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susanj62095573
New Participant
June 3, 2018
Answered

Most powerful build for Premiere Pro

  • June 3, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 10713 views

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

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Elliot Balynn

Based on this link https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Premiere-Pro-CC-2017-1-2-CPU-Comparison-Skylake-X-Kaby-Lake-X-Broadwell-E-Kab…​  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.

3 replies

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syedr88365488
New Participant
December 25, 2018

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.

J
JEShort01
Inspiring
June 6, 2018

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

    S
    susanj62095573Author
    New Participant
    June 6, 2018

    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

    MarkWeiss
    MarkWeiss
    Inspiring
    January 25, 2019

    Based on this link https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Premiere-Pro-CC-2017-1-2-CPU-Comparison-Skylake-X-Kaby-Lake-X-Broadwell-E-Kab…​  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.


    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.

    Ann Bens
    Ann Bens
    Community Expert
    June 3, 2018

    Moved to Hardware Forum​

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