[Nate Harrington]

Thanks for the Video Guys DIY 11 tip. Good information, and I’m thinking now that I’m probably going to go the build-your-own route. I’m curious however, about your not substituting parts comment. DIY 11 specs are for NVIDIA and I have seen posted in several places on this forum that Vegas doesn’t use CUDA of NVIDIA. I’m guessing that DIY11 is for a general video editing setup not targetted toward any specific software. Since I’m using Vegas, would it make sense to substitute an AMD card for the NVIDIA?

I’m probably not going to be able to hold out for Skylake to arrive before getting a new system up and running. I am curious about the changes ahead for Vegas. Can you elaborate?

Thanks again to all of you for your feedback!

[Nate Harrington]

Thanks to all of you for your quick replies. You’ve definitely given me some food for thought. Let me expand a bit on what I’m after.

Not specifying a budget was somewhat intentional. It’s not so much a matter of what I CAN afford vs. what I WANT to afford. I could afford a $10k video editing system; I don’t want to. As I mentioned, video editing is not my profession; it’s simply a hobby. Being able to edit 4K now would be a bonus, as I don’t currently have the monitors or TVs to enjoy the final product, and neither do any of the people that I’m going to be sharing my video with; it would be more of a “be prepared for the future” scenario. It would be nice to have a system that I could upgrade to support that at some point, but it’s not mandatory that I have 4K capability out the gate. That said, if it makes sense to start off with equipment that can handle it rather than upgrading later, that is an option.

The “biggest baddest gaming PC” is not out of reach, but I’m not sure it’s necessary. I could spend $5000+ on a video card, $1800+ on memory, and $2000+ on a processor plus another few grand on supporting components. Would it be impressive? Sure. Is it necessary for an amateur to edit video, even 4K video, reasonably effective? I’m guessing probably not. I didn’t want to put artificial financial constraints on the thought process. I want something that is workable, but not excessive.

I’m not opposed to building my own. I used to do that all the time, but in recent years have opted for the manufactured machines, primarily for simplicity, and because I just needed a general purpose machine.

With the above in mind, so far I have 8 cores, at least 16GB memory, SSD, a hefty power supply, and an AMD graphics card.

I think my biggest struggle is the video card; obviously a pretty important component. The range of video cards is HUGE, and what Vegas can and cannot make use of is still somewhat confusing to me, so I think video is probably where I need the most guidance at this point. Aside from Vegas, everything else I’ll be doing on this machine is good with pretty generic video; I’m not a gamer at all. I am looking for dual display. Are the R9 200s, 300s, and Fury all good options? Even within the R9s there is a pretty wide range of prices. Does Vegas make more effective use of some of the cards in these series than others? Which is more important: more memory or faster memory? Are some brands typically better than others, or are they more or less equivalent?