Hi everyone. I'm looking to build a new PC to get myself set for editing in 4K.

My current PC build is getting on a bit now, I think about 9 years. i74770K, 32GB RAM, GTX770 4GB.

As I've been out of the loop on new PC stuff for a while I'm not sure what everyone is using these days. I've been watching some YT videos and there is a lot of conflicting information. Intel vs AMD, DDR5 or DDR5, etc.

I'll be using mostly Adobe Suite, Premiere, and AE.

I'm also going to need a new monitor since my current one is only 1080p. Used for colour correction and playback.

I'm not looking for a budget option, this thing will be with me for a while, so I don't want to cheap out on it. I also don't want to waste money on the latest parts just for a couple of percent performance increase.

Interested to hear what others are using and opinions on where is best to spend the money for our specific hobby. I'm not looking to make a gaming PC.

Cheers everyone.

Get yourself a threadripper and whatever the best GPU you can afford (anything ≥ an RTX 2070 should be enough for you). RAM speed probably won't make much of a difference for your specific use case.

For a monitor you could get the 42" LG OLED, would be great for color correction once calibrated and it's relatively affordable.

Others might be more knowledgeable but here is my take.

I think it was the general consensus that AMD was the winner for a few generations but Intel has finally caught up with its 12th and 13th generation. I still think that AMD is slightly better when it comes to gaming (particularly their 3D line) but I think the newer Intels might be a bit better on the productively side as they use the whole performance/efficiency processor cores scheme vs AMD using just all similar cores. (Of course this is on Win11 as 10 doesn't know how to manage efficiency cores as well as 11.) If it were me and all things were equal, I'd probably just go with Intel i7 unlocked 13th gen (14th end of this year?) unless you really want to blow it out with an AMD top end Threadripper. Honestly, the gaps are smaller today then ever before.

DDR5 is in the process of replacing DDR4 and although better and I think the advantages of 5 haven't been fully exploited yet via the current hardware. At least when I last looked, the full speed advantage of DDR5 weren't there yet but newer boards might be different. People were still buying DDR4 last year because it was cheaper then 5 and a lot of the current boards support both but I believe 5 has come down in price making that advantage disappear. If it were me I would just go with 5 especially if you are buying a newer, compatible board. But honestly it is not going to do a whole lot unless you are going to work on your computer while it is rendering.

Video cards I'd go with NVidia. Not because they are the be all, end all. If fact AMD has some nice cards that are much faster and cheaper then the equivalent NVidia cards. Having said that, you talked about Adobe Premiere and AE and both work faster with NVidia's CUDA. If you process the same job on similar AMD and NVidia cards, the NVidia is most likely going to pull ahead due to CUDA which the Adobe products are tuned to use. You can easily go with a cheaper 30 series card since I don't think the 40s blow away the older cards in productively but that's a question of the money you want to spend. Even with a graphics card helping, most of the processing is still on the CPU side so I would focus on that.

Monitors are in a great place lately. If you look you can find ones that now do 100% of the P3 colorspace and some that are 90%-100% of the 2020. A few will even come pre-calibrated. I would just look for those color specs to start with and move out from there. Maybe an OLED or QD-OLED to get those color specs and the true blacks.

Hope this helps.

(2023-05-30, 03:20 PM)stwd4nder2 Wrote: Get yourself a threadripper and whatever the best GPU you can afford (anything ≥ an RTX 2070 should be enough for you). RAM speed probably won't make much of a difference for your specific use case.

For a monitor you could get the 42" LG OLED, would be great for color correction once calibrated and it's relatively affordable.

Cheers, I'll look into those. What's the model number of the OLED?

(2023-05-30, 03:39 PM)PDB Wrote: Others might be more knowledgeable but here is my take.

