Most powerful build for Premiere Pro

[susanj62095573]

This is a question that also relevant for After Effects and Media Encoder, but my focus is currently on Premiere.

I am wondering what is the most powerful CPU, as of June 2018, that Premiere Pro can use. The tech specs don't cover optimized systems and nothing I can find in the software community mentions what is the software is currently programmed to cover. I am primarily looking for fast rendering for 4K multicam edits with After Effects compositions embedded with no rendering errors.

I'm looking at a higher core (10+) CPU using hyper-threading as an option, since most rendering is done on the CPU. What is the max model that Premiere Pro can use? Also looking for the best SINGLE GPU to use with 10-bit capability. I'm assuming the 1080 TI, but once again, I can't find optimization specs anywhere. Can I use Optane memory with Premiere Pro or just standard socketed memory?

Mac or PC, makes no difference between these two for me. Not using Linux.

I am looking for answers directly from Adobe or advanced power users using 4K multicam and higher resolution projects.

Thanks!

Susan

[Ann Bens]

Moved to Hardware Forum​

[JEShort01]

Regarding the most powerful CPU for Premiere Pro, Intel's i9-7940x is pretty strong - it's a great balance of clock speed and cores.

Regarding best GPU, I'd offer that a GTX 1080 Ti is really strong and WAY less expensive vs. anything better for Premiere Pro at this time.

Standard DDR4 RAM is fine, 64GB is pretty good, 128GB can help just a bit for really challenging timelines.

You don't even mention drives, and Premiere Pro is only as strong as its weakest link - M.2 drives and NVMe drives are the fastest.

And finally you do NOT need all this "best" hardware for 4K media. It's simply not that taxing. RED 6K, 8K, that's a different story - for that you may want to afford the "best" options .

Regards,

Jim

[susanj62095573]

Jim,

Thanks for your response, but this is exactly the type of response that I DON'T need.

I am looking for optimizing hardware based on how the software is written. The whitepapers are painfully out of date and information is scarce with just a Google search. As a user with over two decades of experience with Premiere (wow, I'm dating myself...), I am all too aware that the shiny new tech isn't always able to be used by the software written by Adobe. They have their own secret plans for adoption paths.

However, I just need to know status quo or a 6-month support outlook. So hopefully I can get a response to that effect. Not going to buy an 18-core hyperthreaded if it's useless, though in theory "should" work.

Susan

[Elliot_Balynn · Accepted solution]

Based on this link https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Premiere-Pro-CC-2017-1-2-CPU-Comparison-Skylake-X-Kaby-La...​  you can extrapolate the more cores the better. So look for a system with 4 x E7 Xeon CPUs or go for one with the most number of cores.

[Peru Bob]

I'm going to purchase a system from Puget Systems.

I have purchased from ADK Video Editing, but they are now out of business, even though their website is still up.

This is a quote from an email I received that answered some of my questions regarding the build:

Both Premiere Pro, and After Effects can be rather demanding on hardware. Premier Pro can spread it's processes out among the available cores to get things done more quickly, while After Effects primarily can only use a single core.  Our testing has shown that for both 1080p and 4K timelines, there is diminishing returns having more than around 10 CPU cores.  Having more cores or physical CPUs can still provide a performance boost if you need the absolute best performance, but in general using a CPU with at least 6 cores for 1080p timelines, and 8-10 cores for 4K timelines with a relatively higher operating frequency of 3.6GHz or higher.  The 8-core Core  i7 7820X processor is our best value choice, where the i9 7900X processor will provide additional performance for Premier (around 5%), but does cost a bit more, so that needs to considered when balancing performance / price. The i9 7900X will also negatively impact your After Effects experience (around -5%) as well.

