro-vs-PC-Performance-904/

[estarkey]

My plan is to build an AMD Threadripper system that can offer 16 cores and 32 threads.

AMD Threadripper 1920X and 1950X CPU Details: 12/16 Cores, 4 GHz Turbo, $799 and $999

Although Premiere Pro does Mercury Playback on some effects like color grading, Warp Stabilizer and standard Render Output needs as many threads as you have available. With the CPU costing $1000 and motherboards probably $300, that only leaves $1200 for Ram, storage and GPU. So here is what the BOM is:

• (1) AMD Threadripper 1920X and 1950X CPU Details: 12/16 Cores, 4 GHz Turbo, $799 and $999  $1000
• (1) First AMD X399 HEDT Motherboard For Ryzen Threadripper CPU Pictured  (estimated) $300
• (1) G.SKILL 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory-Newegg.com $350
• (1) WD Gold 4TB Datacenter Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 128MB Cache 3.5 inch - WD4002FYYZ...  $200 General Storage
• (2) SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 500GB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V6E500BW-Neweg...​ 1 cache drive, 1 Boot Drive/Application Drive $450
• (1) SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 2280 1TB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V6E1T0BW - Neweg... current Premiere Project disk $470
• (1) AMD Vega GPU (estimated) $400

Approximately $3200.

You may  able to dump the cache drive and increase RAM to 64GB for the same price.

[glenpinn]

Just put this Ryzen system together for my son for 4k editing (Premier and Resolve) my son will be using it as from next weekend to see how it gows.

Re: Drive setup on new Premier/Resolve Editing PC

[VHWebMaster]

That is an AMAZING wright up! Thank you for that!