I think it was the general consensus that AMD was the winner for a few generations but Intel has finally caught up with its 12th and 13th generation. I still think that AMD is slightly better when it comes to gaming (particularly their 3D line) but I think the newer Intels might be a bit better on the productively side as they use the whole performance/efficiency processor cores scheme vs AMD using just all similar cores. (Of course this is on Win11 as 10 doesn't know how to manage efficiency cores as well as 11.) If it were me and all things were equal, I'd probably just go with Intel i7 unlocked 13th gen (14th end of this year?) unless you really want to blow it out with an AMD top end Threadripper. Honestly, the gaps are smaller today then ever before.

DDR5 is in the process of replacing DDR4 and although better and I think the advantages of 5 haven't been fully exploited yet via the current hardware. At least when I last looked, the full speed advantage of DDR5 weren't there yet but newer boards might be different. People were still buying DDR4 last year because it was cheaper then 5 and a lot of the current boards support both but I believe 5 has come down in price making that advantage disappear. If it were me I would just go with 5 especially if you are buying a newer, compatible board. But honestly it is not going to do a whole lot unless you are going to work on your computer while it is rendering.

Video cards I'd go with NVidia. Not because they are the be all, end all. If fact AMD has some nice cards that are much faster and cheaper then the equivalent NVidia cards. Having said that, you talked about Adobe Premiere and AE and both work faster with NVidia's CUDA. If you process the same job on similar AMD and NVidia cards, the NVidia is most likely going to pull ahead due to CUDA which the Adobe products are tuned to use. You can easily go with a cheaper 30 series card since I don't think the 40s blow away the older cards in productively but that's a question of the money you want to spend. Even with a graphics card helping, most of the processing is still on the CPU side so I would focus on that.

Monitors are in a great place lately. If you look you can find ones that now do 100% of the P3 colorspace and some that are 90%-100% of the 2020. A few will even come pre-calibrated. I would just look for those color specs to start with and move out from there. Maybe an OLED or QD-OLED to get those color specs and the true blacks.

Hope this helps.

Thanks man, I appreciate the reply. Lots to unpack and think about there.

(2023-05-31, 04:18 PM)Booshman Wrote:

(2023-05-30, 03:20 PM)stwd4nder2 Wrote: Get yourself a threadripper and whatever the best GPU you can afford (anything ≥ an RTX 2070 should be enough for you). RAM speed probably won't make much of a difference for your specific use case.

For a monitor you could get the 42" LG OLED, would be great for color correction once calibrated and it's relatively affordable.

Cheers, I'll look into those. What's the model number of the OLED?

The C3 is the newest model, but for a color grading monitor a C1 or C2 will be just fine. I think the 2&3 still have issues calibrating Dolby Vision so if that's something you care about maybe try and get a C1

(2023-05-31, 05:10 PM)stwd4nder2 Wrote:

(2023-05-31, 04:18 PM)Booshman Wrote:

(2023-05-30, 03:20 PM)stwd4nder2 Wrote: Get yourself a threadripper and whatever the best GPU you can afford (anything ≥ an RTX 2070 should be enough for you). RAM speed probably won't make much of a difference for your specific use case.

For a monitor you could get the 42" LG OLED, would be great for color correction once calibrated and it's relatively affordable.

Cheers, I'll look into those. What's the model number of the OLED?

The C3 is the newest model, but for a color grading monitor a C1 or C2 will be just fine. I think the 2&3 still have issues calibrating Dolby Vision so if that's something you care about maybe try and get a C1

I think the price and size might be a bit overkill on that one. Looking what's around locally it only appears to be th3 C3, and nothing under a grand.

Looking at some more reasonably sized monitors, these 2 are both around 500 bucks here. Anyone have experience with either of these?

https://www.displaydb.com/compare/asus-p...nq-pd2700u

I just upgraded to a 5950X as it's the highest I can go without replacing my board. I'm also running 64 gb ram, DDR4 as that's all my board can take but DDR5 is so expensive and I'm not sure how much difference it would make. Works great for what I do. I'd also recommend going with SSD or NVME drives so disk speed doesn't limit what the rest of the system can do.