[Elliot_Balynn]

I'm going to do a build specifically for Premiere Pro. According to my research (and experience) it is very good at utilising cores. After Effects, on the other hand, is not that good in multi-threading. In Premiere's case the more cores the better (I always switch off hyper-threading, it just an overhead when you have a decent number of cores)

Since I'm mostly using Premiere I'm going to go for:

• Intel Core i9-7980XE (pricey!)
• Compatible motherboard (haven't decided on exactly which one)
• 128 GB RAM - 8 x 16GB G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 3600MHz (yes, right now it's an overkill)
• 2 x Samsung 970 PRO Polaris 512GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive, plus 5 SSDs from my current workstation. One of the M.2s will be used for the OS (Win 10) and another one for Premiere cache files. Slower SSDs will be used for render output. No HDD in my workstation at all, I have a NAS for that.
• Nvidia 1080Ti video card (will carry over from my existing workstation)
• 43' IPS screen - some prefer multiple moniors, I prefer one big screen. For me it's easier to work with.
• Will also use a watercooling kit

All in all it will cost me around £4,000 (~$5,300)

Should be good for a couple of years

Would appreciate any input.

[NikNakNow]

Why does everyone go nuts on the ram. I have 24 gigs of ram, when play my timeline with 4k footage my CPU almost maxes out. Yes I need a rebuild. As far as ram goes it is using 24 % usually. So it uses less than 8 GB. What benifit do you get? I don't even know why adobe recomends 32G. I see no evidence to support this.

[Ussnorway]

you get almost nothing from ram with Pre-pro and unless you happen to have Ryzen there is little point to going above 20G on a Windows system... people tend to go Ram because it was an easy fix

[Ann Bens]

I disagree: on windows very often memory is used up to 30-35 gig. So I am glad I have 64 installed.

Canon 4K in real time, high quality playback, no proxies.

[MarkWeiss]

Three years ago, I built a super NLE, based on Puget Systems, and now, Newegg's recommendation for "money is no object" top performing editing workstation.

The result was a dual Xeon E5-2667-based system with 128GB RAM, Quadro M6000 and all SSD boot and media drives,with separate drives dedicated to projects, video and audio and temp swap areas. Fifteen thousand dollars went into that system, and I fully expected to be able to edit 4K smoothly.

I was already editing 4K on a 7 year old Core2Quad system, but it would drop a few frames now and then with 4K XAVC material, and I wanted faster render times and the ability to do multicamera 4K, which the old PC wasn't up to.

Fast forward to August 2015. I finally build the 'dream machine' with the fastest hardware and two hyper threading 8-core Xeons clocked at 3.2GHz.

But the result? "Sticking" playback. Sometimes video would not play at all, the CTI would move and audio would play, but the video would stay frozen. Sometimes it would unstick and play a few frames then drop a bunch, then play. I found that if I stop/start/stop/start the playback, it would finally smooth out a bit. It might even play for a whole 30 seconds a 24FPS 4K timeline without a single dropped frame. But my Core2Quad from 2008 can do that too. And 60P? Even 1080 60P? Fuggetabbouttit! Over 60% of the frames drop during playback.

This year, given me backup NLE/general purpose machine had crossed the ten year age boundary, I built a 'cheap' $1500 midrange system, consisting of Z390 based board, i7-9700K and only 32GB RAM. The one clearly superior aspect was the M.2 boot drive. 3X faster than SATA SSDs. And that machine cannot install Windows 7, so I was forced to install Windows 10 Pro.

Well what do you know? Premiere runs like a dream on this cheap box! Not a single dropped frame. No 20-second wait for the Render dialog to open when using NVENC. Even things like GPU rendering are 2.5X faster than the dual Xeon, and I only have a GTX1060 in this new build. It will render out a minute of 4K HEVC footage in 24 seconds. Thinking that the newer GTX1060 was responsible for the faster renders, I popped for a GTX1080Ti and put it in the dual Xeon. Not much improvement over the M6000. Maybe 10-12%, but still barely cracks realtime render speeds for HEVC.

The one place where the dual Xeon shines is in Maya, playing shaded viewport renders with high complexity. Oh, also DaVinci Resolve. I managed to get five 4K clips, one background, 4 PiP, rotated and all with LUTs and sharpening applied, to play smoothly at once. Only problem is DaVinci can't rendering anything useful above 1080P, so it's great for feeling the speed of playback, but useless for actual output.

Funny thing is, the big boys keep touting more cores as the panacea for NLE work. My experience contradicts that.

[syedr88365488]

My vote goes to ASUS ROG Maximus XI Hero which is best motherboard for i9 9900k , i am using it from last 1 month and it's performance is really awesome.