PC for Premiere, in 2024

[Rob Ainscough]

This applies to any NLE software (not just Adobe):

You’ll get more bang for you buck if you build a custom PC. I’m not a fan of Dell/HP as they use low quality parts and proprietary parts … if you go Dell/HP then you may as well go the Apple route.

$2124 will get you a good custom PC:

AMD 7800X3D 8/16 – $395

ASUS Prime AM5 X670E-Pro Wifi – $320

G.Skill Z5 Neo AMD EXPO 2X32GB 64GB RAM 6000 CL32 – $210

2TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe Gen4 M.2 – $160

AMD 7800XT 16GB DDR6 GPU – $530

CASE Zalman i3 Neo ATX Mid Tower – $70

CPU Fan Noctua NH-D15 PWM 140mm – $110

PSU EVGA Supernova 850 T2, 80+ Titanium – $190

Windows 11 Home – $139

The custom PC above will run circles around the HP specs you listed.

Cheers, Rob.

[John Sergio]

Thanks for the suggestions, Rob!

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey John,

Rob makes some really good points.

We did recently have this conversation on hardware for PPro, but in your case it all comes down to budget:
https://creativecow.net/forums/thread/editing-system-for-premiere/

I think that it is great that you are helping your son on the way to become a Freelance Editor.
Having kit and software, will be a big plus.

But he will need to find his niche, as in what kind of editing work that he wants to do.
This will be relevant to how much he can charge – as in, can he make enough money to scale up as the jobs demands more of him?

Will he have the guts to turn down jobs that are too big for his current work-flow, or can he make contact to share/hire local resources (DO NOT FORGET INSURANCE).

But as long as he is having fun, enjoying the journey, and getting a fair price, he will do fine with whatever you give him as a starter system – even Mac Mini will be able to get him going.

My choice would be to max out on memory, processor and SSD + have a plan for back-up, whether on drive or in cloud (Google drive can scale him up to 30TB on a monthly competitive subscription – but he’ll need a minimum 1 GBps connection to enjoy it).

Then there is the business of freelancing, and that often requires him to say No, rather than yes, to jobs – no matter how attractive they are, if he can not pay his own bills, it is charity on his part, often financing companies that can afford to pay for it.

First red flag warning is when “nice” potential client (with no money) says “This will look really good on your show-reel…” – RUN – and he should not stop running away from those. They will come back with money, or find another willing village jester to work for free.

Looking forward to seeing his work on the COW!

Atb
Mads

creativecow.net

Editing System for Premiere - Adobe Premiere Pro - Creative COW

Editing System for Premiere - Adobe Premiere Pro - Creative COW

[John Sergio]

Hi Mads. Thanks for the link and the advice. Much appreciated.

[Eric Santiago]

I would like to add more SSD internal and external if possible.

Heck NVME would be helpful but that gets you up there in budget.

[John Sergio]

Thanks, Eric. I’ve increased to 2TB internal, and an external 2TB SSD for video projects.

[Rob Ainscough]

Agree, can never have too much storage.

In my early days, my workflow was Projects on 1TB M.2 (local), assets on a 2TB M.2 (local) and archived on 10TB HDD (local).

I soon grew out of that workflow as I captured at higher and higher resolutions (4K 60, 8K 30) in RAW and 10bit color — need more space and flexibility, my new workflow for storage:

2TB M.2 projects (local about 7000MB/sec)

70TB NAS for Assets and Networked Projects 10G (1250MB/sec)

70TB NAS to render server 20G (2500MB/sec)

I ran render testing against my NAS (network RAID 5 – 5 HDDs and 4 SSDs), 2TB internal NVME M.2 (local), and my 10TB HDD (local) … performance between my NAS and M.2 was within margin of error (almost identical). Performance to my HDD and the project rendered about 30% slower. Your mileage will vary somewhat based on CPU, Chipset, etc. but from my testing the CPU/GPU are still the bottlenecks in rendered output when running any I/O above 300 MB/sec.

Probably more than you wanted to know, but what you might gain from my results is that just about any M.2 or SSD will be sufficient.

[John Sergio]

Thanks for your insight, Rob. Much appreciated.