PC for Premiere Pro and After Effects

[Eric Santiago]

Good luck building one.

I don’t have the patience to deal with that.

My experience with Windows workstations is mostly Industry proven mfg.

Integraph, Dell, SGI (yes they had Windows box), BOXX, and of late HP.

If I had to go custom, I would also add RAID/high-speed drives for faster data throughput.

Premiere and AE are hogs for that.

I was also told that CPU is more important than GPU with the above apps.

Again good luck!

[Bill Celnick]

Take a look at Puget workstations – we’re talking way more in the way of price then Best Buy, HP or Dell, (but less then Apple). In my case, paid about $5500 for a system late in 2016 that is still going strong.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Premiere-Pro-143

[Merlin Vandenbossche]

Choosing/building a new system can be a pretty daunting task. So much depends on your needs and even more on your budget. In the best case scenario you future proof yourself as best you can. So that means you might wish to buy into new tech as much as you can. That could mean a number of things today:

– You might want the latest gen of CPU chips (Intel 10th gen or AMD Ryzen 5000 series)

– You might want the latest gen of GPU chips (Nvidia RTX 3000 series or AMD 6000 series)

– You might want fast up to date storage (NVMe SSD)

– You want enough memory (32 GB+, potentially even 64 GB+)

– You might want latest gen of connectivity tech (Wifi-6, 2.5+ Gbe ethernet)

Last year was a good year for tech, we had plenty of leaps from some companies in their generation of products: Nvidia launched a strong leap in performance for their GPU line-up, AMD renewed both their GPU and CPU line-up and ofcourse Apple took to its own path with the M1 chips. All of those increase performance for us editors by a good amount. But the giant problem you will face today is that a lot of that tech is being sold at too high a price or won’t be available at all due to stock issues and extreme high demand. Good luck finding a RTX 3000 series GPU today. The Ryzen 5000 might also prove difficult. Yet despite this I do feel you can still get on board with at least a number of these techs if you buy carefully.

Now if you look at one of the links you provided:

https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/asus-rog-strix-gl10cs-gaming-pc-iron-grey-intel-core-i7-9700k-1tb-ssd-16gb-ram-rtx-2060-win-10/14706836

There’s a clear number of issues there: it’s 9th gen Intel CPU (9700K), previous gen RTX 2060 GPU, Wifi-5,… In other words, you are buying slightly older tech that has been on the market for 1,5-2 years already. And you are missing out on some advantages.

The problem with commercial marketplaces like best-buy is they are often selling old stock. If you would build a PC yourself or let a specialty store build it for you, you can make the right choices about what gen hardware you are buying. Those 1500 dollars might not get you those RTX 3000 today (still too high in demand), but it can get you 10th gen intel (10700k) and a board with wifi 6 and maybe even 32 GB of memory around the budget range. The Puget systems someone adviced about, while arguably expensive, are great: they offer latest gen on everything so you are not buying yesterday’s tech.

If you are looking to really buy today I would look specifically for some parts that are current gen: like for instance a combination of 10th gen intel, wifi-6, RTX 2000 series GPU. You can add RAM yourself later or swap out GPU’s when 3000 series become available. (BTW: never buy AMD GPU’s for Premiere Pro, Nvidia is better on windows on all accounts due to the more optimal integration because of CUDA). Or do as I would do today: let all the early adopters have at it with the inflated prices on the new tech and buy that generation when it becomes more readily available later in 2021.

[Ernest Rosado]

The parts you’ll want, unfortunately, are currently unattainable. There’s a massive demand for the latest-gen components and unless you’re willing to pay scalper prices on eBay, you’re best off waiting 3 months.

I would recommend a system with a Ryzen 9 5900X or 5950X CPU. At least 32GB of ram (3600 MHz or higher with CL16 or lower), 64 is even better if you can afford it. Stick to Nvidia for GPU’s if you’re doing video editing. AMD’s gpus are competitive for gaming but their hardware video encoder is lower quality and slower. Get at least an RTX 3060 Ti. A 3070 or 3080 will be faster rendering effects, but the 3060 Ti is the sweet spot for price/performance. To power all this you should have at least a 650W PSU, bump that up to 750 or 800 if you go with a 3080.

You’ll also want as much NVME storage as your budget allows, and perhaps some large mechanical hard drives for archival.

[Eric Santiago]

Or just buy a Mac.

Yea we can argue that, but from my years (and it’s a lot) I can tell you that I’ve tinkered with many PC configs and have never had an issue with longevity of any of the Macs I’ve been involved with.

[Eric Santiago]

Just to add and this is not to quell the possible Mac vs PC debate, I had a few awesome Premiere workstations that kicks (even my new 2019 MP) as far as pure speed.
It was a fully-loaded HP Z840. Man, that thing was killer in Premiere, After Effects, Resolve and Maya. It wasn’t mine but I had one for almost a year (client provided). Next to that was BOXX then DELL but that was before the iCores started to saturate the market.