Need recommendation for mini PC tower for editing

[D91302]

While I understand a mini PC doesn't usually have great hardware capabilities like a regular sized tower, is there one that would be good enough to use Premiere Pro 2020 (w/ at least 16 GB of RAM) for less than $1,200?

Would the HP ProDesk 600 G4 Business Mini Desktop (Intel Hexa-Core i5-8600T, 16GB DDR4, 256 GB PCIe SSD) be suffice?

*I have an external 500GB SSD.

[John T Smith]

https://community.adobe.com/t5/video-hardware/article-by-dave-helmly-on-hardware-for-running-premier...

[RjL190365]

Not a good choice, in light of a complete lack of a discrete GPU. You see, all on-CPU integrated graphics solutions steal a very hefty amount of system RAM for itself - and once the iGPU steals that ram, it becomes completely unavailable for the OS and apps until the iGPU gets finished doing its work. In fact, Intel's IGP can actually steal as much as 32 GB of installed RAM, depending on how much RAM is installed! By default, the integrated Intel HD/UHD 600-series graphics steal more than 6 GB of RAM for itself at a minimum. This will result in system hangups and occasional crashes whenever you're rendering out something.

And due to the lack of adequate cooling inside that PC's particular case, the CPU will spend most of its time running at just its base speed of 2.3 GHz. Premiere Pro really runs much better at CPU clock speeds of over 4.0 GHz. Plus, the i5-8600T has only 6 cores and 6 threads - and it is all based on a twice-tweaked variant of an architecture that dated back to 2015 with the Skylake CPUs. Put the low thread count, low sustainable clock speed and old-ish architecture together, and you'll have a "newer" CPU that is weaker than even a quad-core i7 that's three years (or three CPU generations) older than that.

So, if you really want a mini PC that's suitable for up to 6k video editing, you have absolutely no choice but to build it yourself. I did exactly that in 2016, and with its current 4-core/8-thread i7-7700 CPU (which I upgraded to a year after it was first built) it completely destroys the performance of that HP mini PC; in fact, for a while it actually outperformed my main mid-tower PC (which at the time still had a Haswell quad-core i7-4790K CPU). In fact, that i5-8600T actually performs slower than even the i7-4790K, even without factoring in the resource-robbing integrated GPU.

So, simply put, all of the pre-built mini PCs suck. With the low-clock-speed CPUs and the complete lack of discrete GPUs included in such systems, it's no wonder why these systems will struggle with even 720p video, let alone 1080p or 4k. And this is all because the big-name OEM system builders for the most part are stuck in the old school "bigger is better" philosophy, intentionally nerfing their smaller PCs with substandard parts.

[D91302]

Thanks for the thorough explanation. It was very helpful.

What is current mini PC setup?

[RjL190365]

The rest of my mini PC configuration is:

• 32 GB DDR4-3200 RAM (running at DDR4-2400 speed)
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super with 4 GB of GDDR6 VRAM
• 2 x 500 GB Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSDs

Those, plus the i7-7700, and a mini ITX motherboard and a liquid CPU cooling solution, are all packed inside a SFF box that's barely larger than a shoe box.

With that said, I was planning to upgrade those innards even further. And I am currently torn between an Intel i9-10900K (if I were to upgrade to that CPU, then I would simply move the GeForce RTX 2060 Super that's currently inside my main mid-tower PC to this mini PC, and move the GTX 1650 Super that's currently inside that mini PC to my mid-tower) and an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (in which case the GTX 1650 Super that's currently in that mini PC box would be staying there).

Oh, I forgot to tell you that the pre-built mini PCs were equipped the way they were because it is much more difficult and more expensive to manufacture such a system than it is to manufacture a huge full-blown tower PC. Had a mini PC been equipped the way we would like for video editing, it would have cost nearly double the price of an otherwise identical PC in a much bigger case. And judging by the tiny size of that HP that you originally linked to, there is practically no air space, and therefore no airflow, whatsoever. So HP had to cut corners on the component choices, in particular the CPU and the GPU, anyway.

[RjL190365]

Since that time, I had upgraded the CPU and motherboard in my mini-ITX box to an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and a Gigabyte B550I AORUS PRO motherboard. This upgrade did produce a nice performance improvement over the i7-7700 and the Gigabyte GA-H170N WiFi motherboard that used to be inside that SFF system. However, the disks and the GPU remain the same, as is the RAM (though it is now running at DDR4-3200 speed).

When I am ready to use this system again (after I move into my own place), I will move the RTX 2060 SUPER that is currently inside my main PC to this mini-system, and upgrade both my main system's CPU and GPU to either a Ryzen 9 5900X or 5950X, plus a GeForce RTX 3080 or better.