Video Editing Build Advice

[mt110121]

Hi Everyone,

I have built one system before for myself which is the editing bay that I currently use. My wife needs an editing bay as well so we are thinking of building one for her. I'll give you what I've come up with first then ask all my questions:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-z270X-Ultra Gaming
CPU: Intel i7 7700k
RAM: 64GB Crucial Ballistics Sport Lt
Graphics: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC Gaming 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5X Graphics Card
Power: RM 650X


I would love to know everyone's thoughts on this build. Especially about the graphics card for video editing. If there is a better option out there in the same price range, please send it my way.

Also, is 650w enough? How can I find out?

I really appreciate all your help!

 

[FrancisBitter]

If you'd like to see actual hardware acceleration for video encoding (e.g. Metal as used in Final Cut Pro X), I can't stress enough that a natively supported AMD card will yield much better (and smoother) results than any NVIDIA card could running with the web drivers.

Since I've switched from my GTX 1070 to an RX 580, the entire user experience feels amazingly responsive and doesn't lag any more. If you want to pay much more for a graphics card, the VEGA series may be a great alternative.

 

[rwillett]

If you want to use your Mac for video editing then your choice of Video software will make a big difference.

Adobe Premiere is probably best with nVidia cards.
FCP X is definitely better with AMD cards.

There are lots of discussions on the use of graphics cards and video editing as well as suggestions of builds. Rather than rehash it here, I'd search the forums.

650W is OK, but don't forget that for serious video editing a pair of graphics cards is even better. A good sweet spot for FCPX is dual 280X cards. These are quite cheap now and, if you get the right ones, work out of the box. I'd suggest an 850W PSU of the best quality you can afford. It will be quiet and adding a second graphics card will be easy.

Don't forget things like backups, networks, archiving (FCPX hates network backups), multiple screens. Also do forget about over clocking, water cooling and stuff like that. A multi-screen video editing setup can be silent, fast and 1/3 the cost of the same Mac Pro Trash can model.

Rob

 

[mt110121]

If you'd like to see actual hardware acceleration for video encoding (e.g. Metal as used in Final Cut Pro X), I can't stress enough that a natively supported AMD card will yield much better (and smoother) results than any NVIDIA card could running with the web drivers.

Since I've switched from my GTX 1070 to an RX 580, the entire user experience feels amazingly responsive and doesn't lag any more. If you want to pay much more for a graphics card, the VEGA series may be a great alternative.

Thank you so much! I edit on Adobe Premiere. I might use After Effects from time to time as well. Do you think AMD cards are still better or would NVIDIA cards yield better results on Adobe Software?

 

[mt110121]

If you want to use your Mac for video editing then your choice of Video software will make a big difference.

Adobe Premiere is probably best with nVidia cards.
FCP X is definitely better with AMD cards.

There are lots of discussions on the use of graphics cards and video editing as well as suggestions of builds. Rather than rehash it here, I'd search the forums.

650W is OK, but don't forget that for serious video editing a pair of graphics cards is even better. A good sweet spot for FCPX is dual 280X cards. These are quite cheap now and, if you get the right ones, work out of the box. I'd suggest an 850W PSU of the best quality you can afford. It will be quiet and adding a second graphics card will be easy.

Don't forget things like backups, networks, archiving (FCPX hates network backups), multiple screens. Also do forget about over clocking, water cooling and stuff like that. A multi-screen video editing setup can be silent, fast and 1/3 the cost of the same Mac Pro Trash can model.

Rob

Thanks Rob! I'm a Premiere person so you think NVIDIA cards are better for that? I'll definitely try to search the forum a bit and see what I can find.

I think I'm going to go with 850W PSU as you suggested.

Thanks again!

 

[FrancisBitter]

Thank you so much! I edit on Adobe Premiere. I might use After Effects from time to time as well. Do you think AMD cards are still better or would NVIDIA cards yield better results on Adobe Software?

I'm working a lot in Adobe After Effects and I'm enjoying a performance increase with all applications, the Native, ones built with Electron and Adobe's. The Adobe Media Core has had hardware acceleration for OpenCL and Apple's own Metal on top of NVIDIA's CUDA for a while, so modern cards should be supported rather equally — in contrast to the OS, cause it's been a long time since Apple put NVIDIA cards into their machines, so the last true MacPro generation from 2011 (?) is the only official representative for these.

 

[rwillett]

Thanks Rob! I'm a Premiere person so you think NVIDIA cards are better for that? I'll definitely try to search the forum a bit and see what I can find.

I think I'm going to go with 850W PSU as you suggested.

Thanks again!

I use FCPX so I'm happy with my dual AMD cards, but if I went Premiere now, I'd go nVidia as their performance is great across everything. I'm not a gamer so not bothered about insane framerates in Battlefield 1.

 

[FrancisBitter]

I use FCPX so I'm happy with my dual AMD cards, but if I went Premiere now, I'd go nVidia as their performance is great across everything. I'm not a gamer so not bothered about insane framerates in Battlefield 1.

Gaming performance (particularly under Windows) is an entirely different world to native UI performance under macOS. I made the mistake of underestimating the impact of native support and suffered bad performance with 1000-series NVIDIA cards. The 900s don't seem to have that much of an impact.

You can even test the issues out with WebGL Water - Made by Evan, if the water's lagging when being dragged, you most likely have the problem I'm talking about.

 

[Will4k]

Is this Graphic card compatible? Radeon Vega frontier edition Air
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072XKTT7C/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

 

[FrancisBitter]

Is this Graphic card compatible? Radeon Vega frontier edition Air
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072XKTT7C/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Well, I can't answer for specific cards as I only own a single model, Will.
I'm just going to recommend the compatibility list and suggest you choose a newer card with OOB support — it's not necessarily out-of-the-box per se, but you won't have to push mountains for them to work, I'd say.

A more powerful CPU, a 6 or 8 core model may take you further than an overpowered GPU. At the end of the day, even in the most optimised systems, Final Cut and Adobe Encoders still render mainly on the CPU.